Directive Blogs

It's always important to be prepared for emergencies, and for a small business these days even a minor disaster can have long term ramifications with serious consequences. Whether the disaster is short lived, like a power outage or hardware failure in your server, or a more serious event like a flood or fire, you want to be able to get back in business as quickly as possible Here are some steps Upstate New York businesses should take to prepare and add to their disaster plans.

Are you the kind of person who takes meticulous notes? Do you carry around a pen and pad with you so you never forget a single line item from meetings, presentations, or your grocery list? Enter Evernote, a free application that gives you an easy-to-use note taking solution that syncs your notes across multiple devices.

Take a look, a good hard look, at your employees. They are working diligently, right? You've staffed the company with some quality A-players and everyone has taken responsibility for their work. You see good communication, organization, and dare we say motivation emanating from each member of your well-armed team. Or maybe you don't and the company is working on improving that - we understand. We also understand that while an employee might be a rockstar at their job, they could still pose a risk to IT.

Did you know? Microsoft reported in May that every one in 14 downloads from the Internet may now contain malware code. Keeping your business protected is extremely important. Fortunately there are plenty of tools out there that do most of the protecting for you, but these tools need to be managed and kept up to date.

Email is (and has been) a prime method of communication for businesses of all sizes. With email comes a whole slew of issues that are essentially synonymous with the technology; spam, information overload, phishing, and information privacy. Even Upstate New York small businesses that only do business locally are at risk of these issues. Personal email accounts are equally at risk. Employing proper precautions and practices whenever communicating via email is very important to prevent the risk of security compromises, monetary loss, and even legality issues.

Controlling and managing a big network with multiple servers is no small endeavor, especially keeping them maintained. On top of that, software licenses, warranties, user permissions, and security all need to be managed and controlled. As your business expands, you may need more servers in order to perform certain tasks ranging from email, file distribution, specialized software, and security management of various levels. Pretty soon your server room is beginning to look like a cramped mini data center and you need to worry about controlling the heat and maintaining multiple high-priority, mission critical machines. There's got to be a better way, right?

Still haven't found all the right gifts for this holiday season? You are on your own there - but we CAN help ensure a safe online shopping experience. Internet shopping has become widely popular over the years, and this year retailers have seen a big increase in mobile transactions as well. Consumers can skip the lines and the crowds and save a lot of cash in the process. Online shopping is generally safe, although there are a few tips you'll want to be aware of before going virtual shopping this holiday season.

We talk a lot about business and technology and all of that good stuff here on the Directive blog, but believe it or not, there are (at least) a couple things in life that are more important that that. One of the big ones is personal health. This goes double for all you hard workers out there who put in long stressful hours trying to run and manage your business - it's easy to forget or skip over the routines for proper health maintenance. Unfortunately, we don't offer a flat-rate remote monitoring and maintenance service for humans, but here are a few tips you can do to keep yourself in tip-top shape while on the job.

We'd like to wish everyone warm and safe travels this Thanksgiving. Spend time with family and friends, divulge in great food, and try to get your mind off work for a day or two! We'd like to take a short moment to share the things we're thankful for.

Tablets are definitely becoming a staple in the consumer electronics world. For the longest time, the tablet PC was an expensive, clunky device that just didn't wow consumers. Some businesses had adopted tablets back in the day, but they were difficult to use, hard to support, and they simply didn't perform for the price tag. However, like many consumer electronics, Apple reinvigorated the tablet market with the original iPad, and now it would seem tablets are here to stay. The question is, are they right for businesses?

A lot of Upstate New York small businesses are taking advantage of regular proactive maintenance that keeps their servers and workstations in tip-top shape much longer than their typical lifespan. Amazing amounts of money are saved on new hardware and downtime and everything is just peachy! You've been able to run that old server for years and you have workstations that are still chugging away on Windows XP. What you don't know is that your old technology, even if it is in perfect working order, could be drastically slowing things down for your business.

Foursquare is a social network of sorts that works like a marketing game. Users run Foursquare on their mobile phones. It uses GPS to pinpoint your location and pulls up stores, restaurants, and other public locations and venues in your vicinity. You can then 'check in' to the place you are at, and it will share it with your friends. It's a service that promotes word-of-mouth marketing!

Some companies go to great lengths to make sure their backup is up to date. Data is extremely important, and yet fragile. There are so many situations that can cause data loss, is your backup solution ready?

Business owners and executives aren't always chained to their desk. Sometimes opportunities take you out of the office, out of town, and on the road. Traveling to vendor shows, conferences, training, expos, or even hitting the greens for a few days doesn't mean you need to be totally inaccessible. It's becoming increasingly simple to for the traveling business person to stay connected and get things done even when not at the office.

With today’s global economy, the time and money spent on marketing needs to be stretched pretty thin, and results need to  be tracked carefully so you know how to make the most of a limited marketing budget.  Fortunately, we’re experiencing a worldwide revolution in the form of the way people communicate, share information, and how small businesses can reach their customers.  The Internet has opened up huge possibilities, but the real question is how are customers finding YOUR business, and how can you make it easier to be seen.

Voice Over IP phone systems add a lot of great features that businesses can take advantage of, and are improving the way companies are using their voice communication. Besides the fact that supporting older analogue phone systems is becoming increasingly harder as technology carries us forward, here are 7 reasons why Upstate New York businesses should switch over to voice over IP.

You are an expert in your field, right? Whether you sell a product or commit to a batch of service offerings, you know your job and you know it well. We're guessing you have some great employees who know their job well too, right? You hired them because of their drive, interest, and possibly knowledge in the field (or you spend plenty of time teaching and training them). So when someone's computer goes down, why should they waste their time trying to fix it?

Everyone here at Directive would like to wish our clients a happy and safe Halloween! We'd like to share a couple computer and tech support horror stories to set today's spooky mood!  Get out your flashlights and gather around the campfire for these chilling tales that could happen to any small business.

As a business owner, if you've ever looked into training seminars, you've probably been taken back by the price. Your industry likely has a whole slew of organizations dedicated to business training, and there are often training courses on specific software packages you use in your day-to-day line of business. Your employees may know full-well how to do their job, but are they doing it as effectively as possible in order to drive business forward?

Businesses these days depend on having reliable, fast desktop computers. The trouble is, these high-end desktops offer plenty of resources that never get touched, making them underutilized. Huge hard drives and extremely fast CPUs mean each desktop has more capabilities than most users will ever tap into.

Like any Microsoft product, Outlook 2010 has a lot of neat features that get stepped over. One of these is the Quick Step box, which is found along the top on the Home tab in Outlook 2010. Utilizing Quick Steps can shorten the time it takes you to manage your inbox.

If you take a laptop out into the world, you've probably seen the notification saying "Wireless Network Detected." Free hotspots are not uncommon in coffee shops, hotels, airports, and other public locations,  There are some things to know before you simply hop on an unfamiliar wireless network.

Ever notice how much faster a brand new computer is compared to an older one? Think back... was your computer as slow as it is today as it was a few years ago when you first got it? How did you tolerate that back then? It turns out your computer actually gets slower over time, but to contrast that new computers are getting faster, cheaper, and more energy efficient. Computers aren't designed to last forever, and this isn't on purpose; general day-to-day usage and time give computer components a good thrashing. So why is your computer slow? Here are some Directive secrets about why your old computer struggles to keep up with you.

Plenty of Upstate New York businesses use the Microsoft Office suite of productivity tools. From Office 2007 and on, Microsoft has made it extremely easy to dress up your documents and presentations. These tricks will typically work with most Office products, from Word to Power Point, even Outlook; although in some apps the options might be in different places. Today's tutorial will focus on Microsoft Word.

The mobile smart phone market is certainly a healthy one, and powerful devices are getting into more hands (for both consumers and businesses). There are a few great selections to choose from; RIM's BlackBerry, Microsoft's Windows 7, Google's Android OS, and Apple's iPhone. The latest incarnation of the Apple iPhone hits store shelves today, although from first glance it looks the same as the previous iPhone 4. Let's take a look at some of the differences.

The Internet is without a doubt the largest collection of information humanity has ever seen. The trick is getting the information you want quickly. That's where search engines come in, and no search engine has received more recognition than Google. These 10 tricks will help you master your Google searches like a pro and get you to the information you seek faster, and you might be able to impress a colleague or two.

Here's a scenario: Tom's computer is acting up and getting a blue screen error a couple times a day. Obviously this is a problem because it drastically cuts into Tom's efficiency. Tom is a smart guy though, so his manager asks him to see if he can fix it before calling support and putting in a ticket. After all, tech support costs money. Tom spends about 4 hours across the next few days researching the issue, attempting a few things, and finally fixes it. Way to go Tom! You just saved the company money... or did you?

One of the questions we get fairly often is what are the benefits for a small business switching to a managed IT service as opposed to a break-fix-style relationship. When a new client calls upon us to resolve an issue or organize an IT project we talk to them about our proactive managed services, and often we get a reply like "Well we love your service, but we'll just call you when something is broke." Managed services offer a lot of stability and benefits for small businesses. What exactly can switching to a proactive managed services agreement with your IT provider do for your business?

As technology gets more advanced, more of it can get crammed into tinier spaces. Mobile devices used to be heavy, clunky items that could just barely get the job done; they just didn't have the oomph that your desktop workstation had. Today business owners are adopting portable powerhouses like tablets and high-end smart phones to stay connected, but for those on the go often, a laptop or netbook is often a good way to go as well. The Laptop/Netbook debate has gone on since Netbooks first emerged on the market, so let's take a look at the benefits of both.

Facebook, the enormous social network that shouldn't need an introduction for anybody, has been a fantastic way for small businesses (and major corporations and brands, and just about anyone else) to promote themselves. If you haven't established your company on Facebook (which is free, by the way), a new offer from the social network might help sweeten the deal.

Security is an important aspect to a company's continuity, and while portions of business security involve things like anti-virus and firewalls, other aspects of security can't be handled by a piece of equipment. In these cases, your organization needs to create security policies, and keep them up to date as the company grows and changes. There are many policies and sub policies that are necessary for any organization that, if non-existent, can cause chaos down the road.

Software is expensive, especially business critical software. On top of that, as a small business expands, more software licenses need to be purchased for new employees. Organizations such as the Software & Information Industry Association and the Business Software Alliance are always looking for businesses that are guilty of stealing software, and businesses that get busted get hefty fines exponentially higher than the price of the software licenses.

Netflix unexpectedly announced a split between their two offerings, DVD-by-Mail and their streaming service into two separate services. This is surprising as Netflix has continued to grow in popularity and profits every quarter. Why fix what isn't broke? After all, the streaming portion of Netflix claims about 20% of North America's bandwidth during peak hours, which is certainly saying something. Is there something for small businesses to learn from Netflix?

In today's IT industry, downtime can have a huge impact on your company's bottom line. When system downtime occurs, whether it affects an individual employee or the entire company, it means lost money. The definition of the term "downtime" is very ambiguous, although at Directive we consider any issue where an employee can't do their job properly due to technology not being available to be downtime. Even though an application may be up and running, it is essentially "down" to a user if the application can't be used no matter the reason.

Sometimes studies like these are laughable, but nevertheless, worth discussing.  Norton's latest Cybercrime report suggests that people who fall victim to malware are statistically more likely to be mugged in real life.  If someone is careless when it comes to online security, could that really reflect how susceptible they are in everyday life?

Email has integrated itself into the way we do business.  If you use Outlook as your primary email client, there are plenty of tricks you can do to increase your productivity and practice better email etiquettes.

Cloud computing is the new way to get things done for small businesses.  It's easy, it's secure, and it is great for the environment.  According to a report put on by the Carbon Disclosure Project, cloud computing can potentially reduce the world's carbon emissions by millions of metric tons.  The differences are wildly significant compared to running your own in-house data centers, even if you just have a server or two.

Ever since we've been providing tech support for small businesses in Upstate New York, we've seen countless blue screen of deaths. If you've been using PCs for a while, you've probably seen this ominous screen. You'll be working and for apparently no reason your computer monitor will go deep blue and display white error text and the only way to get back to work is by rebooting your computer. What causes this error, and what does it mean, and what should you do if you encounter one?

Wi-Fi can drastically increase your mobility around the home and office, and over the past few years wireless technology has become faster and incredibly reliable. Unfortunately, the signal only goes so far, and can be obstructed by walls, metalwork, and other features throughout the building. If you want to boost your signal, you can try out some of these tips.

Last time, we blogged about whether or not social media and personal Internet use was a bottleneck for employee productivity. Let's not look at the Internet as a fundamental time-waster or a necessary evil. After all, the Internet has changed the way companies do business. This time we're going to investigate if your Internet is keeping up with your company.

The words Productivity and Internet have been fit together in many different sentences, and usually in the sense that the Internet is a Productivity-killer. Take Facebook, for example; there are many arguments stating that Facebook is costing companies billions of dollars because employees are spending too much time on the social network while at work. Of course, Facebook (and the other social networks) are practically mandatory for businesses who want to market themselves. Other companies are clamoring that personal social media use greatly improves productivity and employee moral.

Here at Directive, we love Joomla, the open source content management system that makes it easy to edit your website. Here's an intermediate Joomla trick that will let you load a module inside an article (instead of in one of your template's pre-defined positions). There can be numerous occasions where you might want to drop a module inside one of your Joomla articles. Maybe you want some tabbed content inside your article or an image rotator that shows off your latest photos, or embed a JoomConnect form. This can all be done very easily with Joomla's loadposition tag. Hit the jump to find out how this is done.

Want to look like a PC Pro and get more done faster? With these simple tips, you'll have the skills to impress your co-workers with a few keystrokes. The Windows 7 Taskbar is the menu bar that stretches along (typically) the bottom of your screen. These are some lesser-known productivity tips to streamline your Windows 7 experience.

For some small businesses around Upstate New York, administrative IT tasks and computer support are done the old fashioned way; either over the phone or on-premise. These traditional methods are a major waste of time and money, and can lead to plenty of unproductive behavior very quickly.  Today we're going to examine how remote technical support can benefit businesses.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has resigned from the consumer electronic company. Leaving behind a legacy that has made Apple considered ahead of the curve technology-wise several times, and has changed the game in the industries that he's touched. While Microsoft still rules the personal computer market globally towering over OSX's 8.3% market share, Apple has certainly played a major roll in paving a path to high-end electronics and devices over the past decade that has raised the bar for companies, and has even created a few new industries to boot.

I do apologize for that awful pun, but the Google Panda update has caused a huge stir in the SEO world. Google updates their algorithm all the time, but every once in a while they have a big update that completely changes the game. Google Panda was a massive update by Google to their search engine to limit content scrapers (people who steal content and host it on their own sites in the hopes of getting revenue from ads). Many legit sites saw a major drop in traffic and ranking, and Panda has changed (drastically even) the way SEO works. The latest update is starting to clear the fog, and Google has been explaining their reasoning behind the Panda Update.

2011 has been a busy year for security experts worldwide. Major corporations have been reporting harmful attacks by hackers. So far, technology news site CNET has reported over 80 known major hacks since March that have been publicized. The publication of these hacks is inevitable, especially when user-data, contact information, and credit card information is at risk, and that publication can easily cause a PR disaster which can take loads of time and money to rectify (and in some cases, just can't be rectified). The big questions are who is at risk, are Upstate New York small businesses at risk, and what kinds of IT solutions need to be deployed to prevent data-theft and other intrusions.

It's the start of the 2011 hurricane season, and with Hurricane Irene making contact with Atlantic coastlines this week, it certainly doesn't hurt to make sure your business is prepared for a disaster. Even if you are lucky enough to not be affected by these devastating storms, there are plenty of opportunities for nature to cause havoc on our way of life. It's never to late to put together a Disaster Recovery Plan (alternatively known as a Business Continuity Plan) in case a natural (or otherwise) disaster were to occur for you. Nobody wants to think a disaster might happen, but it isn't impossible. Here are a few steps small businesses can take to become better prepared.

Don't you hate it when you contact us for tech support with a strange issue, and then you can't recreate it? Don't feel bad. It happens all the time, even to us. Sometimes those rarely occurring issues can't be fixed unless you get some photographic evidence of what's going on. This quick guide will show you how to take screenshots of your desktop.

Looking to increase your effectiveness by reducing the time it takes you to perform simple tasks on your computer? In today's Quick Tip, we're going to cover a couple ways to access the directories you need to access the most so you don't need to hunt for them to access your files.

Ever since the mid-1990s employees have been taking advantage of personal gadgets to help them get work done faster. Remember the PDAs and Palm Pilots from a decade and a half ago? Even though many companies weren't quick to establish policies to protect corporate data, tech savvy users were able to sync contacts, schedules, email, and company files to their mobile device. These days, mobile devices are in the hands of many more users, but there are ways to provide security without sacrificing your employees rights to their personal device.

USB thumb drives are fantastic. Small, portable, fast, and highly compatible; these devices make it easy to transfer files and documents from one place to another. If you are burning the midnight oil working on a presentation or document from home, a thumb drive is a fast, cheap solution for grabbing those files and taking them from one device to another. Of course, there are plenty of other alternate ways to move files that are even easier and even more fool proof (how many of you have lost a thumb drive or let one go through the wash?), so the thumb drive has been becoming less popular for businesses.  If you hate to see perfectly good technology go to waste, check out these 3 tricks that give new life to your old thumb drive.

If you use email, you've probably seen spam. If you think we're talking about a canned meat product, and are wondering how it relates to email, then we envy you. For everyone else, saying your inbox probably has a little spam is a dramatic understatement. Spam comes in several different flavors; ranging to inappropriate solicitations to unwanted gibberish to carefully coordinated scams. We're going to go over one of these tricky spoofs that is known to fool users.

RAID, you hear it everywhere. From the techs in the server room talking about it to computer manufacturers asking if you want a RAID formation for your computer's hard drive. Not all RAID configurations are considered equal. Here's an explanation of RAID formats in plain English.

At the beginning of the month, Microsoft officially launched Office 365. What makes this Office different from the other Office suites that Microsoft has released is that Office 365 doesn't run on your computer, it runs on a cloud server. All of your data is stored securely in the cloud on Microsoft's servers. This is great for smaller Oneonta businesses that need to access their files from anywhere but don't currently have the infrastructure in-house to make it happen.

You've probably heard of cloud technology. All the big names in the technology industry are talking about it; but for a lot of people, it's still just a buzz word. Microsoft has been pushing the idea of a cloud for a while, with a couple sitting at an airport waiting for a layover, with the end result being that the cloud ceases their boredom by letting them stream movies from home. What exactly is the cloud and why does it matter for businesses?

The Internet giant Google is well know as being the primary search engine on the Internet and the definer of many web standards. The Big G isn't afraid to trek into new and exciting verticals. Google Wallet is one of those endeavors. Google states that Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem. Their goal is to eventually replace the cards that you keep in your wallet. Since Google wallet is a mobile application it can store as many cards as you want without having to carry multiple cards.

Virtualization isn't new for small businesses, some companies have been enjoying the benefits of server virtualization for many years. However, the concept is new to other growing organizations. Virtualization allows you to consolidate the number of servers you have in your company using one of several virtualization packages. Let's take a look at a few major reasons to consider server virtualization.

For a small or midsize business, technology budgets are naturally fairly slim. It goes without saying that a company needs to get the best bang for their buck with their IT infrastructure, and it's not uncommon to see workstations and other devices still in play years after their prime. This leads to underperforming technology, which in turn, limits what your bottom line can accomplish (remember, your team is only as good as your worst player). Some small businesses are approaching technology in ways that would normally be reserved for HR's interactions with employees, but they are finding that this can improve performance.

We've been talking a bit about the benefits of going mobile, especially for business owners who want to get more done. One of the best benefits of a laptop computer is portability, which leads into its greatest weakness; it's easy to steal. According to the FBI, over 1 million laptops are stolen each year. If you are using your laptop for business, you'll want to take action ahead of time and employ some protective countermeasures to keep your business safe. We'll even go over some ways you can recover your stolen laptop.

Small business owners are discovering they don't need to be chained to their desk to use their computer, and are finding it much easier to be productive with the ability to take their workstation with them where ever they go. The concept isn't new, but the trend hasn't caught on for a lot of small businesses. Business owners who have ditched their desktop for a laptop have a whole world of benefits. Let's take a look at what some of those benefits are.

We're in an interesting era. Consumer electronics have been changing the way we communicate, socialize, and get things done. We've all experienced a recent huge evolution in the communication world with the explosion of mobile phones, with more than 4.6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. Our technology is getting smaller and much more capable, but does that mean we'll be moving away from the typical computer-and-desk to get most of our work done?

Has waiting on a signature ever brought a project to a halt?  A major way to simplify the signing process and get those contacts and other documents signed and delivered faster is by utilizing e-signature technology.

There has been a lot of talk about Google+, Google's new social network. Currently the service is invite only and invites are preciously coveted. Those who have gotten in to try it out have found a clean, simple interface. On first impression, Google+ looks like a very basic Facebook. Is Google+ worth all the clamor and is it going to change the game for social media? Will businesses be able to take advantage of Google+ the same way they do for Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook?

At many businesses, if you look in the waste bin or the recycle bin, you'll probably find a lot of paper. Paper is one of the most common waste products at businesses and as such is also one of the biggest sustainability opportunities for businesses large and small. The environmental benefits are great, but going paperless has some huge benefits for small businesses beyond being green.

Who isn't looking to spend a little less or get more out of their current investments? The costs of day to day business for small businesses need to be within budget, but you still need to give your staff the tools they need to get the job done. Here are some tips for cutting costs without making big sacrifices.

Windows 8? Doesn't it feel like Windows 7 just came out? Windows 7 isn't being replaced anytime soon; the latest operating system by Microsoft hasn't even been out for two years, but that doesn't mean Microsoft isn't cooking up their next incarnation. Microsoft has always kept small businesses in mind as well as the residential consumer, so will Windows 8 stick with the same trend?

Laptops and Netbooks boast portability, but many laptop users find that they need to take their power cables with them if they want their device to run for more than a couple hours.  While older laptops are typically less efficient, it also isn't uncommon for the batteries to wear down over years of use.  Sure, you can purchase a new (or bigger) battery, but let's go over a few ways you can improve the battery life on your laptop.

Have you ever been browsing the internet when out of nowhere your computer starts telling you that you are at risk or that you've downloaded a virus, and before you know it your screen is inundated with warnings and virus scanners? In most cases, this over-dramatic display is caused by a fake antivirus program. Today we're going to discuss how to prevent getting tricked by a fake antivirus attack.

Telecommuting (also known as working remotely) is where some or all of your staff have the flexibility to work in the location of their choosing (and in some cases, the hours that they choose). Not to be confused with freelancing, telecommuters are dedicated employees who work under a management style geared towards the final results (as opposed to how the work gets done). While telecommuting isn't for everybody, it is often practiced. Microsoft is well known for having certain positions where the employee spends most of their day in a coffee shop working remotely, and that trend certainly doesn't stop with the big M.

When can a single dust particle lead to thousands of dollars worth of damage (or more)?

The answer is when your data isn't backed up. Today we're going to talk about just how fragile your data's very existence can be.

Today, small businesses that go green and take action towards reducing energy consumption, waste production, and apply sustainability concepts benefit from a lower cost of day-to-day business. Being green looks great for investors, employees, and consumers alike and can contribute to press and media attention. That sounds great, right? Unfortunately, like most things, going green isn't something you can do over night. It takes time, dedication, and sometimes, a little bit of investment. Hit the jump for some tips to go green with your business.

Is your computer's speed (or lack there of) stressing you out? Intel sponsored a survey and found that computer users experience stress while waiting for their sluggish workstation to respond. They found that 51 percent of adults surveyed said they have done something 'uncharacteristic' out of frustration while waiting for something to load, and of those, 29 percent admit to banging on their keyboard and computer screen. The survey may sound fairly comical, but humans don't like unexpected waiting, especially when we're trying to meet deadlines and get work done. It's a pretty fair assumption to say slow technology is stressful.

Fortunately, there are a few steps that can be taken that will likely give your workstation a little boost, at least closer to where it was when it was first unboxed.

Ever sift through all that junk mail and wonder if you are in the wrong line of work? Obviously the spam industry is working for somebody, or else it wouldn't still be running your inbox rampant with unsolicited junk, right? Spam is more than just a nuisance for small businesses. Hit the jump to find out why.

Patch Tuesday is typically the second Tuesday of each month, and is the day Microsoft releases security patches for Windows Update. This month's Patch Tuesday has some of the most significant updates compared to the past several months, fixing many dangerous flaws with imminent exploits. These are critical updates that, if not installed, will leave computers vulnerable to attack.

Want to get more done in a days time? We all do. If you are a business owner, it is likely you'd love to see your employees get more accomplished during the course of the day. There is a lot that can be done to make your time more efficient (that is an industry all on its own!), but one very frustrating cause of lost productivity is faulty technology. The most overlooked culprit? Slow computers!

Hit the jump to see our analysis of what workstation slowness can cost your company.

As you may know, Sony's online gaming service, the Playstation Network, has been getting a lot of media coverage lately due to a major attack by hackers last month.  Sony is a massive global company with billions of dollars and stockholders and spans multiple industries, but even a giant can teach us all a lesson that relates to our comparably small-fry organizations.

Veterans to building and running small and medium-sized businesses probably know about the huge initial start-up costs.  A small business needs to consider investing in all of the necessary infrastructure, from things like desks, chairs, computer equipment, security devices, break room appliances, heat, air conditioning, a website, marketing materials… the list goes on.  Today, small businesses are finding new ways to streamline and reduce the costs of getting started.  Hit the jump to see a few ways small businesses are cutting high start-up costs.

Computer equipment is expensive, but most people don't even think about the costs it takes to run an entire office worth of tech.  Modern hardware is becoming more and more energy efficient, but older equipment can take a lot of electricity to run (not to mention the maintenance of keeping things running smoothly.  One of the biggest energy hogs in an office these days are old CRT monitors.

We'd really like to gear this conversation towards the other Oneonta business owners out there who might not have a solid plan when it comes to IT & Computer Support.  At DirectiveSHORT, we deal with a lot of the same business-related issues that our clients do.  Marketing, driving the business forward, taxes, internal policies, you name it.  Believe it or not, we also have our own IT infrastructure that needs to be kept up and maintained.  We see the same kinds of expenses (after all, working on our OWN technology internally is time our techs could be doing their jobs).  We've put together a few big mistakes that we've seen businesses make that take much less effort to prevent than they do to fix later on when it is too late.

Microsoft Office still holds a very strong position in the small business world despite some serious competition from Google, who boasts having their software package hosted online.  The latest incarnation of the Microsoft Office suite, named Office 365, is designed to rival Google's offering. Today we're going to talk about Microsoft's hosted productivity software and see what the pros and cons are for small businesses.

Have you ever noticed that the vents around your computer seem to pick up a lot of thick dust?  Computers and Laptops house internal fans that keep the inside components from overheating, which essentially makes them mini-vacuums that constantly suck air and dust in.  Dust can act as an insulating blanket and prevent your hardware from cooling, causing damage over time and wearing down your computer faster.  Hit the jump for some more information and some ways to help keep your computer clean so it can live a long healthy life.

Remember in "Mission Impossible," after an agent listens to his secret mission, the recording goes on to mention "This message will self destruct…" followed by the oversized tape-recorder puffing out billows of smoke. Businesses have gone a long way since then (we've replaced sending tape-recorders with the much more efficient email), and encrypting email messages is easy and cost effective for businesses that want to ensure that certain messages are only seen by certain recipients.

If you haven't heard of Dropbox, you are in for a real treat, especially if you like making it extremely easy to access certain files.  Dropbox is a service that provides secure file hosting and synchronization between multiple computers and devices so you can quickly access the data you need most no matter where you are, and when you get back to your main workstation, the updated version of the file will be there waiting.  Did I mention Dropbox has a free version?  Hit the jump to learn why we love this service.

We're asked all time, both by existing clients and during dialog while on boarding new prospects to our NOCOLOGY IT Support Services.  'What exactly is the point of running Windows updates, especially when my workstation or server is running fine?'

We'll cover why updates are so important, discuss a couple ways you can make sure they are always done as well as how we test and prevent "bad updates".

We can never stress enough to our clients how important their data is.  There are plenty of ways data can become lost, but the one scenario that nobody ever likes to talk about is internal data theft.  That's right; businesses can suffer from their own employees stealing data.  Now, this doesn't mean that all or any part of your staff is plotting to expose company secrets or distribute your leads to competitors, but a few precautions can be taken to just ensure that it never happens.

Microsoft's OneNote is often seen as one of the extra applications that is bundled in with several Microsoft Office packages.  In this article, We'll introduce OneNote, and show off some neat things it's used for, and how it can make your life easier.  OneNote has a whole slew of neat features that you can take advantage of, which we'll cover in the article as well.

You are running a business. You don't want downtime, you want your email to be as reliable as the sunrise. Google Apps has been adjusting their service level agreements over the years to accommodate to the high demands of the millions of businesses that use their productivity software each day.

Before we talk about that though, I wanted to share an announcement Google recently had. In 2010, the Gmail email service, which provides both free consumer and business email services globally, was available 99.984% of the time. That means about seven minutes of downtime per month on average was experienced in 2010. According to Google, the seven minute average comes from a lot of tiny delays that normally consisted of a few seconds a shot. Most users experienced no issues, and in the rare case they did, a few seconds of delay is pretty easy to miss.

I'm sure nobody has missed out on any of the storms happening here in New York. Even our lights have been flickering. Mother nature can be cruel to your IT; a well-placed bolt of lightning can do plenty of damage. Of course, we always recommend quality UPS systems to our clients to protect their most valuable tech, and good surge protectors for everything else (not power strips, mind you, they aren't the same). Regardless, whether there's a risk of the power going out or not, it's important to save often and keep your files backed up. Here's a few tips after the jump.

A lot of businesses have been taking advantage of Wi-Fi wireless networking to increase mobility around the office for staff. Most businesses seem to understand that their Wi-Fi network needs to be password protected to keep outsiders from getting in, but most businesses often make the mistake in using WEP security on their wireless network instead of a more secure solution.

The WEP algorithm can be hacked in minutes by a savvy user with a notebook, not only giving them access to your internet access, but to your network and files. Read on to learn a better way to secure your wireless network.

Let’s take a break from all of this technical mumbo-jumbo and talk about something that is much more important: health. You could have an arsenal of the world’s coolest gadgets and technology in front of you, but if you aren’t practicing good health habits, they won’t do you a lot of good for very long. Normally when we think of injuries, we think of doing something that pushes our body’s limits. Injuries can occur just from practicing poor habits during those 8-hour daily work marathons many of us run each day. I’ll go over a few simple ways you can optimize the ergonomics of your work environment to improve comfort and prevent physical stress associated with bad habits often found in the workplace.

We’re not trying to be negative here. We're not trying to scare you and make you run out and buy a backup device (We’ll save those horror stories for another time). Today we’re going to talk about why hard drives fail. It doesn’t matter what manufacturer your drive comes from, what connection interface it has, who you bought your computer from, and believe it or not, it has nothing to do with the day your warranty runs out (no sir, that’s just a Murphy’s Law coincidence). All hard drives are built in pretty much the same fashion.

If you don't have an Exchange Server, it's likely that your email isn't being backed up.  Fortunately, with Microsoft Outlook, it's not very difficult to create a copy of your email, contacts, calendar, and other Outlook data. While this isn't a complete backup solution, you can at least take the current state of your Outlook data and store it elsewhere for safe keeping in the event of data loss or a hardware malfunction that causes you to lose your precious data.

Plenty of our clients use Remote Desktop to access a terminal server or use their workstation from an off-site location. Depending on your connection and the speed of all of the devices in question, remote work can either be pretty seamless or a laggy, sluggish endeavor if your Remote Desktop client isn’t configured correctly. If you are running into a situation where you type something on your keyboard and it takes several long seconds for it to show up, these tweaks can improve performance and reduce input delays.

Believe it or not, IT companies like DirectiveSHORT work a lot like other businesses.  We have many of the same needs in our business; from accounting to organizing data to marketing ourselves.  As an IT company, yes, we can manage your workstations, servers, and network, but there are other solutions we have up our sleeves that our clients can take advantage of, that just make sense for an IT company to provide, no matter what.

When searching for a word or phrase in a program or website that has hundreds of files it can be quite time consuming. When browsing these files the user might miss what they are looking for in the thousands of lines that they have to look through, causing the search to start all over again. A user can narrow down their search based on what they are trying to find, maybe it is wording that would be in a language folder somewhere. In some places there are multiple language folders, with multiple files in each.

With all the fancy content management systems out there making it easy for users to manage and update their website, suddenly creating new content and pages on your site becomes a snap, and anyone can do it. While CMS's like Joomla empower those outside the professional web design field to completely turn their website into a living, breathing dynamic canvas, there are still a few simple best practices that one might not know without a little experience. One of the big ones that often get missed are images.  In this article, we'll show you how to work with images for the web so you get the best results possible when putting pictures on your website.  This will apply to blogs, social media, and just about any other method of publishing on the web.

Everyone has heard of Google.  The word itself is synonymous with searching the web.  If you don’t know something, what do you do?  You Google it.  It’s become part of the internet vernacular.  You rarely hear folks say they are going to Yahoo that when they get home, or come across a solution by Binging it.

Like it or not, Google has become a part of our lives, but it certainly hasn’t done so without deserving it.  It is the leading search engine, and has earned it by being reliable.  When you search for something on Google, you find what you want.  It’s not easy to manipulate the system, and that’s why people trust Google so much.

Everyone who uses the Internet has used a Search Engine.  It’s nearly impossible not to.  Google, the leading Search Engine, has practically integrated itself into the English Language; it’s not uncommon to swap the words ‘search’ and ‘google’ (don’t know something?  Just Google it!) when talking about using a search engine.  The other leading search engines are Yahoo, and Microsoft’s latest incarnation, Bing, but there are countless others.  Search Engines generally work the same way, but we’ll use Google for example:

Despite the increasingly vast trust we put into the Internet to keep our personal and business information safe and secure, many users take their passwords very lightly. In an analysis studying over 32 million passwords from RockYou, a company that develops software for social networks, it's been discovered just how little effort is put in to keep things secure. The results are shocking.