Understanding Social Media

Here’s a copy of the powerpoint that I did on Understanding Social Media. This presentation is for people that don’t understand what it is, why they want to use it and what impact it is having on doing business. We had 12 people attend the webinar. If you missed it and would like to attend one of these send Amy an email. If I get at least 5 more interested parties I’ll schedule it.

And don’t forget, if you are already into social media. Connect with us!

We’re Using Social Media

A few months back I starting using Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan pages, Facebook groups and LinkedIN.  Recently I added Posterous and SocialOOMPH to help me manage our social media and now it’s is sucking less time from my day and actually starting to add bring in client leads. It’s working for us and it is working for many businesses. These informal, less traditional more casual forms of business communication are taking the world by storm.

About 6 weeks ago I did an online presentation on Social Media for beginners. I didn’t teach anyone how to use it but we discussed why you would want to use it, what the terminology is, how it’s blurring the old line between work and pleasure, and showed how some businesses are using it today. Got several compliments on it so apparently it hit the mark. I may offer that one again soon. If you are interested let me know.

If you are already connected into social media and would like to connect with us. Please do, we’d love to see you there. Here’s how to find us:

Twitter: @harborcomputer or twitter.com/harborcomputer

Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/amy.babinchak?v=feed&story_fbid=201613714255#/pages/Royal-Oak-MI/Harbor-Computer-Services/157213751055?ref=ts

Twitter: @ababinchak or twitter.com/ababinchak

LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/amybabinchak

When to choose a Netbook or Mini

Small computers are all the rage. Everyone thinks that they want one but before you go out and make the purchase you really need to stop and think whether this mini-computer is going to do what you need.

What NetBooks are and are good at:

• They are a small laptop computer, usually with a 10” screen and miniaturized keyboard
• They usually run Windows but some are also running Linux
• They usually have very long battery life. 3-8 hours
• They are best used as a companion computer
• They are great for reading email and working for short periods of time.
• They are inexpensive ($300-$600)

What NetBoks are not good at:

• They are not easy to use for a long time. The screen is small and the keyboard is small
• They are not very powerful. Your applications won’t perform the same. It will be slower.
• They do not have DVD drives (usually)

So why might you want to get one?

• It’s a lot easier to open one on a plane
• They weigh, like, a pound
• You need something very occasionally
• They are great for taking to meetings or to use while waiting at the doctor office
• They are fully functional computers.

What do they cost?

As with all computers the price ranges widely. I bought a refurbished Dell Mini 10V for $236. It is truly bottom of the line. I’ve also seen NetBooks for as much as $1200. I would not recommend spending more than half of what you would spend for a laptop computer because you are going to get about 1/2 of the functionality no matter how much you spend. A small screen and a small keyboard have inherent limitations.

Having said that. I love the Dell Mini. It’s cute. It’s lightweight. It’s small enough to take anywhere. It’s a great email and light work gadget that is easy to use for about an hour or two at a stretch. As long as you don’t expect it to be a laptop you’ll love it.

HotMail and FaceBook compromised

HotMail: If you have a hotmail account, please go there now and change your password. Thousands of hotmail passwords have been farmed. Here’s now:

<copied from ask-leo.com> First login to your Windows Live Hotmail account, and then click the Options link in the upper right:

And then at the bottom of the resulting list, click on More options...:

On the resulting page, click on View and edit your personal information:

At this point you may be prompted to re-enter your password. This is a security measure to prevent just anyone from walking up to your computer and changing your information.

There's something interesting to note about the screen that you land on:

"When you change your password for Windows Live Hotmail, you're also changing it for all your Windows Live based services."

Note that it stopped talking about Hotmail. This is your Windows Live account.

Why does that matter?

Because your Windows Live account is used for all Windows Live services including Hotmail, Messenger Spaces and more. When you change your password for Windows Live Hotmail, you're also changing it for all your Windows Live based services.

Near the center of that page you'll see a section labeled Password reset information:

Click on Change on the Password: line and you'll get this box:

Naturally you must type in your old password in order to prove that you are who you say you are and are authorized to make changes.

As you type your new password the new Password Strength indicator will show you just how strong your password is. Having a strong password that's difficult to guess is incredibly important to the security of your account. Make sure you always have a strong password.

As an additional security measure you can instruct Windows Live to automatically require you to change your password every so often. While this can be seen as annoying, it's actually another layer of security to protect your account from theft.

Click on Save and you're done.

Facebook: is having a different problem all together. Facebook is popping up with rogue anti-virus warning and installations. This means you don’t have a virus --- the warning message is the virus. If you follow through, then you will have a virus. In this scenario, the vector is yet unknown but the infection is happening. Meaning we can’t yet say how you got it, you just did.

You will notice a weight loss post to the notes or wall section of your facebook page. The text will look something like this:

Wow, this woman’s story has inspired me to lose weight facebookhealth4.com

I stumbled across this woman’s weight loss blog today, really interesting facebookhealth5.com

These things must work well for losing weight, check out this woman’s blog and what she did facebookhealth4.com

Once you visit the included link a pop-up will occur telling you that you have a virus and need to clean it – click here. Don’t do that, that is the virus asking you to install it.

If you see any such post you should delete the item from your Wall or Notes immediately.

Be careful out there. These things come in waves and it that we another one has rolled in.

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Harbor Computer Services provides IT services to businesses in Southeastern Michigan. Find out more about us www.harborcomputerservices.net

HP DesignJet Sale

In the Inbox this morning is an email from Hewlett Packard regarding discounts on new DesignJets for loyal customers. Many of our clients have aging HP DesignJets, so if you were thinking about upgrading yours now might be the time. HP rarely puts anything on sale.

 

Trade up today and get up to $2,500 cash back*—offer ends October 23, 2009!
With the HP Designjet Cash In & Trade Up promotion—good only through October 23, 2009—you can get up to $2,500 cash back* when you upgrade your eligible old product and purchase or lease an HP Designjet Z6100 or Z3200 series printer and submit the online claim form by October 23, 2009. You have the option of keeping or trading in your eligible old HP or non-HP large-format product—you just need to show proof that you currently own one.
Plus, you can save up to $200 when you add a qualifying HP Care Pack Service, which will help reduced unexpected repair costs and downtime.

What to do when you get the “you may be infected” pop-up.

The above is but one of many varieties of pop-up that can occur when you visit an infected website. You don’t have to be visiting an obscure website to get this either, even Yahoo and The New York Times websites were unknowingly hosting this infection.

The question is what you should you do? Should you close the window? No! That will actually start the infection install process.

At the time of the pop-up you are not infected. But as soon as you click the Red X in the corner you are. This is because the whole pop-up is actually a picture and not a window, so the red X is part of the picture file that contains the infection and clicking on it anywhere starts the installation.

When this pop-up occurs should do these things:

1. Step away from the computer
2. Call us
3. We will direct you to do one of two things:
1. Kill the window by stopping the process that is running it
2. Pull the power plug

The solution will depend on what else you are doing at the time. Option 1 will preserve any open files that you have that aren’t saved yet. Option 2 will not.

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Harbor Computer Services provides IT services to businesses in Southeastern Michigan. Find out more about us www.harborcomputerservices.net

iPhone 3.1 update alert

Apple has released an update for the iPhone. However, this new version (3.1) will break connectivity between the phone and your Exchange server if you have an older model. Please do not update your iPhone until we issue the all-clear.

Older model iPhones are anything that is not 3GS – the very latest.

The problem with this update is that it will cause the iPhone to stop ignoring an important security feature of Exchange. By default Exchange requires that transmission between it and the phone be encrypted. Older model iPhones would simply ignore this and send data to Exchange unencrypted anyway. Most Exchange servers are configured to accept unencrypted transmission for compatibility purposes with legacy mail systems so the mail goes through anyway.

However with this update, the iPhone is no longer capable of ignoring the request from Exchange for encryption but the older models are also incapable of encrypting the email, so email breaks.

We’ll let you know when Apple has released an update for the iPhones that can’t encrypt email.

For the Student

The following article comes from one of Microsoft’s blog announcing a deep discount program for college and university students that would like to start using Windows 7. Instead of $119.99 it’s only $29.99. Also don’t forget about the Ultimate Steal deal for Microsoft Office: http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx This offer is good for 91% of retail price.

Based on reader comments, I know many are college and university students. I figured I would take a moment to highlight a great deal for those folks we’ve announced today. For a limited time, we are offering the LOWEST PRICE ($29.99 in the US) for Windows 7 exclusively to college and university students. This offer is perfect for students who are not planning to buy a new PC but want to experience all the benefits that Windows 7 will provide. To learn more about the offer and to check eligibility, students should visit www.Win741.com.

Students in the US can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 in the US starting today…

Windows 7 is easy to use and great to take on the go to class as well as staying in touch with friends and family via Windows Live!

Windows 7 gives university students the tools they need manage their work (including an easy to use design, the ability to easily connect to devices, and take on the go to class and the library), stay in touch with friends (with Windows Live Essentials) and have fun (including Windows gaming, Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Media Center to interact with TV and movies

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Harbor Computer Services provides IT services to businesses in Southeastern Michigan. Find out more about us www.harborcomputerservices.net

Buy a Safe Phone

The environmental working group is out with a very large study on which phones emit how much radiation. While somewhat controversial on whether or not the radiation emitted will cause you any harm, I don’t think that there can be any argument that less radiation is better than more. As consumers of phones information on how much radiation is being emitted into us was just not available until now.

You can check out the whole study and even search for the phone that you have at their website.

http://www.ewg.org/project/2009cellphone/get-a-safer-phone.php

Here’s a quick list of the top 10 best and worst phones.

Here’s a quick list of the top 10 best and worse PDA’s

If you don’t see your phone on the list the website has a simple search that looks like this.

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Harbor Computer Services provides IT services to businesses in Southeastern Michigan. Find out more about us www.harborcomputerservices.net

Search Engine Ranking

There are new ways in which search engines are ranking their results. One of these is by the number of reviews that readers have posted. I thought that we should give this a try. We can then report the results to you and if they are good, you can do the same with your customers and we’ll all move up the list.

So if you would, please post a short review of our work to Google. Here is the link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&view=text&hl=en&gl=us&q=harbor+computer+services

Looks like it requires you to have an account with Google.

The interesting part about this new method of ranking is that every site has their own review area, as does LinkedIn and Microsoft. So in order to be ranked high enough to matter everywhere we would end up asking our clients to rank us in at least 4 different locations. Seems like way too much to ask. We are not going to do that. But I will keep an eye on this developing trend and see how it plays out.

You know your legal system is broken when…

Microsoft barred from selling Word in U.S.

Canadian firm wins latest round of patent dispute

Last Updated: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 | 4:44 PM ET Comments236Recommend206

CBC News

A small Toronto company has won a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. that could prevent the giant software firm from selling some versions of its Word software in the United States.

On Tuesday a U.S. district court judge in Texas issued a permanent injunction barring Microsoft from selling the word-processing program because it violates a patent held by i4i Inc.

 

Full Article

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/08/12/canadian-microsoft-word-patent-infringement.html

Back on the old phone number

Nothing like a little bit of chaos on Monday morning. We are back on our old phone number: 248-850-8616

Someone over at Comcast heard my pleas of “why oh why do we have to switch phone numbers when our office moves 5 miles”. After getting settled in with our new phone number, making the announcement, changing the website, Comcast called this morning to say that they came up with a way for us to keep the old number. Presto change-o, we’re back on the old phone number.

Sorry for the confusion.

For the record the phone number for the office is 248-850-8616

Free Software

I have some Not For Resale software available. These are only available to our contract clients. First come, first serve.

• Virtual Server 2005
• Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition
• Visio Professional 2003
• System Management Server 2003
• Plus pack for Windows XP

If you would like one of these please let your technician know. If you are going to take one, we’d like to see it deployed immediately.

New Office Phone Number

The move to the new office is pretty much complete. There’s the bar to build yet, boxes to unpack…but we have desks, Internet access, carpeting, computers, printers and phones so it’s a real working office at this point.

In this move we discovered some Interesting things.

• We learned a lot about what it’s like to live inside of your disaster recovery plan. A very good lesson for everyone that will shape our recommendations and help us set expectations in the future.
• We learned that Comcast doesn’t own the phone numbers that it issues. Ouch.

That last one is a big deal. Although we only moved 5 miles, we moved out of one old Ma Bell exchange and into another. Can you believe that at the heart of our phone infrastructure is still the Lincoln Exchange? I was shocked. Because Comcast does not own the phone numbers that it provides with the business plan, we were unable to take our phone number 5 miles. A major bummer.

So we have a new phone number: 248-629-9142

Which, as a reminder, goes with our new address:

29488 Woodward Ave #450, Royal Oak, MI 48073

We have also completed installation of an actual phone system where everyone has a voicemail box and an extension. It’s a Response Point phone system. We purchased it about a year ago (maybe a bit more) and have been using it for training and demonstration. We’ve installed them for our clients and decided to put the one that we owned into production.

Cool feature list:

• Voicemail to Email. We don’t have to be in the office to get our calls anymore.
• Voice commands. People calling in don’t have to talk to a receptionist. They can simply say “Amy” and they’ll get me. Or they can say “Accounting” and they’ll get Missy. Or they can say “Diana” or “Ted”…you get the idea.
• Groups. We have a generic technician extension and this one doesn’t get you to a person but rather into a voicemail box, where we’ve set up the mail to be delivered to a group of people. So, you leave 1 voicemail and 3 people get the message delivered to their email.
• Automatic backup. Yes, we’re backing up our phone server and the voicemail it contains. It backs up to my computer. Should anything happen to our phone switch I can stick another one in there, from my PC select Restore and everything is as it was. No time consuming re-configuration.
• Integration with Outlook Contacts. When a call comes in, it will attempt to locate a matching contact in Outlook and display the incoming call along with the contact information.
• External Access. We can specify any external number as being part of our phone system. For example, I can specify a cell phone number and when they call-in, they can transfer, pick-up, check voice mail, intercom just as if they were a physical phone in the office.  We can also take one of our physical office phones and put it into a remote office and it will work as if it were in the main office too.

There’s a lot more to this little easy to setup, inexpensive phone system. It amazing how far telephone technology has come in the last couple of years. Now if only Ma Bell or Ameritech or Southern Bell or AT&T or who ever it is we are all under today would update their infrastructure to reflect the mobile nature of business today, no one would ever have to update their Rolodex contact list.

Office 2010 Technical Preview

We’re engaged in the technical preview of Office 2010. It’s obviously scheduled for release sometime next year. This technical preview is a little different for us, in that it’s not NDA. It has been released to only a few people but we’re allowed to talk about it. It’s a nice change because up until now, everything that we test on we’ve not been allowed to talk to you about.

Having just installed it all I really know so far is that the entire suite took me 18 minutes to install. That’s fast for software installation. I also hear that the user experience in Outlook has change significantly.

It installed a Smile and a Frown in my taskbar which it designed to make it easier to provide feedback to them.

I’m all for easy. Previously we had to document the problem or suggestion go into a secure website and upload the information. Other people in the test group would rate the issue on a scale of 1-5 and we’d go back and forth with the development team on defending why we thought what we found was significant. This was particularly true if what we found was a usability issue and not an actual error.

Our goal in participating in these programs it to represent our clients and make sure that we’re providing input so that Microsoft knows what is important to you. We don’t always win these arguments but we try! When we do win, it’s really cool to see the change going forth and making the application work better for our clients.

Since we can talk about this application test, we will. Expect to hear more about Office 2010 in the coming months. I won’t be posting those to this blog as I don’t want to bore people that aren’t interested. Instead I’ll post it to our technical blog. It’s widely read by other consultants so we can help them out by providing information on Office 2010 too. We tend to carry our laptops with us, so if you’d like to see Office 2010 let us now and we’ll show you. Otherwise, check in occasionally at http://securesmb.harborcomputerservices.net

Add Video Content to Your Website, not YouTube

This morning Warrillow has a very interesting post about video. Market research shows that business customers trust the video on your website more than video on YouTube. In fact, they’ll watch it 21% more often. Fortunately posting video to your website isn’t difficult. In fact, YouTube makes it easy by embedding the video onto your website. This means, it’s on YouTube but viewed from your corporate website and you get 21% more exposure for the video. Here’s the article:

Aided by the widespread adoption of high-speed internet access, online video has stampeded its way into American culture. YouTube is at the forefront of this rush with more than 78 million unique visitors last month (source: https://livearchive.exchangedefender.com/redir.aspx?C=1c231bdc787f4ca0825316b09a8a2dc4&URL=http%3a%2f%2frs6.net%2ftn.jsp%3fet%3d1102646284211%26s%3d4823%26e%3d001AaQ9OY5QCr6rZyNavpP5FAJiX7SQSx9fvFloRfC2X7DqK71PBaC3JnaU39foE30RC3X5ah76ZK-Od55_3XoZ9AdloD0QTBuCmRQGPNsJ5K4%3d). The online video phenomena has not skipped the small business market; entrepreneurs are consuming video and specifically for business purposes. But in the small business market, YouTube is stuck riding shotgun to an unexpected forerunner: your website. Warrillow research shows that while over half of small business owners visit YouTube for business videos, corporate websites are the preferred destination for online video.

While consumers rarely consider corporate websites for their recreational video surfing, business owners see your site as a source of credibility. Here are three reasons your website is a better bet for online video in the short term:

1. Exposure: Sites like YouTube enjoy a huge amount of visitor traffic, but the vast majority of it is consumer. From a browsing perspective, your content will be lost in the sea of videos.
2. Spread: Online video still tends to spread on a person-to-person basis through networks and via linking. If this is the case, wouldn't you rather a customer pass on a link to your website than to YouTube?
3. Control: Similar to social networks, there is still risk in search returns on video aggregation sites. You have a great deal more control over what content is going to be positioned above and below your video on your own website.

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Harbor Computer Services provides IT services to businesses in Southeastern Michigan. Find out more about us www.harborcomputerservices.net

Presentation: Understanding Social Media

Thanks for all for responding in the positive. I have scheduled this event for next Thursday at Noon.

In this presentation, I will not be demonstrating how to use Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan pages, LinkedIn and Blogs but rather I will show how other businesses are using social media and provide a general introduction to the terminology and the technology. Hopefully in a manner that is not geeky but rather easily understood.

I have allocated an hour for this event. My discussion will not take up the entire time. There will be time available at the end for Q&A.

When: Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00

Amy Babinchak has invited you to present an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b

Meeting time: Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT) 

When: Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT)
Scheduled to Occur: Once
Duration: 1:00

Amy Babinchak has invited you to present an online meeting using
Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b

Meeting time: Jul 23, 2009 12:00 PM (EDT) 

Add to my Outlook Calendar:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/meetingICS?id=9FFTG5&role=present&pw=c7%7BP8QC%60b&i=i.ics

I-75 Fire

Harbor Computer Services was affected by the fire on I-75 last night. Our servers and other network equipment still reside in Hazel Park. After the bridge collapsed last night, I got a call from our monitoring service letting me know that the server was unreachable.

Sure enough. Power is out. Internet is out. And that plume of smoke was right over the top of us. Due to the uncertainty at that time, we pulled our equipment out and are in process of moving it to a new location. Our disaster plan is in action and we continue to function.

Since we operate in a highly distributed way utilizing Internet services as a backup for email delivery and accounting we shouldn’t experience any delays in service.

Understanding Social Networking

I’m thinking about doing a short webinar on social networking. From talking to people that have attended a conference session, chamber of commerce event or webinar on this topic I’m hearing that the audience left confused or unclear about why they should care about social networking for their business.

I do quite a bit of webinars (usually 3-4 a month), speak at some conferences (usually 2-3 a year) and I spend a lot of my day every day chatting with business owners that happen to my clients. In my other business I spend time helping other IT consultants get through sticky problems, or define the problem and connect them to a member of my staff and I promote both businesses heavily using social networking.

So I thought I would give a stab at explaining social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging and old fashion mailing lists) to you, if you are interested. It really is changing the way that business is done. But maybe more importantly it’s changing the way that your future employees expect to work and do business. The line between personal and professional has been completely blurred with the personal taking precedence. It may seem counter intuitive but social networking over the Internet is making business personal. And it may even be breaking down the networking of old that took place at club, the golf course and in the fraternity/sorority. The playing field seems to be leveling.

Let me know if you are interested and if I get a few responses, I’ll put it together.  Replies should be posted to the blog: http://smalltechnotes.blogspot.com

Security Hole in the News. Should you worry?

No, but you should be careful.

The combination of North Korean supporters attacking government websites and Microsoft announcing a security hole has made for a media frenzy. But don’t let the media confuse you, they aren’t related.

The issue with the security hole is that a clever web developer can create an infected website hosting a video. If you visit the website with the infected video, it will infect you.

The SANS security institute (of which I am a member) is keeping a running list of which websites are infected. None of the commonly accessed websites are infected. In fact looking over the entire list, I can’t find anything that could possibly effect any client of ours. Here’s a sample of the types of websites we’re talking about.

www.7iai.cn
www.jazzhigh.com
www.netcode.com
6ik76.8866.org
76ith.8866.org
qd334t.8866.org
u5hjt.8866.org
vpsvip.com
x16ake8.6600.org
www.huimzhe.cn
www.hostts.cn
ucqh.6600.org
qitamove.kmip.net
news.85580000.com
guama.9966.org
dx123.9966.org
ds355.8866.org

How do you get to these crazy websites? The usual way. You open a spam email and click on the link therein. We know that you are all smarter than that.

There is currently a work around that will protect you from this infection but it’s one of those cases where the cure is worse than the disease. If we implemented the work around you would not be able to use any moving image in your browser. Since most news sites use these and since many of you visit CNN, Yahoo, ClickOnDetroit and other popular sites frequently we’d be crippling you if we implemented the work around.

When Microsoft releases a patch for the browser we’ll be sure to push that out as the permanent fix. Meanwhile we’ll be watching the list of infected websites.

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Harbor Computer Services provides IT services to businesses in Southeastern Michigan. Find out more about us www.harborcomputerservices.net

Palm Pre

While doing my morning reading, I came across this from a fellow geek blogger.

The Palm Pre implementation for Exchange ActiveSync mail is completely unsuited for enterprise companies. There is no support for remote wipe, enforcing password policies,etc. In fact, if you currently force the acceptance of these policies, you will not be able to download mail to your Pre without an exception.

We often get asked which phone to buy. For the most part we don’t have an opinion. Exceptions though have always been the Palm based phones. It’s very disappointing me to that even though they have finally adopted the windows platform that they have failed to implemented basic security.

These policies are implemented by default on your server. The purpose is to protect your contact list, files, pictures and your phone in general from being used by who ever might pick it up, in the event that you lose it or leave it behind somewhere. If your phone is gone permanently, we can remotely wipe everything off of it.

This isn’t to say that we can make this phone work, we can. But it won’t be safe and it will require some additional work on the server. With so many other choices, our recommendation would be to choose any other phone on the market.

Small Business Servers get a mention in USA Today

Nice to see SBS catch a little fame. So many small business overlook it either because they have never heard of it or they don’t realize that it is jammed packed with many more features than standard server.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/abrams/2009-06-26-servers-for-small-business_N.htm

At some point, sharing all this information — let's use the geek term "data" — became incredibly clumsy. That's when I first got a "server" and our own company network. And I recently upgraded my server to Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 to get greater stability, more security features, and the ability to have my tech guy handle more maintenance remotely.

Windows7 – 50% off pre-orders

Microsoft is offering a good deal on Windows 7. If you anticipate that you’ll want to upgrade some of your PC’s whether at home or in the office then you should take advantage of the discount.

Limited time offer, just launched today! As a way of saying thank you to our loyal Windows customers, we are excited to introduce a special time limited offer! We will offer people in select markets the opportunity to pre-order Windows 7 at a more than 50% discount. In the US, this will mean you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium for USD $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for USD $99.99.

Let us know if you would like to pre-order Windows7. The offer is good through July 12th and Windows7 releases on October 22nd.

Office for Home

A couple of people recently asked me where to buy Microsoft Office for their home computer. My stock answer is always CostCo or BestBuy because they will consistently have the best price on any random day.

But I wanted to point out an special advertisement that I got today from Amazon. Amazon usually has very good prices on most everything as well. Here it is:

Microsoft Home and Student edition is licensed in a unique way. It is limited to those computers that you have in your home and don’t use for business. (a laptop you use at work and home is counted as a work computer) As a reward though, it is licensed to load on 3 computers. So if you have 3 computers at home you only need to purchase 1 copy. Amazon doesn’t tell you that little juicy tidbit.

So if you have 3 computers, that’s $28.33 per computer for Microsoft office. You get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote in this package. Not too shabby.

IT Training for the Unemployed

This is an announcement because it seems like a good opportunity. So if you’re an unemployed IT person and need to update your learning to current versions, or want to become one then please read on. If you know someone that could use this information please forward it on to them. This money isn’t going to last long.

(thanks for Detroit.net LinkedIn group for sending me this information)

There is a state grant that may be available to those who qualify who are unemployed.

You can potentially receive up to $10,000 for re-training if you qualify. But you need to make contact immediately (within the next couple of days). You have to get on the grant list potentially by Friday (6/12) in order for them to receive their money by the end of the month. If they can't talk to me by Friday, I can still help them, but it may take a couple more weeks to get funding.

New Horizons provides short term IT training programs (classes usually are 5 days long)

We include all books, pretests, and exams *YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THE CLASSES BACK TO BACK. - take a bit of time to study*

* CCNA - Cisco Certified Network Admin - 2 classes - 5 days total
* CCNP - Cisco Certified Network Professional - 4 classes - 20 days total
* Certified Ethical Hacker - 1 class - 5 days total
* CISSP - 1 class - 5 days
* MCTS SQL - 2 classes - 10 days total
* MCTS Sharepoint - 2 classes - 5 days total
* PMP - 1 class - 5 days total
* MCSA - 7 classes - 22 days total
* A+ - 2 classes - 8 days total
* Network+ - 1 class - 5 days total
* ACA Web Design - various
New Horizons does other various IT certs too, but there are too many to list. We also do classes in Medical Billing and Coding.
If interested, you should contact Christy Rowe at: 734-853-2077 directly or crowe@nhmichigan.com
They do accept NWLB/WIA/JET/WIA Youth (No worker left behind funding) as well as TAA/TRA funding.)

Bing: The new search engine in town

Like they did in the browser arena (remember Netscape?) Microsoft has found itself playing catch up again. This time it’s in search engine. Fortunately for Microsoft they are good at this game. The new search engine is called Bing. (www.bing.com)

So what’s different about Bing? At the bottom of the page you’ll see a question of interest, today is Get To Know your Food Pyramid. You’ll also see a list of top 5 searches, right now it’s National Doughnut Day, Belmont Stakes Entries, Buchenwald and Nenue Fish. (What’s a Nenue Fish? Maybe I should click to find out.)

When you do a search at the top will the latest new items for that phrase. For example, when I clicked on Nenue Fish, I quickly saw from the new headlines that it’s a fish in Hawaii that choked up a gold watch on the beach. Below the news items are the regular links to websites containing the search phrase.

There are a couple of new features that I like.

1. Fly outs. When I put in the search term, bowling, I get the usual list of bowling websites like I would expect. But next to the links there’s a little hover point that when I pass my mouse over, I get a fly out with more about what’s on that website. Below I ran my mouse over the hover point for the first link and I get the fly out you see. This is a huge time saver for me. Instead of clicking on links and waiting for the page to load, checking out the website and then going back to my search when the first link I click didn’t have what I want, I can get more of the information I need to make a decision from the fly out and spend a lot less time going from site to site looking for what I really want. Here I’ve got a fuller description, phone number, email address and links to other pages on their website.

2. Automatic Local Search. Over to the left I have a button called Local. Bing remembers where I am so when I press local, I automatically get results for bowling in Royal Oak, MI without even having to type it in. Complete with map and one-click directions.

3. Travel. When I type travel from Detroit to Seattle, I get the following as my first search result.

It’s smart. I knows that I mean I want to fly from here to there. This gives me a quick glance at flight costs. I get the least costly flight and a 7 day trend. Click those links and I get more information. I can even book my flight from here.

4. Maps. I’ve been using Microsoft Live maps for some time. I like the way that they are laid out and the additional information that they provide. Right on my map, I get traffic and construction detours. But more importantly, I get tips for finding my way like “Sunoco on the right corner” and “if the get to Glenview you’ve gone too far”. When I’m going to a new area this really helps me stay on the path.

So give a Bing a try. It’s difficult to change but it might be worth your while.

Windows 7 Release Candidate

Microsoft sent me 8 copies of Windows 7 the other day. If you have a geeky side and would like to install Windows 7 on your computer to play around with before it comes out, let me know and I’ll get one of these over to you.

It should be noted that this is the release candidate and being pre-release there will be no in-place upgrade to the final product. You’ll have to wipe out and start over. So it’s for experimental purposes only.

Ted’s been our early adopter and he loves it. He’s been running it since beta 1 which is probably a year ago by now. Diana actually runs Windows Server 2008 on her laptop and Vista and Windows 7 in a virtual environment within it. Are they geeks or what? :) But hey, that’s how we learn…on our own systems not yours.

There is no official release date yet for Windows 7 but it is anticipated that it will be available for the holiday buying season.

Request for Assistance

We need you to help test a new extremely economical backup system. We are looking for volunteers. There is no risk and it will not disrupt you current backup. If you are interested please contact either Amy or your technician.

Harbor Computer Services has entered into a beta testing agreement with Symform. I had the pleasure of meeting the brains at Symform on my last trip to Seattle. They asked to meet with me and all I was able to give them was 30 minutes in the hotel lobby while I waited to catch my shuttle to my flight home. What I saw in those 30 minutes absolutely blew me away.

Symform has create a completely revolutionary means of economically storing your backup off-site over the Internet. They have developed a system that completely eliminates the expense, risk and slow recovery time. I believe that their backup system will not just introduce the market to a new backup method but that it will disrupt and rock the establishment.

In order to properly test this new backup method we need to have at least 10 of our clients use it. We do not have to change anything about your current backup system, so there is no risk. The current backup will remain unchanged and will continue to work.

The only investment required is a USB drive that can remain attached to the server at all times. If you already own one, then we can use it; if you don’t one would need to be purchased. This test will run until September and there will be no service fee.

If our testing succeeds, then the price we expect to be able to offer for unlimited off-site backup of your data is $30 per month per server and $6 per month per workstation. Until now, we’ve not been able to touch off-site backup for less than $3 per GB. If you have 100GB of data, that’s $300 a month. See why I think this is going to rock the establishment?

Since there is no risk I hope that many of you will choose to participate. Please let us know as soon as possible.

Free Backup Software for Home

You may recall that a few months ago, I announced that I was serving on the Elite Technology Team (ETT) with GFI Security, Inc. The ETT is a board of advisors to the CEO and management team at GFI. As part of that effort and through the on-going changes and improvement at GFI as it relates to small and medium business, they acquired a company that produced backup software. The first release of this product under GFI, is a free version for home use.  

To assist home PC users in these troubled economic times and to help them understand the importance of data backups, GFI Software today announced the release of a free version of its newly-developed backup and recovery software GFI Backup 2009 – Home Edition. Perfect for home users, GFI Backup 2009 will allow all PC users to safeguard their precious memories in the form of pictures, video, Office documents and any files on the computer.

There will be a future edition of this product for small businesses. In the mean time you can use this version for free at home.

Get it here: http://www.gfi.com/backup-hm/free-backup-software/

I recommend that you backup your home PC to a USB drive.

New Remote Support Connection

Harbor Computer Services has changed remote support products. We will now be using NTR Global. NTR Global provides the same support opportunities that the previous solution did, plus a few additional features on the management end.

We have also taken in some feedback from clients that the previous URL for support was difficult to type. Previously we used the website provided by the support software, this time we have integrated it into our own website and purchased a shorter URL for you.

The URL for our support page is now http://harborsupport.net This is where you will enter in the code that your technician provides to you to allow them into your computer. Upon entering the code, an installation of the remote client will occur. When the session ends, the remote client is automatically uninstalled from your computer. This secures your computer and prevents remote access without your permission.

When you visit the site you will notice that it is actually just another tab on our corporate website, http://www.harborcomputerservices.net

We hope that this integration will make it easier for you to use.

More Powerful Local Marketing

This crossed my inbox this morning and I thought it was very appropriate and good news for us Michigan businesses. It turns out that the #1 thing that creates loyal customers is not whether you are local or not but how easy it is for them to resolve problems with your product. And that feature gives you an 18% advantage. Of course this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be shopping local; we’ve got to support our neighbors but what it does mean is that you can expand out of your local region and be successful.

What's 18% More Powerful Than Location in Local Marketing?

Conventional wisdom dictates that local marketing isn't scalable because proximity is the primary advantage of local suppliers. In the small business community, this just isn't true. While location is important, ease of problem resolution is a much stronger driver of local selection.

In a recent Warrillow survey, we asked small business owners to make trade-off decisions between benefits of local suppliers across dimensions like convenience, relationship, and community. As a group, convenience factors were a strong driver of local affinity, and fixing problems easily topped the list of convenience benefits. In fact, problem resolution was roughly 20% more powerful than proximity in small business owners' assessment of local strengths.

It's easy to see how proximity can mask the stronger driver of easy problem resolution – the two are complimentary in the mind of a small business owner. Don't let your lack of local presence blind you from the core issues of accessibility and fast problem solving. Business owners didn't get into business to navigate your internal help desks; don't make them spend a second more in queue, in line, or in process than is absolutely necessary.

 
Once you've got your service function in order, talk about it! But be warned, “Great customer service” is neither believable nor specific enough to drive home your ability to quickly solve problems. Quoting issue resolution turnaround times, accessibility options, and specific staff qualifications are much more powerful than watered down service claims in the small business marketplace.

p.s. If you’d like to subscribe to Warrillow’s newsletter you can and it’s free. Go to www.warrillow.com I find their information interesting and useful.