TechTidBit - Tips and advice for small business computing - Tech Experts™ - Monroe Michigan

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Are You Ready To Meet Your Social Match?

Whether MagnetU catches on to quite the same extent as social media sites such as Facebook remains to be seen, but for many, the appeal of being alerted every time they are in the vicinity of someone who has the same “social desires” as they do will undoubtedly be enormous.

MagnetU describes itself as the first real-world street network; essentially this little device acts as “a bridge between your online digital life and the real world” by broadcasting your social media profile to everyone around you. Whether you are looking for the perfect love match, want to meet people with similar hobbies or are more interested in making business contacts, all you need to do is go to MagnetU.com, fill in your social desires, and then sign in to Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites to receive alerts each time a “compatible” individual passes nearby.

You can even change which particular social desire you wear at any given time so that you can look for your soul mate while you’re out socializing and a potential business partner when you’re at a business conference.

Although critics of MagnetU point out that machines are notoriously bad at people-matching and suggest that society already faces enough distractions from social media without this addition, it could just turn out to be another one of those technological necessities that we can’t do without, if only because everyone else is using it!

Sometimes Something’s Just Gotta Give

Whether you’re chasing around between two or three different jobs, trying to maintain a standard of living that used to be achievable doing just one, or burning the candle at both ends to fit in numerous extracurricular activities as well as holding down a full-time job, sometimes there just comes a point where something’s got to give.

Although it might be easy to assume that a constant state of activity means forward progression, when things start to get too frantic, all that dashing around can easily become self-defeating. Not only does the body become exhausted, but as the brain goes into overload, mistakes start to be made, things begin to be forgotten and it becomes impossible to give your best to anything that you attempt. Far from moving forward, what often happens is that you end up spending most of your time sorting out the muddles that have been created due to time pressures and the inability to stay organized.

Both mind and body need time to relax, so if your life has started to look like one endless merry-go-round and offers no respite, bear in mind that sometimes you can achieve more by doing less. Focus on what’s most important and give anything else the old heave-ho!

Increase Your Typing Speed And Accuracy With A Touch Typing Course

Touch typing could be described as a “technical” skill, and you only have to watch today’s army of twofingered typists to see that it’s a dying art. Not only is touch typing invariably much faster than poking away at a keyboard with just two index fingers, but being able to type without taking your eyes off the computer screen also decreases the incidence of error by a huge margin because you can see instantly when you have hit the wrong key.

Unlike years ago when learning to touch-type involved signing up for an expensive course, today there are numerous free resources on the Internet that require nothing more than a small investment of time. A wide range of books that promise to teach you to touch-type in a matter of a few hours is also available.

Take the pain out of using a keyboard and brush up your skills for the workplace or your own home use by taking a free online touch typing course and becoming an expert in hours.

New Year’s Resolutions For Problem Free Computing

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Even though we’re a few weeks into the new year, it’s not too late to take a look at your company’s network and make a few resolutions for better computing in 2012. Here are a few suggestions.

Better backups – now!
Implement a better, more reliable backup system to ensure your critical business data is properly protected. If you’re still using tape drives or not employing the latest professional-grade backup software, there’s no bigger New Year’s resolution that you should have.

You should have both an onsite and offsite backup of your data that allows you to restore files fast. Your backup should also be image-based, not just file-based.

Data loss can happen from human error, hardware/software failure, fire, flood, theft or other disaster. Every hour that you’re without your critical business information could cost you thousands of dollars.

Check out the cloud
Is cloud computing is right for you? In many cases, parts of your IT infrastructure can easily be put in the cloud to save you money and give you better service. It is important to talk to someone who can honestly assess your situation and tell you the pros and cons of making the switch to the Cloud. It’s not for every business but it’s worth exploring closely.

Dump the old PCs
I know that no one really likes spending money on new computers but think about how much unproductive time your staff spends waiting for their slow machines.

You can get an entry-level business desktop now for as little as $600, and speed upgrades to newer machines are very reasonably priced. What’s the cost of staff sitting around waiting for their computer or dealing with computer problems?

Upgrade your server
New servers are light years ahead of the ones made three, four and five years ago. Your company is less productive and less profitable with a server that slows everyone down.

Change your passwords
Most businesses regularly have employees leave, including those who were involved with supporting the computer network. Changing passwords regularly will improve security and protect your valuable customer and business data.

Perform a security review
We’re seeing all sorts of increased threats from hackers these days and you need to make sure your security approach is up to date. There are many parts to your security that you should examine including password strength; anti-virus software; and getting a strong firewall that will prevent intrusions, attacks and other malicious activity.

Keep up with your preventive maintenance
Downtime and annoying IT problems can be prevented with regular maintenance on your computers and network. If you’re not doing this now, it’s time to start!

Start the year right with a full audit of your network to develop your IT plan for the year.

Our top of the line network audit is a 27-point review of the security, performance and reliability of your network, and includes a full hardware and software inventory, plus checks on the health of your server, firewall, and network backup.

Data Management: From Storage To Security

One of the most important aspects of maintaining a smooth running safe and secure network comes down to data management.

How you or your company manages its data is important because if managed improperly, or not managed at all, you risk losing years of important confidential data due to failed hardware or even worse, theft.

Data management needs to begin with an audit of your various assets and how they should be managed properly.

This is the first step because you need to know what you have to manage and more importantly how it needs to be managed (can you use a simple flash drive backup, do you need a NAS, how secure does the data needs to be, should data be encrypted, etc.)

An audit should take place at the beginning of your data management plan as well as at the end which will be touched on later.

During your data management audit you need to first lay out what data is being used, when it is in use, when your slow periods are, and how securely you need to store this data.

For example client credit card data requires much more security than say your pictures from the company party.

After establishing what data you have as stated above you need to separate it into its various classes.

Generally people will store all of their data together so if that is your plan, you need to plan your security based on your most important and confidential data sets.

Some people may have a very large amount of data and smaller data sets that need more extreme security.

In these cases backup sets can be separated to allow less confidential data to be backed up to a less secure and much cheaper backup device while you could have a more secure setup for your confidential data.

One major consideration when it comes to backing up your  data is encryption.

The stronger the encryption on data the longer it will take to recover in the event of a data loss.

Encryption is one of the best methods to store data, determined by level of security – it can be high or low.

Again the amount of encryption contributes greatly to recovery time. Data can be managed and stored in many different manners.

Some of the various storage solutions are; a network drive to another computer, a NAS, a flash drive, an external hard drive, data drives and tapes, offsite backups, etc.

Depending on your needs and the amount of recovery time needed, your choices can vary.

For instance, if you have 1 TB of data you are backing up chances are you would be doing an onsite backup rather than offsite to decrease down time in the event of a crash.

A terabyte of data in an offsite backup is going to take a very long period of time to download to your server if your only recover option is to download from the Internet.

A much better solution for this amount of data would be a data drive like a “REV” drive. A REV drive in combination with good backup software offers plenty of space to backup and encrypt your data.

Backups via tapes or data drives should have at least the previous night’s copy taken offsite each night to ensure that you keep one data set safe at all times. It is a horrible idea to store all data onsite.

After you have a plan in place, run through the audit again once things seem to be running smooth to see what is in place, how its running, how secure it is in the event that a data set is stolen, and is the backup time/recovery time acceptable.

If the answer to any of these questions makes you feel your backup solution may be inadequate, it may be a good idea to try something different.

Even though it would cost more money to change data management solutions, it will save you money and hassle in the long run if you find it does not meet your company’s needs.

For a full data management audit give us a call today and we can happily sit down and discuss with you possibilities for your backups and data management as this only touch on a very small portion of data management.

Your data is very important and generally people do not realize just how important it is until they’ve either lost it or had it stolen due to poor management practices.

Feature Article Written By:
Tech Experts

How Strategic Business Continuity Planning Can Prevent Losing Money And Customers

The concept of business continuity planning is nothing new to conscientious business owners.

Without a doubt, the ability of an enterprise, large or small, to recover from catastrophic events and continue to provide an acceptable level of service to its customers  while maintaining a satisfactory level of profits is a basic requirement of good business practice.

Although such awareness has always been a feature of good management, the startling events of September 11 2001 has brought the world into a heightened state of preparedness for disaster.

Why the need for continuity and disaster planning?

Increasingly, natural disasters continue to surface in one place after another.

Consider recent major floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, corporate crimes and malicious attacks upon computer systems in nation after nation and you will sense the pressing need for sound business continuity planning to avoid disruptions due to technology and other failure.

Another factor which contributes to this need is the changing business climate in view of the expansion and increasing accessibility of the Internet over the past decade.

So organizations which formerly rendered services to their customers during fixed hours of business, now find themselves offering their services on an extended schedule, even 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This means that customers have grown accustomed to this ready access to their suppliers and vendors. And now the reality is that consumers have become less and less tolerant of interruptions in a company’s service and availability.

Business continuity planning – is it just for big business?

Business continuity planning now takes on an increasingly important role, not just for larger enterprises, but for small businesses alike.

In fact for small businesses it is even more critical to be ready to respond to the needs of its customers.

Customers expect this and have no problem locating alternate suppliers who stand ready to take your place in the market!

This is true whether you are in the manufacturing or service business, marketing and sales or any other facet of business.

Your network – a key  component in business continuity 

Nowadays a company’s IT System with its network of computers has become the backbone of many businesses.

Vital functions such as Data Processing, inventory and  payroll management, Internet based operations including online sales, human resource and training systems, project management and an almost endless variety of other business functions are critically dependent on the efficacy of your computer system.

Clearly then, any technology disruption can have disastrous consequences.

Therefore business continuity planning often deals  extensively with maintaining a dependable IT system.

This brings into focus not only the hardware components of the system and its application programs, but also the data contained in the system.

Ways to ensure continuity

Some of the key components that determine system reliability include Data Storage Devices, UPS systems, power generator systems and so on.

And nowadays, Cloud Computing is being relied upon to extend the reliability of Computer Systems and ensure business  continuity in the event of major failure.

There seems to be a tendency to use the expressions ‘business disaster recovery’, and ‘business continuity’ interchangeably.

However upon closer examination it becomes clear that the two concepts are quite distinct.

Continuity of service is the desired state we want to maintain while recovering from any unexpected calamity whether an extended power outage, Computer System failure or other problem.

Such continued operation calls for a comprehensive plan that covers the most probable occurrences.

From this information it can be seen that ensuring business continuity calls for a strategy regardless of the size of the business.

As disasters continue to increase in frequency and magnitude, more and more careful thought must be given to your company’s preparedness to respond in the event of any business threat.

The increasingly prominent role of computers in business calls for highly reliable data backups, hardware redundancy, and keen, effective planning as a way to ensure business continuity in the event of any catastrophe.

Take A Smart Approach To Social Networking For Kids

You can’t escape social networking these days: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and all their online cousins are everywhere. If you’ve got kids, chances are they’re eager to join all their friends in cyberspace.

Worrying about their safety is natural, but hoping social networks will go away isn’t very realistic.

You’re better off working with your children so they don’t hide their online activities from you. Take these steps to help them enjoy social networking safely:

• Start with kid-friendly sites. Facebook is far from the only place for people to go. A quick Internet search will help you locate lots of sites just for children. You’ll want to investigate them thoroughly, of course, but they can serve as a good introduction for your children to the world of online networking.

• Talk about privacy. Have a serious discussion with your kids about guarding their personal information online. They should understand that data like their full names, address, phone number, school, and birth date should be kept private for their own protection.

Emphasize that once something is posted online (a message or a photo), they can’t remove it entirely even if they delete the information from their profile.

• Choose a secure password. A password that your child can remember easily may be simple for a hacker to guess. Come up with a password that includes a mix of letters, numbers, and capitalization so it’s less vulnerable to attack.

• Encourage children to talk to you. Tell your children to let you know if someone online does anything to make them feel uncomfortable. If necessary, report the person to your site’s administrator. At the same time, talk about the need for your children to treat everyone with respect, online as well as in the real world.

Does VOIP Phone Service Make Sense For Your Business?

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.
When we moved our office last month, part of the process included reviewing things like our telephone and Internet services.

Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone service is basically technology that allows you to make and receive calls over data networks.

Instead of traditional phone services which channel analog signals such as the sound of your voice over copper wires, VoIP converts these sounds to digital form first—so that they can be sliced, diced, packaged, and routed over a digital network.

Because VoIP technology uses the same ideas behind data networking, and allows the use of the same networks used by computers, voice traffic can also be routed through the Internet as well.

Suddenly you can now dramatically reduce the cost of voice communications, as well as achieve creative combinations of both services to create new applications for use.

VOIP (voice over IP) services have really evolved over the past few years. In the past, I’ve been hesitant to use it because the service could be flaky – and since 90%+ of our business comes in by telephone, I wasn’t comfortable with something that wasn’t reliable.

Fortunately for small business owners, that’s changed. The service is now as reliable as service from the phone  company. And with the ubiquity of high speed Internet service, call quality has improved to the point of being indistinguishable from the old telephone network.

Our switch to VOIP provided two significant improvements over the service we used before.

First, we increased our telephone line capacity and coverage. We’ve added telephone numbers for our client’s in Toledo, Dundee, and the downriver area to be able to call us locally.

Second – and perhaps more importantly – we’ve cut our  telephone costs in half.

Cost and coverage were my primary concerns when looking at a move to VoIP services. Here are a few reasons you may want  to consider switching to VoIP for your office:

You can make and receive calls from multiple devices – for instance, on a dedicated phone, your PC via a software-based phone, or even a mobile phone with VoIP capabilities.

It’s easier to add extensions to your phone. You can provide a local number or extension for all your staff without  additional costs or cabling.

VoIP allows your employees to be more productive and  efficient by giving them the ability to receive and make  calls anywhere with a data connection.

You can use VoIP as a tool for real-time collaboration along with video conferencing, screen sharing, and digital white boarding.

You can potentially unify your communication channels,  streamlining communications and information management—for instance, marrying email with fax and voice in one inbox.

You can employ presence technologies that come standard with VoIP phones and VoIP communication systems. This technology can tell colleagues about your presence or give you info on the status and whereabouts of your staff.

Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend… Would A New Workstation Boost Your Productivity?

Many people find it hard to let go of that old workstation that seems to be “working just fine.” But, ask yourself: Is it really?

Most people recognize that, as their machine ages, it seems to get slower and slower.

A fresh install of Windows generally makes the computer speed back up to it’s “like new” speed.

But as we rely more and more on our computers, laptops, phones, and tablets to be productive in our work, does working at that original speed still make sense?

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it?
Why is it a bad idea to have the “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” mentality when it comes to your computer?

For starters, you’re wasting your money doing so. If a computer is past its normal lifecycle then it really doesn’t make any sense spending the money to continuously bring it back to a like new state as far as the software goes because the hardware is still very outdated.

In general a desktop computer’s useful life span is roughly three to five years providing you purchased a mid-range computer and not the bottom of the line model.

For laptops you get slightly less useful life span out of them due to the fact that a mid-range laptop is generally not as good of hardware as a mid-range desktop.

The other reason a laptop doesn’t tend to last as long is the fact that it is constantly being moved around.

This constant movement, shaking, vibrating, dropping, etc. causes a lot more stress on the hardware in comparison to a desktop.

Due to the different factors involved in a laptop’s life cycle, a laptop’s useful life is roughly two to three years – perhaps slightly longer if it is well cared for.

Software updates may require PC upgrades
Another reason to think about workstation replacement has to do with the software you run on your machine.

Many different software companies offer updates to their software.

Some updates offer fixes to problems or security issues, but many updates also offer new features or updates to old features.

These updates sometimes include a better graphical interface that makes a program easier to use.

Generally, these types of updates have higher computing and speed requirements. Many industry specific software companies put out these types of updates, and they’re great!

Who wouldn’t want a more attractive user interface that functions better and offers more options?

The problem: Updating/upgrading software requires more system resources almost one hundred percent of the time.

If you’re the kind of person that likes to hold on to your workstation forever and never update it, but wants those nice software updates, you might see performance problems.

While your software is updating it needs more RAM, more CPU power, and in some cases, more graphical capacity to run to the new software properly. A lot of times, users don’t realize that with new features come new requirements.

In short, if your computer is over five years old, consider replacing it, particularly if it’s a laptop. A faster workstation will help you with updated software, and keep up with your busy workload.

Feature article written by: Tech Experts

How To Keep Your E-mail Off The “Naughty” List

Someone’s making a list and checking it twice, but it isn’t Santa. Due to rising e-mail abuse and spam, hundreds of servers at various companies now monitor e-mail accounts to make sure those accounts are not sending out mass e-mails.

If that e-mail account is assumed to be sending spam it is put on the “blacklist.”

Once on the blacklist, your e-mail account is virtually SHUT DOWN because your e-mail is blocked by hundreds or thousands of servers and your message can’t be delivered.

Big companies who give out e-mail addresses like AOL, Google, and Comcast, for example, will cut off e-mail service to anyone who sends an e-mail to a large number of people at once.

Because of this, even if you or your employees innocently send a message to 100 of your clients, you could be without e-mail for days or weeks.

So, how do you prevent this costly and frustrating downtime from happening to you?

Read these tips to find out:

Protect Your Server
Spammers LOVE to find e-mail servers that don’t have a proper firewall, anti-virus, and intrusion protection.

They get a high from hacking into these servers and then using them to send out thousands of e-mails. Plus, with no protection in place, tracking and catching these spammers is nearly impossible.

The right protection will also prevent malware from being installed on your server, which can automatically send spam without human interaction.

Don’t Allow Employees To Forward Messages
Unless it is for work –only related purposes, make a policy that no one is to forward messages like jokes, photos, or videos outside the company.

If just four of your employees send out this kind of an e-mail to 30 of their contacts, that’s well over 100 people receiving junk mail on the same day from the same e-mail server. This puts you at high risk of being blacklisted.

Have Your Clients And Prospects “Opt-In”
Sometimes companies end up on the blacklist because someone on your list complained and reported your message as spam.

If you have your clients and prospects agree via an opt-in form that they want to receive communication from you and confirm their permission, then you’ll have better protection against that.

Also make sure you keep good records of these optins. That way, even if you do get blacklisted, you should be back up and running fairly quickly.

Make Sure Your E-mail Is Set-up Properly
In addition to protecting yourself from hackers and invasions with software and firewalls, you also need to be sure that your e-mail is configured correctly and set-up to block outside relays.

If you’ve got the wrong setting in your e-mail account, you could wind up blacklisted, without any e-mail for days or weeks.

Keep Your E-mail List Up-To-Date
If someone asks to be removed from your list and you ontinue to send messages to him, the chances of him reporting your company as a spammer is pretty high.

Avoid this by using in-house lists (instead of purchasing one) and contracting your list to verify the information.

We use and recommend iContact. They’re excellent commericial email service. To sign up for a free trial, or for more information, go to: http://icontact.extole.com/a/clk/37L8x