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Well that was Christmas ... and a pleasant day it was too. Today we're working light and apart from this and one other regular writing gig that I have to do we're taking the rest of the day off too.

There was a time when we would have worked Christmas Day and Boxing Day but not any more. Now we understand the importance of taking days off just to recharge the batteries and if you're one of those who feel you have to work every day then we'd urge you to think again.

Sure, on the days you're not working you may not be generating any income and that may be hard to cope with. Lots of people in this industry feel the same way and really think that you just have to keep working every day but that's so wrong. If you don't take regular breaks then you're going to find that eventually your body and mind will take the breaks they need whether you want to or not ... and quite often those breaks can be much longer than you might be able to cope with financially.

So work some rest and relaxation time into every week and make sure it's more than just a couple of hours. By taking time off every week you stay in control ... trust me, I know from experience.

The NATS Debacle
It seems that now the NATS debacle has escaped into the wild thanks to one idiot who is totally devoid of any level of intelligence. Thanks to his 'end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it' type post on Slashdot claiming that members' credit card details were stolen it's quite likely that we're going to see this hit some major mainstream press outlets and that could have a very bad impact on sales.

Even if his claims are totally baseless the story is certainly going to appeal to any news editor who happens to be looking for something sensational at this slow news time of year.

The sad thing is that it's not the members who are badly affected by the whole NATS situation, it's the affiliates. We're the ones who have had a lot of personal information compromised and we're the ones who are not getting the information we need if we don't happen to hang out on any of the Webmaster boards.

NATS might be starting to get in touch with the sponsors who are using the NATS program but are the sponsors alerting their affiliates to the problem? Steve and I are affiliates of lots of sponsors who use NATS but so far only one of them has taken the time to write to their affiliates and alert them to the problem.

It's sad that only one program has taken the time to warn their affiliates of the problem and urge us to change the details we have registered with that program. When are the others going to get around to warning their affiliates? It's quite obvious that they need to because there are so many affiliates out there who still don't understand what's happened and how it might affect them.

It makes you wonder sometimes just what some of those big programs that use NATS actually think about their affiliates.

One thing is for sure though ... we haven't heard the last of the NATS mess and even now there are some who are beginning to point to signs that perhaps the problem that NATS was having but been happening long before October.

Marketing to Older People
We had Christmas lunch with my parents and over lunch our chatter turned to the Web and marketing. My father was involved in bricks and mortar retail at the management level for many years and even though he is now retired it is something that he is still very much interested in.

In the next week or so he and my mother will be purchasing their very first computer and they were interested to find out what they could actually purchase on line and the sort of prices they might pay for the goods that interested them. It was interesting to listen to them voice their concerns about making purchases online and even though they might be able to pick up some real bargains they were very cautious about handing over their credit card details.

From what they were saying it's obvious that we should never forget to tell our online customers that they can shop online with confidence and that their credit card details are quite safe. It's something that we often forget to do when we're designing an e-commerce website ... even Steve and I have missed that point with a mainstream online shop we're building.

We'll be going back over the design to make sure that we really do stress that purchasing online is something that's safe and secure because older people are very cautious about buying online. And it's something that you should be looking at too because the tidal wave of baby boomers coming online hasn't finished yet.

Not only are the older surfers cautious about buying online, many more Web savvy people are looking for reassurance about the safety of buying online too and if you don't give them that reassurance then you're going to miss out on some sales you might otherwise have made.

Now I'm off to spend the rest of the day having fun and not thinking about work.