Many of us have been shopping online for more than a decade now without a major loss due to insecure credit card transactions.  But most of us also know someone who has been a vicitm of identity theft.  So why then do we keep using our credit cards online?  Because the convenience has outweighed the risk up to this point.  However, with the economy in a slump and electronic credit card theft on the rise, it may be time to rethink that equation.  Or, avoid the problem all together thanks to the wonderful folx over at Shop Shield.

With the Shop Shield Companion browser plugin you can shop online with zero worries that your credit card or banking information will be stolen by cyber thieves.  How? Simple.  Whenever you would normally make a Credit Card Payment you use the Shop Shield Companion Secure Payment Agent (SPA) instead.  The SPA replaces your real payment and identity information with anonymous data that is useless to thieves and can’t be traced to you. Essentially, Shop Shield creates a virtual credit card on the fly that is only usable for that single transaction.  That way there’s no actual account information to be stolen.

But Shop Shield does more than secure your account information (as if that weren’t enough).  Through their Secure Site Registration they also allows you to create anonymous accounts at any shopping site so hackers and thieves can’t even get your personal information like names and passwords either.  How does that sound?

Well if you think it sounds expensive you couldn’t be further from the truth.  In fact if you sign up to pay for your online transactions through your checking account then there will be absolutely no charge for Shop Shield’s service.  And I’m not just talking about the 60-day free trial.  I’m saying it will be free forever!

So we’re talking 100% guaranteed secure online purchase transactions, anonymous accounts with online merchants so no one gets any of your personal information, all for absolutely no cost to you.  If there’s a downside I sure haven’t found it yet.

It continues to amaze me how many small businesses (both existing and soon to be born) do not have an online component, particularly here in the Silicon Valley.  In my continuing conversations with entrepeneurs and business owners I keep hearing the same (sad) reason for not being online: we simply don’t know how to do it.  Well, that excuse is no longer valid thanks to the fine folx over at VenalTech.com.

Their professional web developers and skilled programmers will get your business online, exactly the way you want it, with both speed and precision.  Wether you’re looking to move an existing small business online or are starting a new venture (of any size) the team at Venal technologies can meet your needs.  Want to sell your products?  Check.  Allow social networking and user interaction?  Check.  Perform tasks automatically?  Check.  These guys can make your website look and act however you want it to look and act.  After all, the site is representing your business.

Once the site’s designed and online you’ll need to promote it to the masses surfing the world wide web as well as market it to anyone and everyone online who may be interested in your products and/or services.  Well, the VenalTech.com crew can help with that as well.  SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?  Check.  Building your businesses profile on social networking sites?  Check.  Pay-per-click advertising and/or banner ads? Check.  They’ll even help you create interactive media like digital video.

So, with VenalTech taking care of all the technical aspects of building an online business (or moving your real world business online), there are no more excuses.  Visit their site, drop them an email, or give them a call today.  And I look forward to seeing more local shops taking the plunge into the world of internet marketing.

It’s that time of year again.  If you haven’t started doing so yet it won’t be long before you start dragging out boxes of receipts and paperwork to begin preparing your taxes.  Assuming that, like most people, your (so called) fair share this year is more than you expected and or thought fair yourself you’ll be looking for ways to reduce that debt without having to go to jail for noncompliance.  Well, have you considered donating your old car to get a tax write off?

I know, I know, it’s too late to get the write off on the taxes you’ll be paying in April, but it’s never to early start for next year.  Especially once you take into account that you won’t know the exact value of your donation until after the car is sold.  That’s because the federal government prohibits non profit organizations from assigning values to material donations. However, your donation is valued at the full retail value of the car. So this is how it works…

1. Call your charity of choice to find out the procedure in your area
2. Turn over the car and wait for it to be sold
3. Once your vehicle is sold, you will be notified of the sale price and all the documentation that you will need to claim the deduction on your tax return will be sent to you, including a donation receipt and the IRS Form 8283.

That’s all there is to it!  So it’s not difficult, but it can take some time.  You’re thinking about taxes now anyway, right, so why not keep that forward momentum by donating to your favorite charity as well?

It seems like every day here in Morgan Hill I discover ne whousing being built.  Given the “plummeting home prices” that I keep hearing about in the news reports I have a difficult time understanding why anyone’s financing the building of these new homes.  Then, with a little further investigation I learn that these are all “cookie coutter” houses with almost new personality and I’m left wondering who, exactly, the developers think is interested in buying such a house.

Yeah, yeah, I’m no where near able to buy any sort of a house with my personal economic standing, so I don’t really have a horse in this race.  But, it seems to me, that if I were able to buy a new house given the current state of the economy I’d be far more likely to build that house than to live in someone else’s vision of what my home should be.  If we’re finally starting to understand that buying a house may be a life ling commitment (since it’s more likely to depreciate than appreciate over time) the idea of a custom built home becomes all the more attractive.

It didn’t take much time online to discover Schumacher Homes News. Not only does Schumacher Homes custom build your dream home, but with their Quote My Home Now service you can find out exactly how much your dream home will cost to build in almost no time at all.

Sometimes I hate being right   Two weeks back I asked if Morgan Hill gas prices had bottomed out.  Turns out they had.

When I was out running errands earlier this afternoon all of the Morgan Hill gas stations I passed were posted at $1.89 per gallon with only Safeway bucking the trend at $1.86/gallon.  Of course, they’re likely going to increase tomorrow and the next day as people once again start accruing gas rewards through the use of their Safeway loyalty cards.

Speaking of Safeway gas rewards, they were sure nice while they lasted!  And I’m clearly not alone in that belief as the record gas lines at the corner of Monterey and Dunne on New Year’s Eve proved.  With gas rewards expiring that day (and prices increasing elsewhere) it seemed like the entire population of Morgan hill was filling up the family car.  I know this, because I was in line there myself.

Check out that pic! Yes, I paid $0.67 per gallon of gas! Woohoo! And that was just in this final fill up of the year.  Over the three months the new PowerPump Gas Rewards program was in effect I managed to accrue and use more than 35 $0.10 per gallon discounts.  Since my average fill up is between 25 and 30 gallons and I fill up every ten days or so this really added up, allowing me to be a little more free with my holiday spending this year.

Safeway still has its expanded PowerPump Gas Rewards program in efect. The next expiration date for the gas rewards is March 31, 2009. Unfortunately, they aren’t currently doing the Double Gas Rewards for Gift Cards promotion that ran throughout December. Hopefully, they’ll manage to keep the core price per gallon down low enough that I can get more fillups like the one pictured above.

What with all of the hubub around the holidays it only just occured to me that I never followed up on a post from last month about the annual inspection here at The Caverns.  As I mentioned then one of my roommates managed to nearly destroy his floor with water over the summer.  So we calle don the water restoration ervices of WaterRestoration911.com to get some one to come in and repair the damage before the annual apartment inspection.

They got me a quote in less than a day and had workmen out here in under a week.  They were not only able to repair the damage to his floor, but also identified a problem we were unaware of: mold.  Luckily, the same crew also specializes in Black Mold Removal, so they were able to help us out with that as well.

It turns out the rain gutters outside his room were not properly installed (no surprise considering the slap dash job the construction crew did on these low cost apartments) so water has been seeping into his walls for the last three years and this has caused mold buildup.  It wasn’t anywhere near dangerous levels yet, but no one likes the idea of sleeping next to mold, regardless of the health concerns.  The best news of all was that since the problem was the gutters themselves the landlords had to pay for all of the repairs and we ended up looking like heroes for discovering the problem instead of like schlubs for screwing up our floor.

On my way up to Golden Gate Fields yesterday I realized I wasn’t going to have enough gas for the round trip.  I had planned on saving my Safeway Gas Rewards until after returning from LA on Tuesday night as then I’d need a full 30+ gallons.  Then I remembered the mail spam I’d received from the Shell Gas Station on Dunne.

These two coupons were perfect as I only needed about a dozen gallons of gas and they currently have the same “basic” price as Safeway.  So, the $2.00 off would be the same as using my two available Safeway gas rewards.  Woohoo!!  Of course, at Safeway the savings are calculated right there at the pump so I wasn’t exactly sure how this was going to work.

I pulled up to the pump and went into the “shop”, handing my credit card and the coupon to the clerk.  He told me to go ahead and pay at the pump then bring the coupon back in and he’d give me $2 cash.  Bonus!  Cash from my credit card with no service fee   I put in about 11 gallons at $1.81 per gallon, plus got the $2 back in cash so it came out to around $1.65 gallon.  Not bad at all.  And, I have another coupon that doesn’t expire until the end of January.  Not a bad piece of spam after all.

I never intended this blog to turn into a constant discussion on credit cards and small businesses, but it seems to be what local merchants want to discuss.  After my “Credit Card Processing For Small Businesses” post a few days back I’ve been pounded over the head by merchants asking why, exactly, they should accept credit cards.

The answer, of course, is because your customers want you to. But this isn’t good enough for some local businesses. One merchant pointed me to an October CNN Money article citing a September Javelin Strategy & Research study that showed 39% of consumers decreased their credit card usage, up from 37% in April. But what this merchant (and others like him) are missing is that this is the holiday season. The one month of the year when nearly everyone feels absolutely compelled to spend inordinate amounts of money whether they have it or not.

Yes, Americans drew back from burning up their Visas and MasterCards for a short time with the news of banks and other financial institutions crumbling around them. But then came the biggest gift-giving stampede of the year and they’re all out of cash. Credit is king once again, and your customers are going to be using those cards somewhere. Wouldn’t you rather have it be in your shop?

Despite many, many people still reflexively kvetching about the price of gas, we’ve actually got historically low gas prices here in the United States. According to information provided by the Energy Information Administration the average price for a single gallon of “regular conventional retail gasoline” in the United States was $1.68 per gallon on December 8th, 2008.  You’ve got to go all the way back to March 15, 2004 to find a lower price ($1.675 per gallon).  And let’s not forget that (according to CaliforniaGasPrices.com) $0.62 per gallon is the average Federal and State excise taxes on a gallon of gas.  This tax alone is probably higher than it was in 2004, though I gave up trying to find historic gas tax data.  If you have a site that proveds that info please leave a link in a comment or email me!

Here in Morgan Hill the lowest gas price I’ve seen advertised is $1.69/gallon at World on Monterey.  They’ve been sitting at that price for a few days now, even before Safeway dropped to $1.71/gallon mid-week.  However, yesterday Safeway bumped their prices back up to $1.75/gallon. So the question becomes… have gas prices finally bottomed out even before people stopped complaining about the”high” cost of gas?