Directive Blogs

Directive would like to welcome Kaler Carpenter to our content team. Kaler and his wife Laura moved to Oneonta, NY in 2009 in order to start a new church called The Redemption Movement. Originially from Missouri, Kaler and Laura met each other while attending Central Bible College in Springfield, MO. They have experience working with underprivileged teenagers. They are currently renovating an old storefront to launch their church on Good Friday.

At some point or another you will be asked to present information to a crowd of people. Whether you have to give a presentation about how you can best profit from a bake sale for your local PTA or you're presenting a sales pitch to potential investors, vendors, or clients; using advances in presentation technology and methodology to your advantage can help you make a strong first impression and more importantly, a lasting one. Below are some presentation services that can be used to enhance the content of your demonstration.

You are confident that your employees are good at problem solving, this is why you hired them. Your staff may even thrive on finding solutions with limited resources and keeping operations within budget. It is wonderful that you have surrounded yourself with skillful people, but using your bright staff to fix an IT problem may hurt your business in the long run.

Step back from your monitor for a moment and take a look at your business. Customers from all over the Upstate New York area and beyond are being helped. You have an inbox full of email from countless prospects and clients, and your activity on the world wide web is literally connecting you around the world. This complex coordination of of resources and people in front of you is called logistics.

Have you ever stopped and wondered where the internet is housed? Maybe all the websites are on a skyscraper-sized router? Maybe the internet all fits inside your computer? Most of the information is actually stored in data center facilities all over the world, and the sheer size and complexity of these centers will boggle your mind.

Marketers love to paste QR codes on just about everything; from newspapers, DVD cases, retail displays, even fast food wrappers! QR codes are great for marketing, giving consumers instant access to a company's website, but QR codes also have many practical uses beyond advertising. Here are three helpful tricks you might not have known.

Like clockwork, the release of Windows 8 is accompanied by a new version of Microsoft Office. The new Office will not come out until Q1 of 2013, but many product details have already been revealed; and they are in keeping with the cleaner, sleeker design of Windows 8. Here is a look at a few new features for Word 2013.

Windows has been on tablets for years. In fact, one of the first prototype tablets, the NCR-produced model 3125 notepad computer ran the Microsoft Windows for Pen Computing software for the Windows 3.1 operating system (OS). Today, 21 years later the software giant has ventured back into the portable-computing hardware arena with the Microsoft Surface Tablet.

Domain registration is a fairly simple procedure. Virtually every web hosting company has a step-by-step process where you enter your information, create a website URL, decide how long the registration period will be, pay for everything, and then forget about it. As simple as registration can be, if done incorrectly it can come back to haunt you.

Even if you've never used an iPhone, you've probably heard of Siri, Apple's personal virtual assistant. Siri is one-part novelty, one-part geekiness, and actually pretty productive. She can answer questions for you, facilitate many features of the iPhone, and report notifications and updates to you. For those of us who love our Android devices over Apple's iOS, Siri makes us just a little jealous, that is until now.

Microsoft is gearing up to roll out Windows 8 on October 26th and if the early tests are any indication, the computing giant's latest operating system (OS) could change the face of cross-platform integration. There's always some consternation among business owners when having to decide to outfit their computers with the newest OS so here are a few things you should know about Windows 8.

Time is money. Benjamin Franklin offered up that poignant piece of business acumen in his 1748 pamphlet Advice to the Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One. Travel to the present day and it's one of the most frequent sayings used by businesses professionals. Attempting to find the highest degree of productivity is the goal for everyone that believes that the bottom line is, in fact, the bottom line. One expanding technology that is helping businesses increase efficiency is the Global Positioning System (GPS).

With all this talk about mobile devices like tablets, smartphones, and ultra-portable laptops, you'd begin to think that traditional desktop PCs are going to seem archaic. Depending on your needs, that can be the case, but desktops aren't going away anytime soon, and for good reason.

If you have ever been the victim of a computer virus or cyber attack you know how bad it can hurt. You know the pain of having your data compromised or even your business operation completely shut down. You feel violated, and to add insult to injury, you have no idea who did this dirty deed.

For small and medium businesses, attempting to fix your own computer issues can do more harm than good. It may seem like having to pay for IT services is an unnecessary expense, especially when you have a somewhat tech savvy employee who seems to know what they are doing. It may be an expense now, but it will save you thousands of dollars in time and money in the long run.

Social Media is a far-reaching, extremely valuable tool for advertising and marketing. That is, well... until it isn't. Being able and prepared to handle negative online criticism can be the difference between a small but unfortunate event your company can learn from and 'irreparable damage that your company may never recover from.'

Businesses are inundated with information, programs and quick solutions on making companies green. Some of these suggestions can be implemented today, others my take more time. However, going green, can save your organization significant amounts of money. Wasted paper, plastic cups and wasted electricity are all money literally thrown away.  Here a few suggestions to get you off on the right foot:

We think this is something everybody can relate to. That computer or laptop that you bought a few years ago seemed very fast and capable when it was first set up, but these days it doesn't seem to have the same get-up-and-go. Why does performance degrade as time goes by?

Saving a little on your technology can go a long ways, but cutting too many corners can lead to additional problems and expensive downtime. Here are a few ways you can cut costs without creating long term issues.

Having strong passwords for your online accounts is very important, but sometimes you may want a little more protection in the event your password gets stolen or someone forces their way through it. If you use Google's Gmail service, you can set up your account, then you will need two forms of authentication to get into your email.

Browser toolbars: some people love them, some people hate them, others just don't care. Browser toolbars can make surfing the web easier, but sometimes they can get in the way and slow things down, and even open you up for potential risks.

Technology is changing quickly and businesses are seeing a wide variety of options replacing traditional IT methodology that is driving change and productivity to businesses of all sizes. It's getting easier to take work with you with mobile devices and hosted services, but are these just expensive new toys or do they provide serious benefits to businesses?

Global Payments, a credit card processing firm, announced that as many as 1.5 million credit card numbers were stolen due to a security breach last month. Issues like this seem more and more common place in the news and it is important to know what to do if you suspect that your credit card has been hacked.

As the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, it's a good time to step back and look at ways to rejuvenate your day-to-day operations and do some spring cleaning. These practices won't cover dusting up cobwebs but will offer a few practices to improve your overall IT.

We deal with digital data each and every day, and most of the time it goes unrecognized. Here's a few neat facts to help shed some perspective into our digital lifestyles.

There's a lot of buzz around Windows 8 for technology lovers, and for good reason. Microsoft is making it's next operating system dramatically different than previous incantations, and it sounds like we'll be seeing a lot of this OS in the future on a lot of different platforms, ranging from desktops and notebooks to tablets, and possibly even more.

Twitter is a fantastic networking resource for professionals, brands, and businesses. Having a strong presence on Twitter can mean more traffic to your website and an easy way to get in touch with customers and prospects. The hardest thing about diving into social media is knowing what to say. Here's a quick list with a few ideas to get you started.

Microsoft OneNote makes it very easy to take and organize all of your daily notes. Today we're going to show you how to ensure your OneNote Notebooks are backed up so you don't risk losing any information in the event of a computer issue.

When you mention the term 'disaster recovery,' most people think about the big ground-shattering events like earthquakes, fires, floods, tropical storms, etc. While these natural events are certainly disasters and devastating in their own right, smaller things can constitute as a disaster for your business, and they aren't seasonal.

Busy business owners don't always have time to be technically savvy. Sure, you can pick things up pretty quickly, but when it comes down to the latest technology, you simply don't have the time to sit down and do the research. Walking down any electronics aisle you are likely to be bombarded by choices. Remember when it used to be simple? (Wait, it was never simple!) Let's classify some of the modern devices out there for mobility geared towards someone just like you.

You've probably seen these funny barcode-like symbols popping up and wondered if they mean anything. These days they are all over the place - on websites, in magazines, and even in television ads. What are these mysterious glyphs? Should we be concerned? And of course the question on all of our minds, how can I use them to market my business?

When computer equipment overheats it increases the chances of a crash. Heat (or inadequate heat removal) can even cause long term damage on expensive hardware. You may have noticed that your server room/network closet is a little warmer than the rest of your business. All computer equipment produces heat, and servers are known to pump out a lot of it. Let's talk about ways to keep your important technology cool to prevent crashes and other issues.

When computer equipment overheats it increases the chances of a crash. Heat (or inadequate heat removal) can even cause long term damage on expensive hardware. You may have noticed that your server room/network closet is a little warmer than the rest of your business. All computer equipment produces heat, and servers are known to pump out a lot of it. Let's talk about ways to keep your important technology cool to prevent crashes and other issues.

Ever since the public has been logging on to the Internet, certain people have been using the Internet to take advantage of others. Whether it be through scams, viruses, malware, phishing, or a whole slew of other dangerous activity, cyber criminals have been very good at making Internet security an industry on its own. With the colossal popularity of social networks like Twitter and Facebook, miscreants are capable of targeting even more users than ever before. On top of that, their methods seem to be hitting people where it hurts. Learn how you can prevent falling into one of their traps.

We talk a lot about smartphones and tablets as business tools, but these days more and more people are using high-end devices personally. It's likely that they are bringing these devices in to work, and often using them to become more productive at their job. We call this Bring-Your-Own-Device, or BYOD, and it isn't a bad thing. The catch is managing security risks when users are using their own personal gadgets.

Do you know what others are saying about you online? Keeping track of your online reputation is very important for businesses of any size; and you'd be surprised what people are saying about you.  Using the free service Google Alerts, you can get notifications whenever Google finds something new about you on the internet.

There are plenty of terrible ways businesses can suffer from data loss; the inevitable failed hard drive, electrical disturbances, human error, viruses, fires, floods, earthquakes - you name it. That's what backup is for, right? If you are running (and managing) a tape backup system, and keeping the backups off site, what could possibly go wrong? Today we investigate one of the leading causes of data loss. It will shock you.

Cans of compressed air are no stranger to many households today. They can be used in a variety of different ways, but, most notably, they can be used to perform light maintenance on your computer. Whether you use a laptop or a desktop, a can of air can clean parts of your computer that, if left unchecked, could lead to costly repairs. Dust is one of the leading causes of hardware malfunction for computer equipment. Dust can blanket the heat-producing components and restrict airflow, trapping enough heat to cause damage. Fans and vents can get clogged which will prevent your device from cooling properly, which can drastically reduce the life of your technology.

While search engines aren't as frustrating as they were in the late 90's. Searching for something can still be a time consuming task if you don't know how to use the tools available to you in search engines that can cut down the amount of time you'll spend searching. Google is similar to a library's catalog, except you're not searching through thousands of books; instead you are searching through millions upon millions of websites. How do you sift through this giant pile of information to find what you need? Learning a few simple techniques can help you find the information you need fast.