Small Business Tech Notes

Time to Plan

2012-01-09T16:51:00.001-05:00

We have entered a period of rapid change. The initiator of this rapid change is Cloud services. But is not the reason for the rapid change. The reason for the rapid change is how software and hardware companies are reacting. This reaction creates both pitfalls to avoid and opportunities to grab. This is something that we need to talk about. I want all of my clients to avoid the pitfalls and grab the opportunities while they exist.

I realize that this is vague. That’s because the particulars are going to be different depending on the size and line of business that you’re in. Here at Harbor, we don’t use a cookies cutter to stamp out solutions. So if we haven’t meet in person in the last couple of months, let’s get this meeting scheduled soon. It’s important.

-Amy

Microsoft MVP 2012

2012-01-04T16:11:00.001-05:00

It seems like only yesterday I opened my email and with great surprise found that I had joined an elite group of IT professionals as a Microsoft MVP. But here it is 7 years already and this New Year’s day I again received that email from Microsoft. It doesn’t lose its appeal. If anything I think I would slip into mourning should that email not arrive. The MVP award has allowed me to meet and develop a wide technical network that spans the globe. It’s been a priceless experience to not only be recognized but to then be able to take your feedback to influence the next generation of products.

I’ll be headed to Redmond Washington for the annual gathering of MVP’s from all over the world in March. But that’s only just a tiny portion of what goes on. Monthly I meet with the development team in Shanghia for Small Business Server. We discuss the current version and plan for the next version. I don’t always get my way, because of Microsoft’s bigger corporate agenda but often times my input results in a new feature or a tweaked existing feature. I meet with several other product groups regularly as well and I’m on a bunch of mailing lists with my fellow MVP’s whose focus is small and medium business. It keeps me busy but is very rewarding. I do my very best to represent all of my clients to Microsoft at every opportunity. For this they continue to award me year after year and I am so thankful.

As the independent voice of users worldwide, your influence on technical communities is felt in many ways—enhancing people’s lives and contributing to our industry’s success. We’re deeply grateful to you for sharing your feedback, comments, answers, and expertise with technical communities. In recognition of your commitment, Microsoft is pleased to honor you with the Most Valuable Professional Award. Thank you for empowering the community with your outstanding leadership!

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

Thank you for your exceptional contributions to technical communities! It gives us great pleasure to present you with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for the technical expertise you generously provide to others. By sharing your knowledge, experience, and objective feedback, you inspire and help people to solve problems and discover new capabilities every day. We are honored to welcome you as a Microsoft MVP.

Rich Kaplan
Corporate Vice President
Customer and Partner Advocacy
Microsoft Corporation

Thank You for a Great Year

2011-12-27T09:31:00.001-05:00

The end of 2011 is rapidly approaching so I wanted to take a minute to thank one and all. Our customers have been wonderful. You guys are the very best to work with and we enjoy every minute it. This year, we have struggled to hire the right person and are still working on that project. Diana attended SMB Nation conference where she made new and solidified old product support connections. She learned new tricks from experts from around the world too. Amy spoke at SMBNation on Sharepoint and she also paid it forward by travelled to 13 cities in the USA speaking to IT professionals about opportunities in small business. Early in the year Amy spoke to Microsoft MVP’s at MVPNation on building a successful business and identifying a great idea. We introduced MultiPoint and SBS Essentials into the mix and installed several Terminal Server farms. The trend toward more and more mobility definitely continues at an ever quickening clip. We saw tremendous growth both in number of customers and the work you are requesting of us. Our hunt for another great IT person continues so we can meet these demands.

Our plans for 2012 are modest. We just want to exceed your expectations and live up to the awards we have been given over the years.

We hope that 2012 makes your dreams come true.

- Amy Babinchak and the whole team at Harbor Computer Services

What are we going to talk about next year?

2011-12-08T11:34:00.001-05:00

It is that time of year when we need to get together to talk about the future. It’s planning season. We specialize in unique businesses. We don’t cookie cutter anyone. We make sure your IT fits you and enables your staff to be more productive. Your business is unique but we have a few themes that are going to be important for almost everyone next year. Here is what we think they are:

Consumerization. For the first time, employees are bringing their own computer equipment to the office. On the one hand this development has added productivity to employees through the greater use of technology. But there’s a dark side as well. Your data is being access by computers that you don’t trust, you don’t have any control over (like is it infected or clean?) and it now has your corporate data on it.
Mobile Security. Everyone has a smart phone. Some are owned by you and are therefore officially authorized and some are not. (see consumerization) Smart phones have data on them. At the very least they have email correspondence, business contacts and files. Did you know 93% of business correspondence is email? Do you know where it is? We’ve already seen hackers hitting open active sync ports, smart phones full of data lost and smart phones with your data going to the competition with the former employee on the phone they own.
Backup. Data creep is again taking its toll on backup strategies. Moving data off-site has become a problem for many companies. There’s no way around it, moving terabytes of data from your office to anywhere is complicated. With the hard drive shortage it just isn’t going to be feasible to add more space for more data.
Hard Drive Shortage. This problem is expected to continue for another 24 months. Whole countries are already unable to get replacement hard drives. This problem impacts data storage capacities, new PC purchases and server migrations. The problem is bad now. It’s only going to get worse.
Cloud Technologies. Cloud covers everything from email to remote access, to hosted applications and virtualization. It’s become a true bandwagon. Clouds vary from puffy white cotton balls to hurricanes; some clouds are good and some clouds are bad. The issues are access and data control. We’ve already had a customer’s data held hostage when they tried to leave a cloud application. We’ve already had data disappear and outages occur. We’ve seen the promise of geographic redundancy fall flat on its face. On the up side we’ve also had great success in the private cloud arena; it holds tremendous potential for cost savings and supports today’s more mobile work force and consumerization while retaining protection for your intellectual property. We have also built relationships with trust cloud application providers. Making the right cloud decisions can have lasting benefits.
Telephony. We have noticed that most of our you are using phone systems than are 10-20 years old. Some even have duct tape on them. This technology has turned on its head. Phones aren’t phones anymore; they are computers and we’re ready to install and support them for you. We’re working with several vendors that we think are making the best in terms of service, support and features. That they are computers now is good and bad. The cost of phone systems has plummeted; they are less than half what you paid last time and maybe only a quarter of the cost. On the downside the lifespan of the systems are much shorter too.

I hope that we’ll have an in-person meeting soon to discuss your plans for the future and a great 2012.

Hard Drive Crisis Being Felt Now

2011-12-06T11:39:00.001-05:00

I reported earlier about how the situation in Thailand will be affecting the availability of hard drives for the next 12 months. Since that time we’ve had some disturbing news.

There are now no hard drives available for Canadian distribution
70 million hard drive orders will go unfilled per quarter for the next 24 months worldwide. (note was 12 months, now 24)
There are very few hard drives left in Australia
Many US suppliers of hard drives are out of stock

So what do we do? We do what we always do in times of shortage:

Reduce: We will recommend smaller hard drives and possibly SSD (flash) hard drives.

Carefully use every drop of available space
Use data archiving
Evaluate whether or not stored items are necessary

ReUse: We will be recommending that we keep drives in circulation longer.

Older drives can continue to be used if paired. Using the buddy system we can protect from failure while reusing old drives in new systems.

This shortage is likely to have a serious economic impact as well. Businesses are more likely to keep older equipment in production and will experience greater rates of failure. Mom and Pop computer stores will be hit hardest and may not survive. Sales of IT hardware in general will be down significantly putting a big crimp in the profits of hardware dependent companies like: Dell, Intel and Apple.

We’re keeping a close eye on our suppliers and so far drives are available but expensive. We have seen some sizes and types drop off though and will be expecting more.

There’s no magic bullet solution for this problem. No one company that has more access to drives than another. I have started to hear of “amazing deals”, “my guy can get anything, no problem” as usual if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.

Extreme IT Makeover Of Your Favorite Non-Profit

2011-11-17T18:17:00.001-05:00

As a Microsoft MVP and a recent speaker on the Small Business Community Roadshow (13 cities around the Country – it was exhausting) I have been offered an opportunity to enter a local non-profit into an Extreme IT Makeover contest.

This is sponsored by Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, who will supply the hardware and software. Harbor Computer Services will supply the labor. Over the next 12 months, there will be several opportunities to participate with specific criteria to be met. It should also be noted the Extreme Makeover will be used for promotional purposes and a professional video will be produced. It will be great exposure for the non-profit.

So here is the criteria this month.

This Extreme IT Makeover is First Server. The Not for Profit we are looking for is at the very starting phase with technology, they have no more than 10 users and there is no established network of the client computers.

In order to be eligible the nominated Not for Profit should be engaged in services for people, animals, the environment or education and they must also be legally established as a charity in their country, for example a 501c in the US. We reserve the right to exclude Not for Profit’s that are political, religious or extremist in nature from this program.

If you have a relationship with a non-profit that matches this criteria and would like to introduce us, we will enter them and hope for the best! I am specifically looking for non-profits that you care about and has an existing relationship with. This isn’t a huge contest with thousands of entries. The only entrants will come from MVP’s like myself of which there are only 40 worldwide. So your non-profit will have an excellent chance at being selected.

Floods in Thailand

2011-10-27T11:45:00.001-04:00

It turns out that the world is flat, or at least it is in many aspects other than physical. You may have heard that Thailand is flooding in a big way. People are displaced. People are dying. Perhaps you felt bad for those people but didn’t think the flood would effect you and your business. This is not an area that normally floods. Much like the middle of our own Country that experienced floods last year, these floods aren’t supposed to be happening. In addition to personal horrors businesses are suffering as well.

The two largest suppliers of hard drives, Western Digital and Seagate, have major operations in Thailand right in the flood zone. The news isn’t good for buyers.

Western Digital, which has been our preferred brand for years, is in particularly bad shape.

Two factories which produce 60% of WD's drives are flooded and are not expected to be back online until Q3 of 2012.
Q4 2011 shipments are expected to be less than half of Q3 2011 shipment numbers.
Shipments to distributors have been stopped. All product in the pipeline is being redirected to WD for allocation.
Pricing on the existing inventory in the channel has jumped 45-60%.

Q3 2012 is a full year down the road. That’s how bad the flooding is.

Seagate isn’t in as bad as shape, but it is still a very bad situation with limited availability of hard drives.

One HDD factory and most HDD component suppliers are in the flood area.
Q4 shipments are expected to drop at least 10%.
Scheduled shipments to distributors have been de-commited pending an allocation plan.
Pricing on existing inventory in the channel has jumped 38 to 58%.

Seagate uses the term de-committed as opposed to stopped. To me, it’s the same thing. Distributors are unable to fill orders. Seagate has also not issued any estimate on when they expect to be back in full production.

These are not the only hard drive manufacturers to be suffering from the floods. Pretty much all hard drive components are manufactured in this area, so this effects everyone. These are small companies, more nimble perhaps in their own region but unable to shift production to other regions.

I’m expecting prices to continue to climb, especially after the end of this year. Next year hardware prices should be significantly higher than they are now. We will keep an eye on the situation for you and make recommendation accordingly.

When the cloud goes down

2011-08-11T08:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday starting about 12:30pm, the main data center for the spam, email and web hosting service provider that we recommend to all of you experienced a catastrophic failure. The initial problem was a power failure. This normally isn’t a big deal for a data center, since they are connected to multiple independent sources of power. But then it got worse. The ATS (automatic transfer system) failed too. Then the generators failed. It was kind of like that blackout that the whole east half of the USA and Canada experienced a few years ago, where one failure caused the next one until everything went black.

After a couple of hours, they were able to begin to get emergency power going for some systems and the failover to the Los Angelos data center occurred for the spam service. Eventually everything failed over to LA emergency servers. Then upon restoration of the full power in Dallas, everything began to move back to Dallas from LA.

Although a failure is a terrible thing, I was very pleased that they kept us informed via twitter every step along the way. We got play by play updates throughout the day and night. It was actually the best informed that we’ve ever been kept informed by a third party vendor in crisis. They even held a debriefing conference last night and again this morning. This is critical when choosing a cloud partner, because without the status information we would not have been able to make decisions on whether or not to pull mail direct into local servers or not. As it happened, this wasn’t necessary because we knew that the failover systems were kicking in.

What you will probably see this morning are duplicate emails. As systems are moved from one place to another, they automatically roll back to a point in time where there is no doubt that every piece of mail got delivered. So even though your mail got delivered by the emergency system yesterday, it might also get delivered today by the main systems. It’s a safe guard. The servers should be complete with the back log and email delivery assurance this morning and the duplicates will stop coming.

We did appreciate everyone’s patience through this issue.

Email and Website Problems Likely

2011-06-21T09:38:00.001-04:00

Yesterday morning we noticed some problems with email delivery with a couple of our clients. The caused was determined to be unreachable DNS records. Many of you have your DNS records hosted with the largest DNS hosting solution, Network Solutions. Being the largest they are a favorite target but fortunately due to the redundant nature of their servers they are usually able to fend off the attacks. However the current attack is much more significant.

As a result we will see:

Email delayed or undeliverable
Websites that are unreachable

This problem can occur with your email or website or also with the person or company that you are trying to reach. There is not a thing that we can do about it, except wait. We are keeping an eye on the developments and if there comes a point where we feel that a move needs to be made we will do so.

Network Solutions has been keeping us informed of their progress in the fight against the hackers via twitter and facebook.

Harbor Featured for Backup Expertise

2011-06-20T12:04:00.001-04:00

Harbor Computer Services is being featured by Symform as an expert in offsite Internet based backup services. We have been involved with Symform and other online backup companies since the concept first came to light. Over time we have refined the process for moving data offsite for secure storage. Owing to security and bandwidth challenges, online data storage is a difficult problem to solve with grace and reliability. We’re pleased that Symform, a provider of Internet backup services, considers us an expert on this topic worthy of featuring in Channel Pro Magazine this month.

	Look inside >

June 2011

Security in the Spot Light

2011-06-16T09:53:00.001-04:00

This week has brought forth the following security breaches.

Sony
LockHeed Martin
RSA SecureID
International Monetary Fund
CIA
Citibank

An excerpt from yesterday’s hearing: Testifying before members of the U.S. Congress in confirmation hearings to become the next Secretary of Defense, Panetta said a large-scale cyber attack on critical infrastructure such as the power grid, financial sector or the government could amount in the next "Pearl Harbor," and that such an event is now a "real possibility."

Now I’m not one to put on my tin foil hat often and say that we’re under attack. But we are and we can expect it to increase. Some of these attacks are suspected retaliation for the StuxNet attack that has crippled the Iranian nuclear program. Israel and the USA are generally considered the ones behind this attack. Once this Pandora's box has been opened there’s no closing it and in as many words that is what our next Security of Defense, and current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said at yesterday’s hearing.

So how do we protect ourselves from becoming a causality of a war that doesn’t use guns or bombs? A new type of shelter is required.

Great Firewall that protects the edge from all angles
Staff education on how not to get sucked into scams that result in security breaches
Redundancy for Internet dependent business critical functions
Careful password development and management
Limited recreational Internet use at work

I think that we can consider this our new reality. This is not just another temporary flare in activity so on going awareness will be required. Be careful out there.

A new Baby

2011-06-14T13:56:00.001-04:00

Many of your have had an opportunity to meet our new technician, Matt. He’s been with us for about a month now.

Today Matt and his wife welcome a new addition to their family, Dominic Matthew DeNoyer.

Congratulations to Matt and Shawna!

NASA reports major geomagnetic flare–expect outages

2011-06-08T08:59:00.001-04:00

This morning NASA reported that the sun has released an enormous flare that will disrupt satellite communications and cause the rerouting or cancellation of air flights. Solar flares release magnetic energy which when it collides with the Earth’s magnetic field causes electrical interference. Should you expect these possibilities for the next 48 hours:

Difficult cell phone communications
Slow Internet
GPS inaccuracy

These events are expected to begin occurring about Noon today.

Introducing Matt DeNoyer

2011-06-03T13:03:00.000-04:00

I am pleased to welcome Matt DeNoyer to Harbor Computer Services. Matt started with us a little over a month ago now and has been making great strides in learning the high standards to which we adhere.

You may have met him already. He’s been shadowing Ted and Diana in their daily client visits. I have also been training him on performing maintenance, working remotely and becoming familiar with the range of products that you depend upon.

Matt comes from a manufacturing background, starting on the shop floor and moving into IT. He recently completed his degree. He’s the father of one with another expected to arrive in a couple of weeks.

He is ready to take on responsibility for your computer network and as such I will begin to assign some of our clients to him. We will have an orderly transition plan from your current consultant to Matt. Diana or Ted will work closely with him to make sure he is aware of the particulars of your network. If your support will be in transition I will send you a special email detailing the particulars, scheduling a meeting and providing Matt contact information to you. We will be working as a team to make the transitions smooth.

I appreciate everyone’s support of us during this growth phase.

Windows 8: Wow, just Wow

2011-06-02T10:02:00.001-04:00

Yesterday Microsoft released a video showing a preview of Windows 8. This is the first time that a preview of the user interface has been released to the public. It’s a WOW. It’s also scary. It’s the kind of leap that we made when we went from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Since 95 the Windows desktop has remained pretty much the same. Well, say goodbye to the well loved desktop and hello to the world of touch and tiles.

Change in Default Mobile Security Stance and Mobile Device Acceptable Use Policy

2011-05-09T14:47:00.001-04:00

Mobile Device Security Stance Change

Following recent notification from one of the servers we manage that an attempt was made by a rogue mobile device to connect to it we have changed the default security stance of all Exchange and Small Business Servers when it comes to Mobile devices.

By a mobile device I mean a mail enabled mobile phone or an iPad or similar slate device. Heretofore, the default security stance was to allow these devices to connect and then attempt to authenticate. However, given that mobile device connections are now becoming a favorite target we have decided to modify the default security stance of these servers and disable all mobile device connections for all users that are not specifically authorized by you to make such a connection. This will reduce the risk footprint considerably for all servers.

We have completed this work and will be sending you a list of mobile devices that have made connections to your servers and the user account that they are associated with. We will be asking you to verify that you have approved these connections. If you have not approved these connections we have two ways to proceed: disable the device from receiving future email, calendar, contact lists from the server or disable the device from receiving future email, calendar, contact lists from the server and wipe it of the data that it currently holds.

Mobile Device Acceptable Use Policy

On a related note our client, Community Legal Resources, recently distributed a large number of mobile devices to their employees and developed a well thought Mobile Device Policy. They have agreed to make this policy available to all of you in boilerplate form for your use. I would strongly encourage everyone to implement a mobile device acceptable use policy sooner rather than later. These devices are holding a significant amount of your companies corporate data and intellectual property and an acceptable use policy can help you secure it. I have made this document available to you via download from a new Sharepoint site that we have created to hold documents that we think you will find useful. Please download the policy and modify it for your individual business needs.

The website is ssl, username and password secured. Please ask or send an email to your technician for the account information.

I hope that you will find this boiler plate and the site helpful.

Handling Large Data Archives

2011-04-28T14:42:00.000-04:00

For a lot of years now archiving large amounts of data was handled by storing it on tape or storing it on CD or DVD. Of course this is when we considered large to be a few hundred megabytes or a small number of gigabytes. My how times have changed. Data just keeps getting larger and as a result we now see that many of our clients have stopped archiving data. The number of GB’s of data is just too huge to manage. Instead it is being stored on the server mingled in with current data.

We have a better way.

Issues in data archiving are:

quick easy access
restricted permissions
redundancy

These three things are critical to good data archival practices. So let us introduce you to an appliance that is really good for data archiving.

It’s called Drobo. A simple Drobo is a four drive unit. It takes Sata drives which are pretty inexpensive these days and come in large formats. It’s a plug and play device as far as the drives go. We can put drives of any size in it, we can mix and match those sizes and we can lose up to two drives to failure and not lose any data. Recovery is as simple as sliding in a replacement drive. To access your archival data we simply map a drive to the Drobo volume.

How much? Well the 4 drive unit costs about $400, plus the drives. They make bigger units too for those of our clients with vast data archive requirements.

You might find us suggesting these. They’ve been around for a couple of years now and on our radar for almost that long. Ted attended a premier training event a while back in Las Vegas and came back thoroughly impressed by the technology. I think that you’re going to like these.

Considering Buying New Phones or Phone Service? We can do that.

2011-04-27T15:45:00.000-04:00

Phones, phone systems (PBX) have changed dramatically and we’ve been watching carefully. Phone systems have changed from the blackbox that hangs on the wall that you never touch into true computers that operate on the network on the same Ethernet cable as your computer.

Computers are our expertise, which is why we’ve been watching carefully. We’ve also been busy building relationships with key hardware vendors and voice line suppliers. The phone business has become the computer business and we’re ready to supply these services for you.

As we have done with computers, servers and software, we have selected the vendors and service suppliers that were willing to develop close relationships with us and our clients. We look for partners that not only supply hardware and services to small/mid businesses but ones that are interested in developing a deep relationship with us so that we can support you better while helping them to develop better and better products for our customers. It’s a trademark of Harbor Computer Services and we’re approaching the Phone system vendors with the very same expectations.

We’ve connected with several partners: Cisco, TelNet, Verizon, Sprint, CallTower, UltraCom and Unified. We have selected products from within the set that these companies offer for specific attributes so that we can customize the telephony solution to your needs.

There are a few things you should know about new phone systems:

They need good computer cabling
They cost about 1/3 of what phone systems used to cost
They last about 1/2 as long
They are integrated with your Internet service
They can integrate with your mobile phones too
They are loaded with features
They are computers and do require some maintenance

Thinking of phones as computers is a new idea for most people, but if you buy a new phone today it is a computer. The industry has shifted. Phones are now playing in our ballpark and we’re ready to go to bat for you.

When you’re ready to talk about phone replacement or updating your phone service let us know and we’ll bring the best folks to the table for you.

Who is the most common target?

2011-04-22T14:42:00.001-04:00

Today I am reading the incident and compromise report for 2010 by Verizon and the US Secret Service. It’s a good read if you are in my business. It gives me the pulse of what the bad guys are attacking and let’s me know if we’re doing the right thing to try to keep our clients out of harms way.

The good news is that in 2010 the incident of compromised data is down. But the bad news is rather dramatic.

Of all of the cases that they evaluated in 2010 a HUGE percentage of the data attacks occurred on small businesses. So why is this?

It’s the same old thing with crime, whether physical or virtual. The solution is simply don’t be an easy target. This says that far too many small businesses are leaving themselves unprotected but also that getting out of harms way isn’t difficult. The marketplace for crime in small business is wide open, so if you’re the company with a quality firewall, update to date anti-virus software, good acceptable use policies for the Internet and are filtering spam – you are not the low hanging fruit and the criminals will go elsewhere. But if you don’t have locks on the doors the criminals will walk in your door.

What are they looking for? When a cyber-criminal robs you they don’t ransack the place. They try to leave it as clean and untouched as when you left it so you won’t even notice that they’ve been there. There are two important statistics here.

Less data was stolen from servers. Why? Because not all data resides on servers anymore. A lot of data now resides on laptops, netbooks, phones and ipad type slates. Its easier to steal from those locations than it is from your server, so guess where crime has shifted to?

Most data thefts were not discovered by the business whose data was stolen and this is up by 25%. That means the bad guys are getting better at what they do. They are more adept at getting what they want without breaking anything in the process. The thefts are generally reported by consumers or business associates. They are the ones that end up with the stolen identity or the confidential business process that suddenly everyone knows how to build. They are the ones that suffer.

So what does the report recommend besides don’t be an easy target?

Notice the word mitigation in the title of this figure. It is about mitigation. The bad guys are smart and they change tactics frequently. Security can’t be guaranteed but you can move yourself from harms way. The first item is a big one for many of our clients. We know most of you take our advice when it comes to security efforts, but few take our advice when it comes to data storage. Data archiving is a form of data protection. If there is one item that we should discuss with you beyond our usual recommendations it is this.

If you’d like to read the report for yourself, you can find it at http://www.verizonbusiness.com/resources/reports/rp_data-breach-investigations-report-2011_en_xg.pdf

Internet Explorer 9 Soon To Be Installed

2011-04-08T14:02:00.001-04:00

About a month ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9. It will now begin to arrive on your computers with the next update cycle. Ted was our Beta tester for IE 9 and has been running it since the very first beta was available nearly a year ago. He’s been through the pains to the gains and reports that it’s a fantastic upgrade.

However, as with all recent Microsoft application releases in addition to new features there is also a new look and feel.

Web-focused browsing

Windows 7 integration

Security

Tracking Protection

There’s a lot of new stuff in IE 9, but the links above will take you a few under 1 minute video’s that show off some of the new features. To sum them all up, IE 9 has better integration with Windows 7, is more secure that ever, has better download security, allows you to prevent website from tracking you so those annoying ads will have a more difficult time finding you and it’s fast, really fast.

Best of Michigan businesses

2011-04-05T07:48:00.000-04:00

Harbor Computer Services has been named Best of Michigan businesses for IT Services by the readers of Corp Magazine. I attribute this award to our wonderful customers and thank you for nominating and voting for us.

https://www.corpmagazine.com/features/cover-stories/itemid/3724

Amy Babinchak, company CEO, said, “I am very proud of my employees for continuing to have such a passion for their work. It is because of their efforts that Harbor has been recognized as a best Michigan Business. I started Harbor Computer Services to serve a market space that was not taken seriously by other IT firms. Small Businesses deserve great IT support services and we're happy to have been recognized as having reached that goal for our clients.”

Announcing SBS 2011 Certification

2011-03-30T13:54:00.001-04:00

Harbor Computer Services is pleased to announce that all of its technical staff members have passed the Small Business Server 2011 certification exam.

Each person took the beta exam which consisted of the entire question set. Because of this, passing a beta exam is very difficult and passing is a real mark of knowledge and skill. In addition because Small Business Server contains all of the components normally held by several servers, passing requires knowledge in many technical areas.

This exam allows each member to also meet the requirements for retaining their Small Business Server Specialist status.

We’re very proud of them.

Alert: Problems with Windows 7 SP1

2011-03-10T09:50:00.001-05:00

Last night I started to receive notices of many “dead bodies” as we call them in IT from around the world. That is, computers failing to boot after installing Service Pack 1.

This issue seems to be limited to computers whose files have been altered by some third party software. Hewlett Packard computers with pre-installed operating systems one of those. We are attempting to find other common threads that so we can alert you more specifically and plan for the service pack installation potential issues.

Meanwhile, we’d like to ask you do not install Windows 7 SP1 at this time. If your computer is prompting you to install it, please contact your technician.

Phones: A New Security Issue

2011-03-02T19:40:00.001-05:00

Not very long ago, smart phones were rare. Businesses purchased smartphones for very few employees and those that had them were generally business owners. Today, we are seeing that smartphones are being purchased for everyone in the company. The other trend is for employees to connect their personal smartphone to their employers network.

What’s a smartphone? They are phones that do more than allow you to answer a call. Think iPhone, Windows Phone, Android and Blackberry. iPads also fall into this category.

These phones collect email, contact lists and files from your network and stores them. This introduces a security problem because these devices are holding your critical data.

If you have a small business server then we have a solution. We can wipe these devices of ALL data and configuration settings. This is a great feature and it can protect your data from leaking in the event the phone is stolen, lost or the employee leaves employment. We can prevent that data from getting into the wrong hands.

This is great for business owned devices. But there are some pitfalls that need to be planned for in advance. If we wipe the phone:

Any personal email will also be deleted
Music and video is deleted
Everything is deleted

Now, what if the employee owns the phone and the phone has been connected to your network? Can you legally protect your data? Can we wipe it clean?

Both of these scenarios are human resources issues and require an acceptable use policy. You should consider having your employees sign an acceptable use policy that allows you to wipe any device connected to your network whether is it owned by the employee or the business. Employees that desire to have a connected device need to be forewarned that should it be lost, stolen or when they leave your employment that the device will be wiped clean.

It is this document that will allow us to use the remote wipe tool to protect your data that is now living on mobile devices outside of your office.

__________

Connect with us! www.facebook.com/harborcomputerservices

Fake Domain Conflict Emails

2011-02-23T13:38:00.001-05:00

Recently we have received calls from several clients that have received a notice via email of a domain name conflict. The short story is that it should be ignored.

The email that you receive looks like this:

From: Oscar Hu [mailto:oscar@chinashkow.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:46 PM
Subject: Domains Dispute – <Your DomainName>
Importance: High

(If you are not in charge of this case, Please transfer this urgent email to your CEO.)
Dear Manager,

We are the domain name registration and solution center in China. We have an important issue to confirm with you. On February. 22th, 2011, we formally received an application, The company which called "<SomeCompanyName>" are applying to register '' <YourCompanyName> " as Internet brand and China Domains:

<Your DomainName>.asia
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.hk
<Your DomainName>.tw
<Your DomainName>.hk
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.tw

After checking, We found the domain name being applied are as same as your company's name/trademark. so we need to confirm with your company.
If the "<SomeCompanyName>" is your business partner or your subsidiary company, Please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you have no any relationship with "<SomeCompanyName>", Please reply us within 5 workdays(our audit period). Out of the deadline, we will JUST approve the application submitted by "<SomeCompanyName>". unconditionally.

Kind regards,
Oscar

Oscar Hu
Senior Consultant
No.59, Building 20,
Lane 1118, Xi Zha Rd,
Fengxian District, Shanghai
Office: +86 (21) 6715 8606
Fax: +86 (21) 6715 0255

This email is safe to ignore. If you contacted them they would offer to correct the situation by asking you to register all of the above domain names to protect your space in China.

The companies offering this “service” are legitimate companies in China offering to scam you. Please don’t fall for this scam.

__________

Connect with us! www.facebook.com/harborcomputerservices

Need Remote Access to your Computer?

2011-01-31T10:08:00.001-05:00

The big snow storm is coming. It probably won’t be safe to drive to the office on Wednesday.

Contact your technician today to setup or test your remote access to your computer.

The weather outside is frightful

2011-01-24T17:20:00.001-05:00

Property damage is from winter storms one thing. As you can see it’s easy to tabulate and throw into a graphic. But business productivity is another. It’s a larger number but because we don’t report to our insurance companies it doesn’t get measured.

Business productivity doesn’t get the glamor shot in news articles. Unless it’s the government, or how many flights airlines had to cancel.

Office of Personnel Management chief John Berry has said each snow day costs taxpayers $100 million in lost productivity from federal workers.

So if a snow day costs the Federal government $100 Million, how much does it cost you? If someone can’t make it into the office because there’s snow on the road how much did that cost your business? If you decide to send everyone home early so they can avoid a rush hour of slipping and sliding and hopefully live another to work another day, how much does that cost you?

I know it costs a lot. We can help to mitigate those costs by implementing some things that you probably already own.

Now might be a good time to review how your staff can access company resources to work from home.

Free or nearly free options:

Outlook Anywhere, if they have a laptop or smartphone
Outlook Web Access, if they don’t have a laptop
Sharepoint can be accessed from the web for some or all
Remote access to their computer in the office
Remote access to shared files and folders, if you have SBS 2011

Additional options:

Dedicated remote computers. A small bank a computers specifically for remote access.
Remote Services: to provide whole desktop experience
Remote Services: to provide access to a specific application

Poor Choices:

VPN – provides remote access but potential for infection is very high
LogMeIn or GoToMyPC: Why bother when remote access is free and built into the operating system of your computer and provides better security

We can help you implement these solutions or train you on how to use them. We can also secure them. The trade-off in allowing remote access to be certain that we’ve secured it properly. Once secure your employees can work from home and be as functional as in the office.

__________

Connect with us! www.facebook.com/harborcomputerservices

Our Favorite Mobile Things

2011-01-18T13:19:00.001-05:00

Mobility is really taking off. Everyone is getting smartphones, netbooks, laptops and handheld devices. For those of you looking to make them better, or still shopping I thought it might be helpful to tell you about our favorite things. This list is gleaned from our own usage of these products.

We love the iPhone and all of our technicians have one.

Pain Points? Spell Check and iTunes. Battery life is not outstanding.

Handy Free Apps? Maps, Weather, Yellow Pages, Bing, Sodoku, Yelp, MoShare (sharepoint) and of course Angry Birds.

We have two Windows Phones. They are pretty new but we love these too. Battery life is better than we experienced with the iPhone. Having Word, Excel, OneNote. PowerPoint and Sharepoint built-in is wonderful for the business person on the go.

Pain Points? Too many clicks to turn off the ringer. No favorites list for quick phone dialing.

Handy Free Apps? Maps, Weather, Yelp, Bing, YouTube, and RunSat

This is the Jabra Cruiser. It’s a hands free speaker phone device for your car. Its amazing. Cuts out road noise so well that the person you’re calling won’t even know you are in the car. It has an FM transmitter built in so you will hear the caller from your cars speakers. Simple to use, it automatically connects to your phone via bluetooth when ever you’re in range and it has a 3 day battery life.

Bonus? It uses the same power cord as the Windows Phone.

The Intel NOBI. It’s a rugged notebook and tablet all in one. Powerful enough to run all of your apps in a 10” lightweight package. Rugged to a 3ft drop, waterproof and it has an anti-microbial coating. It also has built-in encryption so no one can ever read your data even if it gets stolen or they remove the hard drive. It’s the ultimate road warrior machine.

Bonus? This might sound hard to believe, but it’s a people magnate. Walk into any meeting, any conference, any coffeeshop, any Panera and you WILL be approached by more than one person asking about this notebook. Its everyone's dream device.

Our least favorite mobile things? BlackBerry and Droid phones. They continue to result in high support costs due to lost connectivity and constant resetting. Droid has the additional problem of continue unpatched security issues.

Small Business Server 2011

2011-01-12T10:38:00.001-05:00

The new version of Small Business Server is here. It contains an interesting new feature, some new options and for those of you that purchased SBS via subscription there’s an extra benefit coming your way when you upgrade.

New Versions:

Exchange 2010, OWA 2010, Windows 2008 R2, and Sharepoint 2010 Foundation

New Features:

Remote Web Access – this replaces Remote Web Workplace and provides the additional SCARY option of providing remote access to files and folder directly from the site.
Sharepoint – Redesigned site, workflows (documents can pass from person to person automatically for approval or editing), blogs, additional security and content controls.
Outlook Web Access – It’s almost indistinguishable from full Outlook. Many additional features added to make it more like Outlook.
Administrator tools – much has changed behind the scenes for your administrator

Exciting New Option:

Exchange 2010 Enterprise Cals – these can be added to unlock more Exchange features including archiving, legal hold and search across mailboxes capability.

Extra Benefit for subscribers:

Subscribers to SBS Premium will receive what Microsoft calls
“make-good” whereas before SBS Premium was a single server, in 2011 it is two servers. Because of this change Microsoft is providing a free copy of the second server operating system. Software Assurance continues to prove to be a good value.

Over all we’re very impressed with Small Business 2011. It is addressing the needs of a more mobile work place beautifully and continues to provide features and functions that no other server package in the market does.

Quick Notes:

Many of our clients are moving data over to Sharepoint, a feature of small business server. If you haven’t considered doing this yet, please ask your technician about sharepoint. They can show you our sharepoint site and discuss how other clients of ours are using it. Many are finding it a great solution to make data easy to find, easy to track and available through a wide variety of devices.

Amy has been appointed to the Small Business Specialist Community Advisory Board at Microsoft. She will represent the Heartland region of Microsoft partners. The Heartland region includes Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter! We’re active on both. www.facebook.com/harborcomputerservices and www.twitter.com/harborcomputer

We hired a new technician

2011-01-05T12:54:00.001-05:00

Please join us in welcoming Ethan Pitts to Harbor Computer Services.

Ethan brings to Harbor, 17 years of experience supporting computer networks for Xerox and CornerStone Schools. In both positions he not only supported the servers but also the pc’s, laptops and the people using them. This well-rounded experience makes him well suited to the type of work that we do for you. He is currently pursuing his bachelors degree and has been a member of the local Small Business Server user group for quite some time. He is also a drummer with a passion for making music.

For the next couple of months Ethan will be working closely with each of us on different days. It’s likely that you’ll see Ethan next time we need to make an on-site visit. You’ll be talking to him too as we ask him to take some calls for remote support under supervision.

We’re exciting to expand our staff and to bring on someone that we think will fit in very well and uphold the standards that we are known for.

A happy MVP for another year

2011-01-04T11:54:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has chosen to again award Amy with it’s Most Valuable Professional award. This award is given annually to a very select group of IT professionals that exhibit advanced technical skill and the generosity to share those skills with their peers. They award about 1700 people worldwide annually. Amy was awarded this year for Small Business Server. There are 40 people awarded for SBS around the world.

This award provides Harbor Computer Services opportunities and open doors at Microsoft, allowing us to represent the IT Community and our clients to Microsoft staff working on small business products. It’s an award but also an opportunity and responsibility that we take very seriously.

The Reasoning Behind Complex Passwords

2010-12-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

We have always gotten a lot of push back on enforcing complex passwords. Believe me as a person that works with a lot of passwords every day, I understand completely. But the data speaks for itself. In the picture below, note the difference between only lowercase and all characters.

What’s the most shocking of the statistics below? It’s that 4 digit pin number to your bank account, isn’t it? Absolutely insecure and under the best of circumstances broken in 1.36 minutes. See if they’ll let you use a longer one.

There is however, another very important take-away that you need to know about…

it’s the definition of All Characters. All Characters means that your password contains upper, lower, numbers and symbols and the letters do not form any known word.

So it’s something like !)@ftlgjsro2BB which is just awful to type and remember but it will take a hacker 154,640,721,434 millennia to break it. Perhaps it is worth committing to memory?

Still I have a easier solution to this problem. It’s the one that we use internally. It’s a formula and it goes like this: symbol symbol word word symbol symbol or symbol number word word symbol number

Here are a couple of examples of easy to remember complex passwords that do not contain any known word.

$$TreePhone)) ^6FlipHanger0)

But those are words, you say? Yes but No, they aren’t. They are two unrelated words that when put together make nonsense and aren’t found in the dictionary. Complex password don’t have to be difficult and we do have to enforce them. If it wasn’t important we wouldn’t harp on it so much.

Take 5 Minutes and Learn Something New

2010-12-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

Each of these videos is 5 minutes or less in length.

OneNote is the most amazing application. Everyone that uses it, loves it. If you haven’t tried it yet. This would be a great way to kick off the new year.

How to create and use notebooks

New to the Ribbon interface in Office 2007 and Office 2010? Take a tour to learn how it’s organized. Once you learn it in one app, it’s the same in all of the others.

Tour the Windows 2010 Ribbon

Learn how to setup a Master Slide in PowerPoint. Once you have a master setup, you can standardize your templates across the company and have each new slide in your presentation automatically have the correct formatting.

How to Create a Master Slide in Powerpoint

To the Cloud, and Beyond!

2010-12-16T18:26:00.000-05:00

The “cloud” is all the talk in computing these days. They talk about it as if it’s something new. I suppose in once sense it is. It is a new term in marketing and boy are they pushing it. Microsoft’s “to the cloud!” commercials have been a hit, a kin to Apple’s I’m way cooler than a PC commercials were a couple of years ago.

So what is this cloud thing? Well, as you know there are many different types of clouds and some clouds are more pleasant than others.

In IT marketing speak there are two types of Clouds that have formed. Public Cloud and Private Cloud. Both are very simple concepts and neither is new.

Public Cloud = The Internet

If you are reading this, then you are using a public cloud. The cloud allowed me to upload this document into Harbor’s blog. The cloud allowed me to tell my blog to send a copy of this blog post to the members of our client mailing list. Your email server received the message from the cloud and is displaying it to you right now. You’ve probably been using the public cloud for years.

Private Cloud = Virtual Servers in your Office

A virtual server is the same server software only it runs as a file and it uses virtual hardware. Because it uses virtual hardware, we can run multiple servers on one physical piece of hardware. It saves some money because we don’t have to purchase so much hardware anymore. We increase the efficiency of your hardware purchases. Several of our clients with multiple servers, are running a private cloud.

Cloud Computing = Applications that are housed on the Internet or that use the Internet for some of their function.

This one is tricky. It’s in the cloud – it must be good. The cloud IS good at some things, it is not good for some things, and it’s impossible for other things. That’s the uncertainty. The only certain thing about the cloud is that it requires compromise.

At Harbor we have moved in the direction of the cloud in our recommendations for some items, when it makes sense for our clients business needs. Our remote support tool that allows us to connect to your PC remotely, is one such example. We’re recommending a cloud version of Trend for anti-virus. We have some smaller client using Exchange in the cloud – it’s a great solution for small businesses that couldn’t afford Exchange otherwise. We’ve got phone apps integrated into Sharepoint using a cloud connection. The cloud is everywhere and we’re tuned into.

We can do almost anything in the cloud these days. The problem is that it doesn’t always make sense – or cents. Using the cloud isn’t free, it’s a lease. Using the cloud isn’t without risk, you give up control. Using the cloud isn’t without downtime, you just can’t do anything at all about it except wait and hope for the best when it happens. Using the cloud isn’t secure – it’s not your building, not your server hardware, not your people maintaining it or configuring it, not your backup system, not your upgrade schedule, not your data security plan, etc.

Therefore, it’s best not to trust the cloud. But the good news is that we don’t have to trust it to use it. We only have to plan accordingly, make allowances for the lack of trust and the relinquishing of control over our own data and applications.

As always we need to be careful and make wise decisions. We can harness this cloud and make it work for us. We’re already doing it.

Part Two: Outlook Social Connector. Why you should care, even if you don’t use it.

2010-12-08T11:50:00.000-05:00

This post is a continuation of this one: http://smalltechnotes.blogspot.com/2010/11/things-you-need-to-know-about-outlook.html If you aren’t familiar with the Outlook Social Connector then you should read that post first.

Here are few people that I am not connected to. Let’s see what they look like.

The above people are randomly pulled from mailing lists I belong to on Yahoo and ISAServer.org. They didn’t even send email to me directly. Rather they posted it to a mailing list and that mailing list gets delivered to folder in my Outlook mailbox.

This guy above didn’t email me either. He was simply copied on an email that someone else sent to me. There’s his photo.

At this date in history about 1/2 of the email I receive has a photo attached to it. I know what these people look like even though I am not friends with them on Facebook. I know this because they choose to allow basic information in their profile to be shared. This includes their profile photo.

So what if you don’t participate in any social media? Well then this is what you look like to me.

Is not participating in social media the way to go? I can’t see your photo, is this a good thing? Today you’ll be in good company in my inbox because only about 1/2 of the email I get has photo. But riddle me this…in the near future when your clients look down the list of people in their contacts and they see your ghostly outline instead of your smiling face, how are they going to feel about you? I’ll argue that they won’t be drawn toward you. They’ll probably pass you over.

So what does this mean for your business? It means that the profile photos you post ANYWHERE will be seen by your business contacts. It means that what you do in social media IS part of your business right now and that same goes for anyone in your company that has an email address. There is very little separation between private, public and work anymore and very soon there will be none at all.

Does this pose a bit of a human resources problem for your company? Oh boy, the times are a changin’.

Happy Holidays–Santa is on her way!

2010-12-07T09:58:00.001-05:00

This is the time of year when we take an extra moment to appreciate all of you, for your business, for your friendship, for being the wonderful people you are.

Please enjoy the snacks that “santa” is about to bring you.

Headlines read malware attacks in 2010 greater than all previous years combined

2010-12-01T10:02:00.001-05:00

From http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/11/17/243967/Malware-growth-reaches-record-rate.htm

Malware growth has reached its highest levels, with an average of 60,000 new pieces of malware identified every day, according to the latest threat report from security firm McAfee.

Cyber criminals are becoming more savvy and attacks increasingly more severe, said the threat report for the third quarter of 2010.

The Zeus botnet is identified as one the most sophisticated pieces of malware to plague users, with US small businesses losing $70m to Ukrainian cybercriminals.

Most recently, cybercriminals unleashed the Zeus botnet aimed at mobile devices, designed to intercept SMS messages to validate transactions. As a result, the report said criminals can perform the full bank operation, stealing funds from unsuspecting victims.

And the rates are just continuing to climb…

http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792146/Monthly_Malware_Statistics_October_2010

First, a big congratulations for surviving and not getting more malware infections than all previous years combined. We did not spend more time fighting malware infections than in previous years. That means that we can all feel good that we’re going something right. Please keep it up.

As a refresher, here’s how you avoid letting the bad guys steal from you:

Have a good properly configured firewall that is smart enough to catch malformed packets
Have current anti-virus software
Keep your PC’s' and Server operating systems current
Keep all software fully patched
Keep your eyes open for websites that don’t look quite right
Don’t click on attachments in email
Don’t click on ads in webpages
Don’t believe everything you read in email or on the web

Things to avoid:

Facebook – Be careful who you “like”. If you don’t know them don’t accept them as friends. There are fake user accounts out there whose sole purpose is to steal your account.
Facebook – Who viewed your profile? This is malware. Once installed it will steal your account and start posting in your name. Beware of Facebook ads in general.
Fake Updates – found mostly on porn and sports websites where videos are displayed, a fake update for the video player of your choice will pop up. This is not a update for your video player, it is malware asking you to install it.
UPS, Amazon, and other sites – After visiting you may receive an email with information about your “purchase” or shipment. It’s a fake. They are after your account information or credit card information.
IRS – The IRS is going digital and the criminals are really coming out of the woodwork to try to redirect your dollars. They can only do this with your help. An email comes letting you know that there was a problem with your monthly deposit. Click the link and go to a VERY real looking website and resend it – to the criminals.

You may have noticed that it’s no longer your computer that’s the problem. It has become very difficult for a virus to install itself. These things get installed and cause harm because they have fooled you into thinking that they are legitimate. They ask you to install them because they can no longer do it themselves. Small business is the main target of cyber crime today. Why? Because they know that most small business don’t take security as seriously as larger businesses do and so small business and home computers are viewed as the easily picked low hanging fruit. Sure, there’s not a lot of dollars to be had from any individual or small business, but that doesn’t matter because these guys don’t attack one person at a time, like a pick pocket. They use the power of the Internet to pick a million pocket simultaneously.

"With great power comes great responsibility." – Spiderman

If only they used their power for good. These malware writers are smart, it’s too bad they are also greedy. Be careful out there and call us if you see anything that you are unsure about.

Things you need to know about the Outlook Social Connector

2010-11-24T11:41:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-18T12:55:00.000-05:00

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?

2010-11-15T12:38:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-09T12:45:00.001-05:00

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

2010-11-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

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.

We won another award

2010-10-28T16:17:00.001-04:00

Harbor Computer Services has been getting a lot of attention lately. I’m not aware that we’ve changed anything, we just seem to be getting noticed.

2009 Microsoft regional VAR Growth Award

2010 World-wide Small Business Specialist of the Year

Just now: At the SMBNation conference I was awarded SBSer of the Year. Meaning they chose me as the person that has given the most to the community of SBS IT people over the last year.

It’s great to win awards and be recognized. It’s also a little strange. We’re still just Harbor Computer Services.

Windows SmartPhone Nov 7th

2010-10-11T15:12:00.001-04:00

Microsoft has released a new version of the Windows Smart Phone. It’s been a long time since they last updated their phone software.

So will it be worth buying? After reviewing it today, my recommendation is yes, if you use it for business purposes.

The new Windows phone implements the same features that have made the Droid and iPhone so popular. They’ve made it easy to

take pictures and post them to Facebook.
listen to music
play games
things slide from side to side for that coolness factor

But they’ve done something that other don’t that will make it the choice of business.

integration with Office Web Apps
sync – pc, laptop, web and phone all together

The reality is that today we all use multiple devices. We’ve got desktop, laptops, notebooks, and a phone. Maybe you’ll even get a slate device. The problem is that they don’t talk to each other and it’s easy to lose track of what’s on which device and the apps are all different on everyone of them. By integrating the same apps that you have on your desktop, laptop and notebook and allowing you to sync them over the web, Microsoft has the problem solved.

This what will make the Windows Phone a winner again in the business marketplace.

As before Microsoft is allowing the OEM’s (Sprint, AT&T, others) to decide what the devices will look like and what features they will implement. After Nov 7 we’ll update you on which devices we think are better than others.

What’s new in Office 2010: PowerPoint

2010-09-17T11:52:00.000-04:00

Although there are more components of Office like InfoPath, Sharepoint Workspace and Sharepoint Designer, Access, Project and Visio this will be our last installment. I’m happy to share information with you about these applications for those who want them. Contact me and I’ll send them to you.

PowerPoint has transformed everything from business presentations to school science projects. PowerPoint 2010 builds on the HUGE number of new features seen in 2007.

Presentations to live and virtual audiences - PowerPoint has a remote slide show capability that lets you present a slide show over the Web or a network connection to virtual attendees or live attendees, or both. No expensive video conferencing account required!Some common broadcast scenarios are as follows:

· Ad hoc one-on-one broadcast.

· Invite multiple viewers to view a presentation remotely at any time.

· Present a slide show to both live and remote attendees at the same time in the context of a training session, meeting, or conference call.

Working with text and objects - PowerPoint provides improved editing tools with a new set of Photo Effects that enable you to transform your images.

· Video and audio editing

· Graphics, transitions, and animations

· Help and translation

Presentation security - In PowerPoint 2007, new security features were introduced to help ensure that a presentation was safely managed after it left the user’s hands. In PowerPoint 2010, the permissions can still be set, but now through the Backstage view. Security features include the following:

· Prevent unintended changes to a final version of a document by using the Mark as Final command.

· Provide assurance as to the authenticity, integrity, and origin of the presentation by adding a digital signature.

· Assign permissions that prevent other users from copying, printing, or editing the presentation by selecting the access level specific to their requirements.

· Manage document properties through the Backstage view.

PowerPoint Viewer - The Viewer lets you view presentations created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, PowerPoint 2002, PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint 2007, and PowerPoint 2010. The Viewer also supports opening password-protected PowerPoint presentations.

And now for a little training:

Make the switch to PowerPoint 2010 (about 45 minutes)

What’s new in Office 2010: OneNote

2010-09-10T11:26:00.000-04:00

You’ve never heard of OneNote? Unfortunately that is the case for too many of our clients and yet everyone who uses it can’t imagine what they did without it. It is the best kept secret of the Office suite. If you haven’t used it before then you might want to skip to the bottom of this post and click on the links there to learn more about how you use it.

This is one of many posts on Office 2010. If you missed the others please visit our blog to read them.

What’s new in OneNote?

Improved access to information - OneNote provides virtually uninterrupted access to notes by allowing you to view and use your notebook files anywhere — at work, home, or in transit.

· Sync to Windows Live You can access notebooks from any computer. You can also synchronize notebooks by using shared folders, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and USB drives.

· Microsoft OneNote Web App You can access and edit notebooks from a Web browser, even on computers on which the full version of OneNote is not installed.

· Microsoft OneNote Mobile 2010 By using a compact version of OneNote on a Windows Mobile-based smartphone, you can access and edit your notebooks stored on Windows Live and SharePoint.

Improved search, which can find information on either the current page, within selected sections or notebooks, or within notebooks. Search improvements allow for rapid search and navigation within the search results. For example, by typing the first few letters of a title, users can quickly jump to recently visited pages, or repeat a previous search.

Outlook integration improvements:

· Create Outlook tasks from OneNote.

· Improved organization and search features:

· Section and page tab improvements.

The ability to easily add links to content within other content — for example, pages, sections, or section groups — and to quickly navigate through these links. This enables you to create Wiki-like notebooks.

Quick Filing feature, which lets you choose where in your notebook you want to send information (such as mails from Outlook, pages from Internet Explorer, and so on).

Quick Styles for creating and applying headings.

Support for mathematical equations.

Formatting improvements for bulleted lists.

Mini Translator, which lets you use your mouse to point to a foreign word or phrase and see a translation into your native language in a small window (you can also use the Play button to hear the pronunciation of the word or phrase, and use a Copy button to paste the translation elsewhere in your notebook).

Linked note-taking to Web page URLs, Microsoft Word 2010, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.

Automatic text wrapping.

Sharing and collaboration features -OneNote supports simultaneous editing of notebooks by multiple users. For example, a group of users can work on a notebook at the same time, or a single user can work on the same notebook from different computers simultaneously, all without locking the file.

The changes are as follows:

· New content is automatically highlighted.

· Author information for any added or shared content is identified by a color-coded bar and the author’s initials.

· Version support lets users see when and by whom changes were made to a notebook. Changes relative to earlier versions of the notebook are automatically highlighted.

· Faster synchronization of pages so that changes are displayed to all authors in near real time.

· Display recently added content (by last day, week, month, and so on). You can also get an overview of what specific users changed on specific days.

· Merge feature allows merging two sections of a shared notebook.

Support for touch-enabled computers -OneNote provides support for computers that run touch-enabled operating systems such as Windows 7. The features include the following:

· Panning and auto-switching On compatible computers that run Windows 7, the user can scroll and pan around any page in OneNote 2010 by using a finger and, depending on the input device, OneNote automatically switches between pen, pan, and selection.

· Zooming On multitouch devices, such as a computer that runs a touch-compatible or multitouch-compatible operating system such as Windows 7, using a pinch gesture with the fingers allows a user to zoom in or out of a notebook page in OneNote to customize the page view.

· Improved navigation Several navigational enhancements have been added to OneNote 2010 for users who have computers that run touch-enabled operating systems.

But if you’ve never used OneNote before than that’s probably all gibberish, so here’s how you can learn more about OneNote:

Make the switch to OneNote 2010 (about 30 minutes)

Doing basic tasks in OneNote (document)

What’s new in Office 2010: Publisher

2010-09-03T11:24:00.000-04:00

If you are still using an older version of Publisher then you are really missing out. By now most of you have installed a copy of Office 2010 and if you were previously using Office XP or Office 2003 as many were then you are in for a real treat. Publisher 2007 introduced a lot of new things and 2010 builds on those. It is a really useful program to master for your flyers, spec sheets, invitations, and other business marketing materials. I’m going to do is just post what’s brand new and then point to some quick and easy training courses at the end.

If you missed our other post on Office 2010 you can read them on our blog.

Here’s what brand new for Publisher:

Integrated print and preview experience - Print and Print Preview are integrated so that it is easier to get a more accurate view of what publications will look like when they are printed. This includes the ability to make print adjustments while viewing the effect of the changes in a large preview of their publication. You can view multiple pages at the same time, view page boundaries, page numbers, and sheet rulers while in print preview, and even view a simulation of a two-sided document as if it were held up to a light — to see the front and back at the same time, as the publication will look when printed. This is really handy stuff.

Save file as .pdf or .xps - Users can save files in the .pdf or .xps file format. No PDF writer required.

Improved picture technology - You can more easily work with pictures in their publications with the following picture technology improvements:

· Cropping Rotate and resize pictures, crop them into non-rectangular shapes, and preview the images while keeping the picture in the desired size, shape, and location.

· Replacing pictures Replace pictures by drag-and-drop, swap two pictures in a single operation, and paste pictures copied outside from Publisher into a placeholder in Publisher.

· Using picture placeholders Maintain placeholder dimensions when a picture is inserted. For example, pictures either too small or too large for a placeholder are automatically resized.

· Add captions Add captions to their pictures, choosing from a gallery of caption designs and layouts, and make changes easily.

Publisher is one of those applications that is better seen that described. So here are a few short training courses that will help you get going. These are for Publisher 2007, but since that was when the major changes happened in the application they will be useful for 2010 as well.

Get started designed professional publications (about 45 minutes)

All about handling objects, moving forward and back (5-10 minutes)

Everything you ever wanted to know about pictures (5-10 minutes)

Those last two items are help documents, not courses but you will find them very helpful and clear.

Off-Site Backup made Affordable and 3 Months Free too.

2010-08-31T10:36:00.000-04:00

About a year ago we asked for volunteers to test an off-site backup solution called Symform. The test went very well, with some hiccups here and there that were expected from a beta product. Shortly after that, they named Amy to their advisory board, fixed those issues and the product released. (I don’t get paid for my advisory status with them.)

As a refresher, Symform takes your backed up data, breaks it up into pieces, encrypts it and sends those bits to random places in their cooperative storage cloud – 32 times. Because we don’t trust the cloud, incredible redundancy like this is important. Symform does this for a fixed monthly fee per server or per workstation regardless of the amount of data you store. It is amazingly brilliant technology that makes off-site backup affordable. No one else does this.

But there’s no perfect software or perfect solution, one of the problems that has cropped up is bandwidth. Depending upon your business, we might end up chewing up the bandwidth for backup not leaving enough for speedy day-to-day stuff. For most companies it’s not an issue because your daily Internet use is light, but some of you use a lot of Internet bandwidth for every day activities. An update was just released to solve this issue. We can now move the hosting of storage to our office and get it off your bandwidth bill.

To kick things off, we’re offing 3 months free backup service if you sign up before the end of September. Here’s the pricing:

$50 per month per server

If you have bandwidth limitations and want to use some of our bandwidth to host storage, then it’s an additional $10 per month.

What’s New of Office 2010: Outlook

2010-08-27T11:36:00.000-04:00

This is the third installment of our series on Office 2010. The previous ones were on Word and Excel and you can read them on our blog site. As with Excel and Word, there are many changes to Outlook, so I’ll only mention what’s brand new and then point to some quick and easy training courses at the end.

Outlook has arguably become the most important application for many businesses. Our communications, calendar and tasks are here making up the organization of our days. Microsoft has really put in a lot of effort to making an already amazing application even better and I’m very impressed with the changes.

Here’s what brand new for Outlook:

Calendar Preview in meeting requests - Outlook shows a preview of your calendar in meeting requests. The Calendar Preview feature shows where the meeting appears in your Calendar together with any conflicting and adjacent meetings. No need to open your calendar when you get a meeting request in your Inbox!

Conversation actions - Outlook can help you manage your Inbox more effectively, with the Ignore and Clean Up commands. The Ignore button on the ribbon moves all of a conversation and any future replies to that conversation directly to the Deleted Items folder. The Clean Up button moves older, redundant messages in the conversation to the Deleted Items folder but keeps the most recent message.

Quick Steps - Quick Steps are one-click buttons that can perform multiple actions at the same time. You can create your own quickstep to create a new email and address is to a group of people for example with the push of a single button.

Roaming AutoComplete list – This had to be the most requested feature of all. Recipient AutoComplete lists are now stored on the Exchange Server. A user’s recipient AutoComplete list is now available to any computer on which Outlook 2010 runs that is connected to the same Exchange account. Names can be easily removed from the list by using the new inline Delete function.

And now for a little training

Make the switch from an older version of Outlook to Outlook 2010 (about 45 minutes)

Tame your Inbox and manage that mail (about 30 minutes)

Get Familiar with the Calendar (about 45 minutes)

Stalker Apps are Everywhere, even in your Photos

2010-08-23T13:02:00.000-04:00

In the spring we participated in an excellent local conference in Royal Oak on Social Media. Great conference. The thing that surprised me though was the continual mention of FourSquare. FourSquare is a stalker app. You load it on your phone and every time you walk into someplace you hit the button and it announces on various social media where you are. I understand why retailers like this because they can hit you up with today’s special and learn more about their repeat customers. What I don’t understand is why people are willing to participate? Or maybe I do. I think it’s ego. I’m here! If you are the person that most frequents the location then you get to be Mayor. WooHoo, it’s not for me and I think it’s dangerous.

So now Facebook is in the game too. Having linked up with FourSquare they now offer something called Places. Here’s the twist, your friends can check you in to places, thereby helping a stalker find you, unless you turn this feature off. Do it now. Go to Facebook, My Account, Privacy Settings and flip Friends can check me into Places to Disabled. I’ll feel better about your personal safety.

The next latest thing is location services. Location Services is a very handy thing. On my iPhone it let’s the weather channel app show me the weather for where I am now. In Maps it shows me where I am now and helps me get to where I’m going. But did you know that when you take photo with the iPhone (or any gps enabled phone) that it embeds, latitude and longitude or address information into that photo? When you post that photo to the Internet that information goes with it. Someone created a website called I Can Stalk You, to prove the point that the information is out there. Fortunately you can turn this off too. It will be different on every phone but here’s how you do it on the iPhone. Go to Settings, General, Location Services then flip to Off next to Camera. While you are here flip to off any other application that you think doesn’t need to know where you are.

Be on the lookout for stalker apps. It’s the latest “cool” thing, but it can also the latest dangerous thing. Take care.

What’s New in Office 2010: Word

2010-08-20T11:08:00.000-04:00

This is the second installment of our series on Office 2010. If you missed the first one on Excel you can catch it here As with Excel, there are many changes to Word, so I’ll only mention what’s brand new and then point to some quick and easy training courses at the end.

Here’s what brand new for Word:

Fluent UI – The fluent user interface consists of several components but the important part of it to understand is that Word is going to change the options available to you in the ribbon based upon what you are doing at the time. So if you start making a list, the ribbon menu will change to expose Word’s list features. Most people find this very helpful as it helps you use features that you may not have realized were there.

The Ribbon – The ribbon is the name for the menu at the top of the screen. This was new in 2007. What is new in 2010 is that you can customize and create your own tabs in the ribbon. People use this to organize their favorite features into one easy to find place.

Backstage view – Backstage view replaces the file menu of old. It is used to manage files and the data about the files, such as creating and saving files, inspecting for hidden metadata or personal information, and setting file options.

File format - The Word 2010 file format enables new features such as co-authoring, new graphic and text effects, and new numbering formats. Word 2010 works with Office Word 2007 documents.

Protected View - Files from a potentially unsafe location (such as the Internet or an e-mail attachment) or files that contain active content (such as macros, data connections, or ActiveX controls) are validated and can open in Protected View. When you open files in Protected View mode, the editing functions are disabled. This will help protect you from opening an attachment only to find it was a virus. You can open and edit files from trusted sources by clicking Enable Editing.

Collaboration and sharing features - Word 2010 supports co-authoring functionality. Co-authoring functionality simplifies collaboration by enabling multiple users to work productively on the same document without intruding on one another’s work or locking one another out.

Graphic enhancements -Word 2010 provides improved editing tools with a new set of Picture Tools that enable you to transform your documents into artistically engaging documents. New editing tools are as follows:

· Picture Correction Options

· Artistic Effect Options

· Background Removal

· Picture Layout Options

Now for some quick training to demonstrate a couple of these new features.

Make the Switch to Word 2010 from earlier versions ( about 30 minutes)

Understanding new Word security messages (about 10 minutes)

Create visually compelling documents using image editing, screen clippings and new SmartArt (about 30 minutes)

We hope that these references will help you make a smooth transition to Office 2010.

What’s New in Office 2010: Excel

2010-08-13T16:11:00.001-04:00

By now most of you have installed a copy of Office 2010 and if you were previously using Office XP or Office 2003 as many were then you are in for a real treat. There are so many changes from those versions that it’s not possible to list them. So what I’m going to do is just post what’s brand new and then point to some quick and easy training courses at the end.

Here’s what brand new for Excel:

Backstage view -The new Backstage view replaces the traditional File menu. All file management tasks are available in Backstage. Click the File tab to access the Backstage view. Although it was previously possible to save and publish worksheet data to a SharePoint site, in Excel 2010, the options for doing this are now conveniently located together on the Share tab in Microsoft Office Backstage.

Sparklines - are a new kind of visualization in Excel 2010. They are small cell-sized graphics used to show trends in series of values by using line, column, or win/loss charts. Click here to see what they look like.

Slicers - make filtering and interpretation of data easier. They improve PivotTables and CUBE functions in a workbook. Slices filtered data interactively. They float above the grid and behave like report filters so you can hook them to PivotTables, PivotCharts, or CUBE functions to create interactive reports or dashboards. Click here to see what they look like.

Excel 2010 64-bit advantages - Applications built with the 64-bit version simply can use more physical memory than ever, especially important for those who need to work with really large data sets. In Excel 2010 investments were made in our 64-bit architecture to optimize our memory consumption while keeping the cell table (and related operations) as fast as possible.

Compatibility mode tool - New features in Excel 2010 are disabled when you are opening previous versions of Excel in Excel 2010. For example, new 2010 Sparklines and Slicers features are disabled with opening earlier version of Excel. Workbooks created in the Excel 97-2003 file format (.xls) automatically open in Compatibility Mode. Workbooks created in Excel 2010, but destined for others who use earlier versions of Excel, should turn on Compatibility Mode to prevent accidental use of functions and features that are incompatible with the earlier versions of Excel. This is very important for users who plan to share workbooks with other users who have not yet migrated to Office Excel 2007 or a later version.

File loading performance - File loading (opening and saving) lends itself well to parallel processing and the multi-core functionality of Excel 2010. However, the structure and content of workbooks significantly affects the performance gains. For example, if there is only one very large sheet in a workbook, a proportionally large amount of file loading time will be spent simply loading the one sheet. But if you have two very large sheets, Excel can fetch the second sheet off disk while the first sheet is still being loaded into memory.

PivotTable enhancements - PivotTables are easier and faster to use in Excel 2010. The description of those changes are too lengthy to recount here.

Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel add-in - If you need to model and analyze very large amounts of data, you can download the PowerPivot for Excel add-in and work with that data inside your Excel workbooks. By using this add-in, you can quickly combine data from multiple sources, including corporate databases, worksheets, reports, and data feeds.

Calculation Improvements – new version of solver, 50 new statistical functions

Filtering - For large worksheets filtering enables the quick location and display of specific data in tables and PivotTable views. Use new Search Filter capability to spend less time sifting through large data sets.

Excel Services enhancements - Many organizations use Excel Services to share workbooks and data with other people.. If you use Excel Services on a SharePoint site, you can take advantage of the following improvements:

· Share workbooks from Backstage Before Excel 2010, it was previously possible to save and publish worksheet data to a SharePoint site. In Excel 2010, the options for doing this are now conveniently located together on the Share tab in the Microsoft Office Backstage view.

· More support for Excel features Before Excel 2010, if a workbook contained unsupported features, it could not be opened in the browser. In Excel 2010, most workbooks with unsupported features will open. In addition, more Excel features are supported in Excel Services, including new Excel 2010 features such as Sparklines and Slicers.

· Edit and collaborate on workbooks If you publish a workbook to a SharePoint site where Excel Services is installed, you can edit your workbook in a supported Web browser, in addition to viewing it. In addition, you and your colleagues can work on the same workbook at the same time. This means that you no longer have to e-mail a workbook around, or wait for someone to check it back in on the server before you can edit it. For example, imagine that you and your manager are currently viewing the same worksheet in different offices. If you make a change to the data, your manager will see that change on her screen.

Conditional formatting - Conditional formatting allows references to be made to different sheets on the workbook (cross-sheet conditional formatting). Use conditional formatting to discover and show important trends and highlight data exceptions. More styles, data bar options, and new icon sets made available. References to other worksheets allow in conditional formatting rules. Conditional formatting stores dependencies of the formulas used so reevaluation of the entire conditional format is not necessary as often. Pivot tables or scrolling refresh more quickly so they can display faster.

Icon sets - Icon Sets are a new kind of conditional formatting. An icon is drawn in each cell representing the value of the cell relative to the other cells in the selected range. Icons sets are a great way to create groups of similar data as a part of your data analysis.

Data bars -Data bars now drawn proportionally according to their values. Negative values more clearly displayed and zero values are suppressed.

Pattern fills - Pattern fills removed in 2007 have been reintroduced in Excel 2010. Charts formatted with pattern fills in previous versions of Excel will retain and display the pattern fills when they are opened in Office Excel 2007.

Charting - In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, you could have up to 32,000 data points in a data series for 2-D charts. In Excel 2010, the number of data points in a data series is limited only by available memory. This enables users — especially those in the scientific community — to more effectively visualize and analyze large sets of data

High Performance Computing Clusters – which in english means if you’re doing a huge amount of computing you can assign a group of computers to process the data and get it done faster.

Macro recording support for chart elements – even more places to automate Excel repetitive activities

So now that you’re overwhelmed with just the list of what’s new, never mind what’s changed, how about a little training? Microsoft has free bite-sized training bits available online. Here are two that you should make the time for right away.

Here’s a 30 minute short course on getting up to speed on the new version of Excel. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/make-the-switch-to-excel-2010-RZ101809963.aspx

A 15 minute course on new security features in Office 2010. You’re going to need to know how to use these for all parts of Office. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/office-2010-security-protecting-your-files-RZ101665538.aspx

A phony crisis in London

2010-07-27T13:52:00.000-04:00

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Randi Lou Franklin. She is the owner of Inter-Lingua a firm that provides translation and interpretation services for many languages and specializes in medical, technical and engineering. I lost track of how many languages she speaks, oh and she’s a lawyer too. Smart woman. She’s got a bunch of employees with experience in various fields.

She also writes a blog on dBusiness.com and related a story for me about the day she was hacked. She blogged it too. It’s called A Phony Crisis in London and recounts the day malware sent a message to every email address it discovered in her computer telling everyone she knew that she was in London, her wallet and ID stolen and needed them to wire her some money to the hotel so she could get home. Guess what? In her line of business this is a plausible story! The bad guys had set up an account to collect money from her concerned friends and business associates. You can read the whole blog here: http://www.dbusiness.com/Blogs/Annual-2010/A-Phony-Crisis-in-ldquoLondon-rdquo/

This is a prime example of how hacking works these days. They aren’t after the vast wealth and International secrets contained in your business. They are after your money. This is why we’re such pests when it comes to anti-virus software, good firewalls, Internet use monitoring and protecting inbound access to your network. These guys are smart, very smart.

So what could Randi Lou have done? First off she uses aol.com for e-mail (has for years and doesn’t want to change). But the fact that this is public email is a problem. If she used a business email client, then we could restrict outbound e-mail. We could scan it for suspicious content, malware and virus. We could make sure it is only delivered from her office to our filtering service and no where else, where it would have been caught. Of course nothing is 100% but we can get close and that will keep your business from a similar embarrassment.

Thank you Randi Lou for being so honest and providing your experiences in writing for everyone to learn from. A person that can learn from their mistake is the most intelligent kind.

The future is revealed

2010-07-19T12:08:00.001-04:00

I spent last week representing Harbor Computer Services at the world-wide partner conference where we were honored with the Small Business Specialist of the Year Award. We beat out 3,000 eligible companies world wide. I want to thank all of our customers for making our job challenging and for being such amazing business owners. While my peers had up to 50% of their clients go belly up in the recession, because of your amazing business skills we didn’t lose a single one. In fact a loss of clients was so common that the very next question out of everyone's mouth after the obligatory handshake was “what percentage of clients did you lose last year?” Seriously, I was shocked. I believe that if we are all doing our jobs working toward the common goal of making your business the best it can be that we will not only survive but thrive. In 2008 we started our program of offering you free meetings so that we can play our role better in helping you make good decisions and make sure that we are all reaching for the same goal. Since that time I’ve spent a good deal of my days in meetings. I’ve decided that we’re going to keep doing that. Free meetings are now a permanent part of our contracts.

At the WPC Microsoft trots out its vision of the future and tries to convince partners to go along with it. Some are resistant to the major shift in technology that is upon us and to that Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (Bill Gates replacement) literally said “blah, blah, blah” during his keynote. The interpretation of blah, blah, blah, is get over it, quit complaining, the tech world is changing. He angered a bunch of people. Honestly because of our close relationship with the small business server development team and others within Microsoft nothing was said that surprised me. We’re very fortunate to know what the future holds before it gets here.

The tech world is indeed changing. Pretty much all software is now being designed to run “in the cloud”. Which is to say on someone else's server, sitting who knows where and managed by who knows whom. There are two things I am certain of when it comes to cloud based software:

Software hosting companies have not cornered the market on great IT people.
Not all clouds are the same.

Because of this we know that mistakes will be made by these software hosting companies, servers will go down, personal information will be hacked and data will be lost. The trick is going to be chose your cloud carefully and remain in control of your data. We are offering some cloud based software now and we will offer more in the future. As always our concern will be for your business, your data, and your security. The cloud is an opportunity, not an answer and the secret to opportunity is to grab it and make it work for you. What we all know is we can’t fight change. To those that do, we’re with Mr Ballmer, blah, blah, blah. We will make change work for you.

Exchange Defender has New Features

2010-07-13T17:02:00.000-04:00

If you are using our Exchange Defender service you should be aware of the standard feature set. However new features have been added that you may not have heard about yet and you may have forgotten about some of very useful things it can do now.

Old Features Reminder

Live Archive: Live Archive is your ability to access your email live at anytime from anywhere when your server is down, your office has no power or no Internet. Just go home, or over to Panera and login into the service.
Flexible Spam Reports: Set the time of day you want to receive your spam quarantine report, or have it delivered multiple times each day.
Spam quarantine Outlook integration: Install a toolbar in Outlook, click it to view your spam quarantine anytime on demand.
Pop-up spam alert: Get an instant alert pop-up in your system tray that a message has been quarantined, click it to view. Note, use cautiously this can be very annoying.
Unlimited email aliases at no cost: If you receive email to dave, david, accounting and taxes, you still only pay for one anti-spam account.
Anti-Virus and Anti-Phishing: Incoming and outgoing email are scanned for both virus and phishing attempts before delivery.
Attachment Scanning: Attachments are scanned before delivery and identified for alien content.
Disclaimer: A disclaimer can be stamped to the bottom of every outgoing message. No need to configure Outlook or depend on signatures.

Lots of New Features

Web Filtering: Central management of web filters by category. Agent based so even roaming laptops remain protected and their users productive.
File Transfer: Need to send a file to someone that is too big for their email system? Consider it done. Simple, no FTP server required. Data transfer is encrypted too. Have a standard document that you often need to send? Save it to your file library for easy access.
Policy Based Email Encryption: Policies can be set so that email sent to particular addresses will always be sent as encrypted email. Required for certain compliance.
On-Demand Email Encryption: You can send an encrypted email to anyone right now. Just specify it in the subject line and the mail will be securely delivered to them. Required for certain compliance.
Spam Quarantine Report Improvements: Hover over an email in the spam report and see a snap shot of what is in that email without requesting delivery. Is it what you think it is? Do you need it delivered? Find out before releasing it.

Our staff can show you how to use these features. They are all very simple. The policy based features we will configure for you after determining your needs. I will be doing a webinar soon to demonstrate each feature.

How to Detect a Phishing Email

2010-07-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

Our anti-spam filters do a pretty good job of keeping junk out of your email box. But filtering is a cat and mouse game. The scammers and spammers want to get their message to you and work night and day to figure out how to get around filters. The good guys want to keep them out and work night and day to block the latest clever way to thwart their filters. This means that every once and while something is going to get through. This week a few phishing messages got through.

These guys works really hard to make sure that their scam mail looks as close as possible to the real thing. So there will be elements that are correct. I have highlighted those in yellow. There are areas that are wrong too, I have circled those in red.

What’s Wrong?

A Friend has sent you a Hallmark E-Card: This should read, Amy Babinchak has sent you a Hallmark E-Card. It should not be generic. It should list the full name of the person or organization sending you the card.

The second item is more insidious and it is where the poison pill is located. Look at what happens when I move my cursor over the URL.

URL’s highlighted in blue are not really web links even though they look like them. They are just blue underlined text to indicate that you can click here and they themselves are linked to an underlying URL. The underlying URL is exposed in Outlook by moving your mouse cursor over it (just don’t click) and a little message box will appear. The message box will show you what will really happen if you click. In this case, if I click a web server in Russia (.ru) will download and run a program on my computer (.exe). This would infect my computer with an application that will scan my computer for credit card numbers and social security numbers. It might even uninstall itself after it is done. They are getting smarter all the time.

As always be careful out there and keep a sharp eye out for phishing scams. If you are using our partner Exchange Defender and you get a phishing email send it to spam@ownwebnow.com so they can analyze how it got through. You won’t get a response but you will help it from getting through again.

Android now fully supports Exchange

2010-06-29T10:55:00.001-04:00

Many of you have asked about Android phones and until yesterday we have not been able to recommend them for business use because of a lack of security protections for your data. However, this has all changed, as yesterday an update was released that includes support for Exchange security policies and remote wipe capability. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

On 28 June 2010 an OTA (over the air) update to Android 2.2 build number FRF85B commenced to T-mobile customers with a Google Nexus One phone. Changes included:^[48]

General Android OS speed, memory, and performance optimizations^[49]
Additional application speed improvements courtesy of JIT implementation^[50]
Integration of Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine into the Browser application
Increased Microsoft Exchange support (security policies, auto-discovery, GAL look-up, calendar synchronization, remote wipe)
Improved application launcher with shortcuts to Phone and Browser applications
USB tethering and WiFi hotspot functionality
Added an option to disable data access over mobile network
Updated Market application with batch and automatic update features^[49]
Quick switching between multiple keyboard languages and their dictionaries
Voice dialing and contact sharing over Bluetooth
Support for numeric and alphanumeric passwords
Support for file upload fields in the Browser application^[51]
Support for installing applications to the expandable memory^[52]
Adobe Flash 10.1 support^[53]

Awarded: Small Business Specialist of the Year!

2010-06-23T09:03:00.000-04:00

I’m elated to announce that we’ve been chosen by Microsoft as their Small Business Specialist of the Year! This is a world-wide award and only 1 company is awarded. Of the 3,000 partners that submitted a portrait of their company, customers and solutions, they chose Harbor Computer Services.

While I’m beyond excited, I’m also stunned. Our submission titled, Modern Architecture for a Cloud Influenced World, highlighted our efforts to bring the best of Internet technologies and software subscription programs to our clients while co-mingling these new technologies with on-premise solutions for a rock-solid best of both worlds approach to IT. I believe that this is the path that will help our clients keep the competitive advantage by maximizing return on IT investment.

Andrea Russell, global channel development manager, wrote to me afterwards, “As the Lead Judge, I can attest there were many outstanding submissions in your category but your entry, above all others, demonstrated a unique solution that not only helped the customer meet business goals, but set them on the path to computing in the future…”.

I’ve been getting email from Microsoft’s highest global executives congratulating us and just not in a form letter way but in a way that makes me think they actually read what I had to say about our clients. This is what has always impressed me about Microsoft as a company; they recognize that you don’t have to be big to make an impact. Since I have no desire to be big, working with software companies that respect what we do and are trying to achieve for our clients is very important to me. Without that kind of support for us, we could never support you as well as we do.

We will continue to work with suppliers that get small business and understand that you don’t have to be big to be doing significant things in your industry. We are just like you, small but mighty, and we extend this award to you. Without our valued clients, each doing interesting things in their chosen industry, we couldn’t be who we are. So I thank you for continuing to give us the opportunity to help make small businesses they best they can be.

In July I will be attending the Microsoft World-Wide Partner conference in Washington DC to accept the award.

Office 2010 Official Launch

2010-05-25T09:43:00.001-04:00

Today I am staffing the community booth for Microsoft’s Office 2010 Launch down at the RenCen. My fellow IT Pros from across the State are stopping by to ask questions. Some are old friends, some I’m just meeting. It’s fun.

But the real question of the day, is why should my clients care about Office 2010? Since most of you are still using Office 2003 I think that there are a huge number of improvements that you will value. I’m going to list a few of the more innovative features and skip over the fact that regular tasks like mail merge, save, print, protect have been made a lot easier. In a new version that goes almost without saying.

Free Web Apps. Microsoft has created free web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. That’s not the innovative part. They have further allowed you to connect those web apps to your Sharepoint site on your own server so you can access your files from any browser. Connecting the web, free apps and your local data together allowing you to work anywhere. It’s a repeating theme in this version of office.
Built-in PDF. You can save directly as a PDF.
Social Media Connector. In Outlook, all of my emails and contacts now have your picture in them if you are my friend on Facebook, LinkedIN or Live Messenger. Further I can click on those photos and community with you directly in those social media applications from Outlook.
The Ribbon and Backstage. The ribbon isn’t new in this version but it is refined. The ribbon exposes features like never before. It make advanced features easy for the ordinary office user.

I’m not going to go on and on. The new feature set is so large. Just when you think Office can’t possibly change for the better, it does. The office team really out did themselves.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship needs in Michigan

2010-05-03T11:03:00.001-04:00

The Detroit Regional Chamber is partnering with Lawrence Technological University to poll on the resources needed to get businesses throughout the region interested and involved with innovation and entrepreneurship across Michigan.

We are encouraging you to participate and take the Lawrence Tech Innovation & Entrepreneurship Needs Assessment Survey sponsored by a U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration grant.

The aim of this project is to identify the availability of, and gaps in, resources needed by individuals (including displaced workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers, small business owners, venture capitalists, corporate R&D, and business support organizations) that are critical to spur innovations, entrepreneurship and new business creation in Michigan and the Great Lakes Region.
Once you have completed the survey, please pass it along to friends and colleagues.

Surveys will be collected through May 14, 2010.

Please note: Your participation in this survey is completely voluntary. There are no right or wrong answers and you may stop at any time. All answer will remain completely anonymous, and you do not have to answer any question. The survey is comprised of 7 sections and can be completed in approximately 10-15 minutes. When you have completed the survey, you will be asked if you are willing to be contacted for a follow-up interview.

Thanks for helping Michigan.

Alert: Intuit phishing scam email

2010-04-20T08:17:00.001-04:00

A scam email has been sent and we received an alert from Intuit. It is fairly convincing and they are concerned that many of their customers may have followed the instruction in the email and infected themselves. We would like two things: Please let us know if you received the email. We will pass the information along to Intuit to help them gauge the spread. Please also let us know if you followed the instruction so we can disinfect your computer.

Here’s a copy of the email:

From: Intuit Company [mailto:update@intuit.com]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 11:55 AM
Subject: Intuit Update

Dear customer,

NOTE: Read this letter up to the end. You will mislay access to your account on Intuit website without actions described below,
Because of the increasing number of attemptsto hack the accounts of clients we are doing everything to perfect the technology of our security system. Thats why you need to do these actions to perfect the security of your Laptop.
Please do all the actions of this instruction:
1. Change your password on your private cabinet at least once a month.
2. Install and update your antivirus regularly.
Do not pass login and password from our service to others.
3. Do not install expansion to your browser from the unknown vendors.
4. Download and install Intuit Secure Software, which guards your browser from viruses done to steal information (usernames, passwords, etc.). Also it will provide additional security when working with a private cabinet and your financial information. NOTE: Beginning with 24 of April 2010 you wont have an admittance to the services of our company without an installed Intuit Secure Software.
System requirements :
Mozilla FireFox 2.0 and above
Windows XP, Vista, 2000, 2003, Seven
Internet Explorer 6.x, 7.x, 8.x
ATTENTION: You will not be able to use our service without update from 24 of April 2010
Download :
· Intuit Secure Software for Quickbooks Users
· Intuit Secure Software for Intuit Merchant holders
· Intuit Secure Software for PayCycle customers
· Intuit Secure Software for Quicken users

If you are not Microsoft Windows user you can use our services as usual

Marketing for Manufacturers

2010-04-13T08:49:00.001-04:00

I came across this blog. The theme is digital and traditional marketing for manufacturers. Norman Wright is the author of this blog and I thought there were some very good tips. It would be worth subscribing to, even if you aren’t in manufacturing.

http://wright-to-know.com/2010/04/12/how-manufacturers-can-build-a-brand-centric-culture/

Here are 12 action items that you should implement to start creating your own Brand Centric Culture at your manufacturing company:

Know what you stand for

Know what makes you unique

Be meticulous over the “Experience”

Everyone in the company needs to “live the Brand”

Be strategically intentional on how your brand is viewed by the customer

All decisions should be designed to strengthen your brand not weaken it

Have a “Brand Champion” focused on your Brand. Someone that is passionate about it

Realize that every member of your team is a spokesperson for your brand

Build a leadership team that understands the power of words, imagery & detail

Understand that all “Stake Holders” impact the strength of the Brand and the conveyance of the message of the Brand.

Realize that your Brand is a reflection of the culture and the culture needs to be reflected in the day to day actions of your company

Maintain consistent real-time feedback from your target audience via Social Media implementation in to your strategy

Privacy and Using Business Computers for Personal Purposes

2010-04-05T13:55:00.001-04:00

I read an interesting article this morning on the results of an important legal case between an employee and Loving Care Agency, Inc. It has implications for every one of our clients. I know that we’ve said it before, probably not loud or often enough, but everyone needs a computer network use policy. If you don’t have one yet, let’s get that done.

“The machine may be the employer's, but, in the post-LovingCare world, the data may be the employee's - at least where the cloud and the attorney-client privilege are involved. You can read my detailed case analysis below.”

http://www.infolawgroup.com/2010/04/articles/workplace-privacy/privacy-privilege-and-the-cloud-oh-my-taking-lovingcare-to-heart/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfoLawGroup+%28Info+Law+Group%29

In this case, an employee had a conversation about her employer with her attorney using Yahoo mail from her work computer. The New Jersey Supreme court ruled that the conversations were private and subject to attorney-client privilege.

Two things happened here. First the existing computer use policy left wiggle room for personal use of the computers. Second, the court ruled that client-attorney privilege can’t be subject to any corporate policy that informs the employee that their activity would be monitored.

Now this took place in New Jersey and we’re in Michigan, so there’s time. But this seems to be a trend and the only way for businesses to protect themselves will be to have computer network policies that are strict and do not allow “wiggle room” for personal use. Doing so could protect you in the event you have the business need to monitor an employees activity; to do so without prior consent might be unlawful.

There are some templates available for policies like this. Of course you should have your attorney look it over before implementing one.

Healthcare Bill & Very Small Businesses

2010-03-23T17:07:00.001-04:00

I received a summary of the health care bill that just passed from our senator. There wasn’t much for business in it, just this one item. Thought I would pass it along. It was in the effective immediately category.

Small businesses will get a tax cut to help them pay for health insurance for their employees. Companies will get a credit up to 35 percent of the money they spend on premiums. Those credits will increase over time, eventually reaching 50 percent when the Insurance Exchanges go into effect. The full credit is available to small firms with 10 or fewer employees, and firms with up to 25 employees will qualify for a partial credit.

Interesting Tax Credit for 2010

2010-03-11T14:57:00.001-05:00

This article from US News and World Report, just crossed by my twitter account today. Mostly the article is about your tax credit options from the 2009 small business stimulus bill (small business defined as 15 million or less) but there’s a mention of 2010 as well. In particular this:

Last week, the Senate passed a bill with a payroll tax holiday for business owners and their employees and an extension of a tax deduction on capital expenditures. The payroll tax holiday—dubbed the Hire Now Tax Cut—allows an employer to forgo payroll tax on any unemployed person hired by the firm this year.

I have noticed many of our clients starting to rehire, so don’t forget about this one. An opportunity to legally avoid payroll tax is one not to be missed.

Here’s the link to the whole article: http://www.usnews.com/money/business-economy/articles/2010/03/04/small-business-tax-breaks-in-2010.html

Here’s a decent link on the 2009 tax credits:

http://www.mspotter.com/main5.html

Remember, I’m just an IT person. See your CPA about this.

Cloud Services? Virtualization?

2010-03-08T16:35:00.001-05:00

You might be starting to hear a lot about Cloud or Internet based applications and maybe even virtualization. These are the current BUZZ words in the world of IT. Less you think that Harbor isn’t on top of the latest technology I thought I would point out some of the things that we’re doing in these areas:

hosted anti-spam
hosted Exchange
hosted email encryption
hosted Sharepoint
hosted Anti-Virus
hosted online conferencing and meetings
server virtualization
desktop virtualization
off-site backup storage for servers and PC’s
data center data storage
data center server co-location

and more…

The move in the industry is away from having your own servers on-site and toward paying monthly for renting someone else's technology.

We’re ready to implement these things when it is the right technology for your business but not before. It’s good to be on the front end of the technology curve but it’s bad to be on the bleeding edge. :) We want to see you stay nicely balanced.

New Intel Tablet

2010-03-02T16:19:00.001-05:00

It’s not often that I hype a product but then I’ve never really been in love with a computer before. You probably read that our love affair with Dell has ended and Equus as an Intel builder is our new friend.

One of the things that first brought them to my attention was the Intel Tablet Netbook. It’s small; it’s a tablet; it’s water resistant; it’s shock proof; it has an anti-microbial keyboard'; it’s got 7 hours of battery life and it has a handle. It runs Windows 7 and has a TPM chip which will allow us to encrypt the entire hard drive so no one will be able to read your files if it is stolen. There’s a camera that flips around to let you record what you are seeing. Did I mention it’s a tablet? You can take written notes on it. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. I bought one and I love it.

If this sounds like you, we can get you one. It comes in at just under $700 with 2GB of RAM and the 3 year warranty.

Representing you at MVP Summit Next Week

2010-02-12T11:12:00.001-05:00

I’m off to the Microsoft MVP Summit next week. This is the annual event where Microsoft’s developers get MVP’s from around the world into a small room by specialty where we thrash their current products and argue for feature adds that we think would benefit you. Much of what we’ll see next week is “already baked”, that is it has already been developed and we’ll just be asked to help put the icing on the cake and suggest final tweaks. Make no mistake though, this is hell week for Microsoft developers. It’s when they have to face us and explain themselves and their vision for the future.

These guys aren’t professional speakers. They are serious nerds, nervously showing demo’s of their new idea. To get up in front of this group of 30 or so people you need some thick skin because we don’t hold back.

I’ve already seen what’s coming, so I’m prepared. In October I was one of the fortunate 15 that got in earlier for a week and saw some interesting things in the new product line. The changes coming are dramatic and will take us all down a new path. Imagine if you will, instead of just SBS being available to you, a choice of 6 different server configurations designed for different types of small and medium businesses of up to 500 people. Off-site hosted solutions are also coming on strong and I’ll venture to say that 5 years from now your computer network won’t bare much resemblance to what it is today.

On the weekend after, I’m headed to Vancouver to see Olympic curling. I’m very excited about both components of this trip.

Life without Dell

2010-02-09T11:56:00.001-05:00

“Dell Inc. will spend $3.9 billion for the technology services company Perot Systems Corp. in an attempt to expand beyond the PC business”

“Dell's purchase of MessageOne, coming on the heels of its acquisition of EqualLogic in November, may signal that the manufacturer is looking to build its own storage brand…”

“Dell Computer has acquired privately-held Plural Inc., a Web application development and services company…”

“Dell has completed the acquisition of Everdream, a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for remote-service management, providing Dell with an expanded presence in the rapidly growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-enabled managed services market….”

I could go on and on posting news snippets from the last two years that demonstrate Dell’s progress out of its core business of providing great PC’s and Servers to businesses. Dell has purchased 10 companies all of which have nothing to do with making a good computer for you.

Dell has also reduced the sales and support for partners like Harbor Computer Services. Whereas, we used to have a team at Dell that was dedicated to helping us get you the best configuration for the specific needs of your business, we no longer have that team. Support for business sales is dismal and is moving in the direction of Dell’s customers support – off shore and disinterested.

Recently Dell moved it’s assembly plant from Texas to Mexico. With this move, Dell is no longer able to provide shipping time estimates for custom products. Our customers have experienced month long wait times and this unfortunately isn’t something that Dell intends to fix. It in in fact part of their plan to move away from providing custom computers for business needs.

Given the problems we have been experiencing, coupled with the news that Dell is moving its focus away from building great PC’s and Servers, we have decided to begin the move away from using Dell products. After significant research and agonizing over loosing a long term supplier, we have made our selection. We have been a HUGE Dell fan in the past, so this decision was not taken lightly or quickly – it has in fact been somewhat painful.

Our new preferred partner is Equus. Equus is an American business with 100% of its assembly, support and service in the USA. They build computers from Intel components. They are Intel’s 7th largest customer. They have been in business for 21 years. They are employee owned. They have an office in Novi and are headquartered in Minneapolis. We are confident that we have found the right hardware supplier.

Building computers is what Equus does. Support partners like Harbor Computer Services is all that their support department does. They are good at what they do and have been well respected in the industry for many years.

We hope that you will move along with us in the transition from Dell to Equus. We will still be able to obtain Dell equipment for you, but we no longer feel confident in recommending them as the preferred solution. Ted, Diana and Amy can answer any questions and address concerns that you may have. Change is difficult and uneasy but sometimes necessary. This is one of those cases.

Other States putting regulations on you

2010-02-01T10:57:00.001-05:00

There a trend in State’s requiring business to protect personal information of their residents. This new laws apply to all businesses even those not located in the State. Tried in the California courts, it has stood the test and I expect this trend to rapidly spread to every State in the nation.

Massachusetts follows California, Utah, Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania in putting regulation on businesses and individuals outside of their State that hold information about their residents. This means that if you have any customers that live in these States (and expect these laws to spread quickly) you are required to protect their information in specific ways.

As an example, here’s what the Massachusetts's law says:

http://www.mass.gov/Eoca/docs/idtheft/201CMR1700reg.pdf

In a nutshell, if you have any information about one of their residents you are required to protect it and document in a security plan how you are going about it protecting this information.

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be a hugely elaborate or expensive effort. But you will need to have one, if not today, then eventually because it won’t be long before every State enacts similar laws.

So what is consider personal information?

Note that earlier in the document that “person”and “resident” encompass business entities are well as individuals people.

So if you have a name and another piece of information you are subject to this law. Many businesses will have a name and a tax ID number that’s enough to find yourself subject to these laws.

If you think you are or might be subject to these new regulations, we can help you develop your plan and reduce your liability.

--Harbor Computer Services 248-850-8616

Reminder: How we’ve helped our clients resolve human resources problems.

2010-01-22T10:41:00.001-05:00

For years there was little that IT could do to help businesses resolve human resources issues, but that has recently changed. We have been able to help our clients with employee productivity drops due to Internet distractions, inappropriate use of Internet (you know what that means), and employees sending corporate data home or worse to the competition. Besides solving those problems, we have also tracked sensitive files for regulatory compliance and most importantly provided a self-monitoring employee productivity tool. We’ve been able to do all of this with products from Spectorsoft.

I’ve been very happy with the results that this package has been able to deliver and with its ease of use. What seems a daunting task, is actually quite simple and I’m happy that Spectorsoft has agreed to help us tell you about it.

I know that many of you have the same human resources problems. We can do something about it. Please join us for this webinar on Tuesday afternoon to learn about this great tool.

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/583229370

Correction: Invitation to webinar

2010-01-08T16:53:00.001-05:00

I have just been alerted that the URL to register for the webinar was not working. I have made the correction and now invite you all to register for the event using a link that works. :)

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/583229370

In the last 18 months, several of our clients have experienced problems that here-to-fore might have been considered human resources issues: employee productivity drops due to Internet distractions, inappropriate use of Internet (you know what that means), employees sending corporate data home or worse to the competition. Besides solving those problems, we have also tracked sensitive files for regulatory compliance and most importantly provided a self-monitoring employee productivity tool. We’ve been able to do all of these with products from Spectorsoft…The original post with corrected link is here.

Invitation: Tracking Employee Activity, Stopping Data Loss, Controlling Internet Use, Improving Productivity and Staying in Compliance

2010-01-08T12:37:00.002-05:00

In the last 18 months, several of our clients have experienced problems that here-to-fore might have been considered human resources issues: employee productivity drops due to Internet distractions, inappropriate use of Internet (you know what that means), employees sending corporate data home or worse to the competition. Besides solving those problems, we have also tracked sensitive files for regulatory compliance and most importantly provided a self-monitoring employee productivity tool. We’ve been able to do all of these with products from Spectorsoft.
In the process, we’ve developed a nice relationship with the good people at Spectorsoft. With all software it’s not what it says it does, it’s what we do with it and how it’s implemented. They are a US company based out of Florida and they’ve agreed to do a webinar with us to show you what they can do. I’m particularly excited about how this product can be used to enhance employee productivity through self-monitoring – not restrictions that require constant oversight. I’m also excited about the tools they bring that will help your people recover lost or missing files, while making sure that those of you subject to regulatory compliance (HIPPA, SOX, FCC, Homeland Security) stay compliant and can prove it to the powers that be. We’ll provide examples on how we’ve used this to help other clients.
All of this and the brilliant people at Spectorsoft have managed to make it efficient and cost effective.
Join us for an hour on Tuesday January 26th 3:00-4:00pm. Please register so we know how many people to expect. This is a webinar so you don’t have to leave the office to attend. We will come right to your computer. There will be ample opportunity to ask questions too.
Here’s where you register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/583229370

New Year – A Whole new World

2010-01-08T11:37:00.001-05:00

This new year is screaming out for change. It may be a cliché but nothing is more consistent in computer network technology than change and boy are we getting a lot of it this year. The interesting thing is that this change isn’t simply a new version of this or that. It’s change of the seismic shift order. Everything in IT is turning on its head.

What was real is now virtual. What was on-site is now in the cloud. What was unthinkable is now the ordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s before my time in IT, but I think it must be like the change from mainframe to PC’s. We are entering a new era and those that don’t move with it will be left holding the punch cards.

So how do we make dramatic change without chaos? We learn, we train, we test and we educate. We’re to the point now, where internally we have learned, trained and tested these new technologies. Now we’re ready to educate. It is important to me that you understand why we make the recommendations that we do. I don’t want it to seem as if they are coming out of left field or we’re suggesting something you’ve never heard of before. So expect to see a large number of opportunities educational opportunities. We promise to keep the geek speak to a bare minimum and focus on how these new technologies can improve the bottom line of your business, will have a very quick ROI and will make you money. We’re going to sponsor in-person education events and web based ones too. Most of them will be web based because we understand the value of your time and the necessity for you to remain at your office. I hope that you will be able to join us at these events.

Our first invitation will be coming soon.

Amy Babinchak named Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

2010-01-04T09:23:00.001-05:00

Harbor Computer Services is proud to announce that owner Amy Babinchak has again been honored by Microsoft with the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. This is her 4th year receiving this select honor.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. Microsoft MVPs are a highly select group of experts that represents the technical community's best and brightest, and they share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. For more information on the MVP program, visit http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/.

Amy was awarded for the Essential Business Server category. Her MVP profile can be found at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=EBF7B66B-D1F4-4CE5-A025-A1C147F086DF

IT Investment Incentive Ends Dec 31

2009-12-18T14:48:00.001-05:00

Many of our clients are taking advantage of the opportunity to increase their deduction in 2009. (thank you for keeping us very busy this quarter) So just a reminder that it will end in a just a few more days. If you have any orders to place, we should get them in soon. End of year is very hit or miss on deliveries.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 extends the increased deduction for the FULL PURCHASE PRICE of qualifying equipment and software purchased or financed during the tax year, up to $250,000.00.

This incentive is scheduled to expire on December 31, 2009. Time is running out to make your purchases and take your deduction.

Internet Lingo Dictionary

2009-12-17T11:04:00.001-05:00

For those of you that have delved into social media, facebook and instant messaging or have children at home that do, this dictionary is for you. It contains all of the acronyms that you’ll ever need to know and some that you probably wish you didn’t. I find myself having to look up short hand to understand what I’m reading on the ‘net and this dictionary is handy to have around.

Spectorsoft has put this dictionary together and it’s great. Of course it’s also a sales tool for them. They make great software – different products for home and business. We have clients that use both. So I feel OK about passing this along to you. They make great stuff and are a great company to work with.

Download a Complimentary Guide to Decoding Your Child's Secret Online Language

CUL8R. LMIRL. PAW. GNOC. Is this an alien language, or just language that is alien to you?

Kids have quickly adopted a secret form of communication (an Internet Lingo) that consists of abbreviated words and phrases that they use to code their conversations. With SpectorSoft's new "Parent's Guide to Internet Lingo" you can now decode this secret language and know EXACTLY what your children are discussing with friends online.

Best of all... it's absolutely FREE!

Download the FREE "Parent's Guide to Internet Lingo"

Can you decode these common phrases? Take the Internet Lingo QUIZ

WARNING THIS GUIDE CONTAINS POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE AND SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE CONTENT THAT IS REPRESENTATIVE OF CHAT LANGUAGE USED BY KIDS ONLINE.
Just in case you were wondering: CUL8R = See You Later, LMIRL = Let's Meet In Real Life, PAW = Parents Are Watching, GNOC = Get Naked On Cam.

Ho Ho Ho

2009-12-14T10:35:00.001-05:00

Santa is on her way!

Love a Local Business Grants Available

2009-12-09T13:19:00.001-05:00

Intuit is giving small grants to local businesses. Why not you?

http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/?cid=ad120x60

Help us find local businesses that deserve some love - in the form of a $5,000 small business grant.

Each month, five local businesses will be randomly selected to receive $1,000 small business grants. Based on the power of your words, one of them will have their grant increased to $5,000.

December Bonus: To celebrate the season of giving, every business that applies for a grant will receive a free $50 Facebook Ad Credit.

Empirical evidence for benefits of good IT practices

2009-11-23T14:58:00.002-05:00

Sometimes it’s good to look at a a report and say to yourself “I could have told them that”. Ever have one of those moments? The picture below represents one of those moments. At Harbor Computer Services, we’ve seen these results in action over and over again.

We’ve got some new tricks up our sleeve that we’ll be bringing to you in 2010 that we think we help push those percentages above even higher. We’re hard at work beta testing and training on those now. Competitive advantage is everything.

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Incompatible Quickbooks 2009 Update Coming

2009-11-19T12:11:00.002-05:00

Heads up to our Accounting clients, Intuit is about to release an update to Quickbooks 2009 that is not backwards compatible. That means that all of your customers will have to be at level of update too. Here are the details from Intuit.

QuickBooks 2009 Release 9 (R9) Won’t Be Backwards Compatible with Earlier Releases of the 2009 Software
Intuit QuickBooks 2009 R9, going out live as an Automatic Update on December 1, has important improvements for both you and your clients. We strongly recommend that both of you use the update.
However, unlike other updates in recent history, this update will not be backwards compatible with earlier releases of QuickBooks 2009.
Accountant's Copy Remains Good Alternative: Backwards compatibility continues for the Accountant's Copy. That is, if you update to QuickBooks 2009 R9, you will still be able to receive, open, and return an Accountant's Copy of your clients’ files in earlier releases of QuickBooks 2009 and QuickBooks 2008, and your client could accept and upload the Accountant's Copy without moving to QuickBooks 2009 R9.

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New Backup Option

2009-11-17T16:43:00.002-05:00

Over the summer several of our clients helped us beta test a revolutionary backup system. Through their feedback and our experience with the product, we helped the development team at Symform fine tune, debug and add some new features to make it the best off-site backup solution. I really appreciated the assistance of everyone that stood up and participated with us. Software companies want to make great software and it’s participation that makes it happen. Thanks to all of you our input can definitely be seen on the final product.
It’s ready for prime time.
Symform has officially released the product and as predicted it is making waves through the backup community. It’s not often a disruptive technology comes along, but Symform has managed to create one and they have turned the world of off-site backup on its head.
I’m going to plan a webinar, maybe 30 minutes long, with the details of how this backup system works. But here’s the bottom line:
Your server stores your data in a RAID5 redundancy or maybe a mirror. This backup system stores it off-site in RAID96. The data is encrypted and stored across this vast array of drives geographically distant from one another. It’s the most secure and redundant system I’ve ever seen. (I need to stop gushing because I’m starting to sound like a ShamWow infomercial.)
But I’m really excited because we’ve never had a good off-site backup solution that didn’t get horribly expensive really fast.
Servers $50 per month unlimited amount of data.
Workstations $8 per month unlimited amount of data.
You also need 1 or 2 external Sata drives in the office to hold the data being sent off-site and to contribute to storage. Whether you need 1 or 2 will depend on the amount of backup data.
We’re ready to setup anyone that is interested. It only take about 15 minutes.

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Free Outlook 2007 Training

2009-11-12T14:31:00.001-05:00

http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC101000901033

Each last from between 20 and 50 minutes and is a short video on how to use a specific feature or perform a task. Below is just a sample, there are many more courses than just these.

Not following us on Twitter yet? Do it. http://twitter.com/harborcomputer

Not a member of our Facebook Fan page? Do it.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Royal-Oak-MI/Harbor-Computer-Services/157213751055?ref=ts

Understanding Social Media

2009-11-06T14:13:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-03T16:31:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-28T11:40:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-08T10:20:00.002-04:00

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

2009-10-06T14:08:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-09-29T09:56:00.002-04:00

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:

Step away from the computer
Call us
We will direct you to do one of two things:

Kill the window by stopping the process that is running it
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

2009-09-23T11:00:00.001-04:00

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

2009-09-21T11:49:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-14T15:42:00.002-04:00

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

2009-08-14T10:50:00.001-04:00

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…

2009-08-13T12:50:00.001-04:00

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 Comments236 Recommend206

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

2009-08-03T11:30:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-29T11:41:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-29T09:38:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-22T15:30:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-21T11:31:00.002-04:00

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:
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.
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?
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

2009-07-17T11:08:00.001-04:00

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

Small Business Tech Notes

Time to Plan

Microsoft MVP 2012

Thank You for a Great Year

What are we going to talk about next year?

Hard Drive Crisis Being Felt Now

Extreme IT Makeover Of Your Favorite Non-Profit

Floods in Thailand

When the cloud goes down

Email and Website Problems Likely

Harbor Featured for Backup Expertise

Security in the Spot Light

A new Baby

NASA reports major geomagnetic flare–expect outages

Introducing Matt DeNoyer

Windows 8: Wow, just Wow

Change in Default Mobile Security Stance and Mobile Device Acceptable Use Policy

Mobile Device Security Stance Change

Mobile Device Acceptable Use Policy

Handling Large Data Archives

Considering Buying New Phones or Phone Service? We can do that.

Who is the most common target?

Internet Explorer 9 Soon To Be Installed

Best of Michigan businesses

Announcing SBS 2011 Certification

Alert: Problems with Windows 7 SP1

Phones: A New Security Issue

Fake Domain Conflict Emails

Need Remote Access to your Computer?

The weather outside is frightful

Our Favorite Mobile Things

Small Business Server 2011

We hired a new technician

A happy MVP for another year

The Reasoning Behind Complex Passwords

Take 5 Minutes and Learn Something New

To the Cloud, and Beyond!

Part Two: Outlook Social Connector. Why you should care, even if you don’t use it.

Happy Holidays–Santa is on her way!

Headlines read malware attacks in 2010 greater than all previous years combined

Things you need to know about the Outlook Social Connector

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

Recycling Update

When is Social Media Good for Business?

Internet and Phone Solutions from Harbor

Comcast – Cable Internet

cBeyond – T1 Lines with Mobile Phones options

Telnet Worldwide – T1 lines

An Interesting Trend You Don’t Want to Miss

We won another award

Windows SmartPhone Nov 7th

What’s new in Office 2010: PowerPoint

What’s new in Office 2010: OneNote

What’s new in Office 2010: Publisher

Off-Site Backup made Affordable and 3 Months Free too.

What’s New of Office 2010: Outlook

Stalker Apps are Everywhere, even in your Photos

What’s New in Office 2010: Word

What’s New in Office 2010: Excel

A phony crisis in London

The future is revealed

Exchange Defender has New Features

How to Detect a Phishing Email

Android now fully supports Exchange

Awarded: Small Business Specialist of the Year!

Office 2010 Official Launch

Innovation & Entrepreneurship needs in Michigan

Alert: Intuit phishing scam email

Marketing for Manufacturers

Privacy and Using Business Computers for Personal Purposes

Healthcare Bill & Very Small Businesses

Interesting Tax Credit for 2010

Cloud Services? Virtualization?

New Intel Tablet

Representing you at MVP Summit Next Week

Life without Dell

Other States putting regulations on you

Reminder: How we’ve helped our clients resolve human resources problems.

Correction: Invitation to webinar

Invitation: Tracking Employee Activity, Stopping Data Loss, Controlling Internet Use, Improving Productivity and Staying in Compliance

Last Updated: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 | 4:44 PM ET Comments236 Recommend206