Things you need to know about the Outlook Social Connector

Last year Microsoft introduced the Outlook Social Pane as an add on for Outlook 2007 and 2010. It’s really a great tool that brings together Facebook, LinkedIN, Messenger and Outlook. But take note, even if you don’t use this feature, your customers probably do and yes they WILL see your Facebook, LinkedIN or IM profile photo, even if you aren’t “friends” with them.

In case you haven’t seen the Outlook Social Connector, this is what it looks like.

It lives just under your email preview pane. Let’s look at the features first because it is a very useful tool.

This is the default view. This information is displayed when you highlight an email in Outlook. It displays this additional information about the person that sent you the email.

• The icons under picture indicate in which social networks I’m connected to this person.
• The words “2010 Small Business Specialist of the Year!…” come directly out of Amy’s LinkedIN profile. It pulled that information from there.
• The photo also come from LinkedIN. It’s part of the public profile. I can hover over the photo and scroll through other photos on Amy from her other Social Media profiles. (more on the implications of this later)
• The information displayed in the main area is a compilation of email I have received previously, facebook updates, linkedin updates, instant messages, calendar items…everything I’ve got everywhere that is associated with Amy. I can sort this information using the various tabs.

Here I selected Amy’s Facebook photo and moved down to only show emails from her. This makes it quick and easy to find previous emails from your contacts.

 

Yet another view. This time, Amy’s IM photo and I’ve selected to look at items in my calendar associated with Amy.

And now for my favorite useful view. I can get a list of all of the attachments that Amy sent me recently. This is great because I don’t have to remember when I got an email with an attachment, or what the subject was. I can just look at the attachments themselves.

So what if you aren’t using the Outlook Social Connector?

You now need to be very concerned with the profile photos in your various social media applications, because your business associates will see them every time you send an email. Even if you don’t “friend” them.

…To Be Continued…

Recycling Update

Monday was America Recycles Day. At Harbor we’ve been into recycling since before there was a Harbor Computer Services. Heck I started recycling newspapers in 1975 as a way to earn money. My neighbors would save them for me and I’d load up the trunk of my mom’s Cadillac with hundreds of pounds of newspaper and she would drive me down to Roseville to Great Lakes Recycling to cash them in. It was a great way to make a few dollars as a kid. (aren’t mom’s great?)

These days newspapers are on the way out and besides the truck stops in front our houses and picks up the recycling. Unless it’s business electronics, that is.

For that last 10 years, Harbor has been recycling computers for our clients. There never was any money in it for us but the scrap yards were happy to take them after we’d removed your data. Unfortunately we’ve run into a dead end and our resources for taking the components has dried up.

Because of this situation, we’ll only be able to take the physical hard drives until we locate a new source. 

The fee for hard drive recycling is $45. Missy or your technician will remove the old drive(s) from your computer. They will be brought back to our office where the physical drive is opened, the platen(s) destroyed and the metal recycled.

Remember that there is data housed on your PC’s, laptops, servers, netbooks, iPads, cell phones, external hard drives, USB (thumb) drives, backup tapes, copy machines, some printers and some scanners. We need to make sure that all of this data gets destroyed before disposal of the equipment occurs.

When is Social Media Good for Business?

Here are the demographics for Facebook.

Here are the demographics for Twitter.

Look closely and some important facts quickly emerge.

• The majority of people in Facebook are Female
• The largest Facebook demographic is 35-54
• The largest Twitter demographic is 25-44
• Twitter people over all are older. Twitter has a much larger population that is 55-64.

Does this blow away your preconception of social media? Hopefully not. These statistics are what they are because businesses and business people have flocked here. Look around at your customers. How old are they? If they are between the ages of 35-54 and your business isn’t active on Facebook and Twitter then you’re probably missing potential sales.

Social media marketing is a process, not an event. It does take energy and continuous input. But the results are there.

Internet and Phone Solutions from Harbor

At Harbor we strive to provide you with full service on all of the technology pieces in your business. We gets calls daily about Internet outages, cell phone problems and multi-function copy machines. Over the years we’ve found that the most efficient path to getting these things up and running again is if we’re the partner of record on the account. The vendors are much more willing to prioritize our support issues once we established this relationship.

For that reason, we have worked to develop relationships with several companies for Internet and Phone connectivity.

• Comcast – Cable Internet

• cBeyond – T1 Lines with Mobile Phones options

• Telnet Worldwide – T1 lines

When you are ready to make a change in multi-function copiers, T1 lines, Internet service please contact us so we can connect you with the sales person with these companies that we know will provide you with a great experience and will cement the relationship so when there’s a problem we can get you the support you deserve.

An Interesting Trend You Don’t Want to Miss

Today I read an article by a leading IT news company, ZDNet. They took a look at Internet usage patterns to see how OS & Browsers use has changed recently.

They found a few things:

• XP is being replaced rapidly
• Apple hasn’t gain market share
• Linux has lost market share

But most importantly they found something that they didn’t expect. That is that use of the Internet by mobile devices is climbing sharply. The movement is currently being led by Apple and Symbian through their phones. 

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-vs-apple-whos-winning-the-numbers-dont-lie/2504?tag=nl.e539

They say that if you take the current trend then within 2-3 years 20% of Internet traffic will come from mobile devices. That means you’ll spend about 10 hours a week using the Internet from a phone, kindle, ipad, notebook type device. That might sound far fetched to some of you but I’m sitting here on a wireless Internet connection from a hotel in Texas writing this using a Netbook. During the day, I use my phone primarily for email, GPS, facebook and linkedin. I think I’m already in that future.

The market is about to be flooded with inexpensive devices that won’t help you run your business and will expose you to a range of security risks. Please be careful with your purchases. We will be testing and researching some of these new devices. So if you are thinking of purchasing one, please ask us how it stacks up.