Messenger Moves to Skype

The much beloved Messenger application is almost dead. Microsoft has decided that March 15th will be it’s last day of functionality. On that day you will have to start using another IM client. Microsoft thinks that you will like to use Skype.

When Microsoft purchased Skype I expected them to integrate Skype into everything but instead they have move Messenger into Skype and integrated Skype (optionally) into Office 365.

None of that is important right now, the important part at this time is that you have a plan to stop using Messenger and start using another IM client. If you choose Skype all of your contacts will migrate over seamlessly.

If you would rather not use Skype, let us know. We have some alternatives we could offer especially if you’d like to keep your IM’s private within your company. 

We’re here to help with this migration. If you need a hand with it please let us know. When we talk to you between now and then we’re going to be asking about whether you are using Messenger currently because the move needs to happen BEFORE March 15th or you’ll lose  access to your contacts.

- Amy

Internet Explorer 9 Soon To Be Installed

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.

Things you need to know about the Outlook Social Connector

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

…To Be Continued…

What’s new in Office 2010: PowerPoint

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

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

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.

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

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)

What’s New in Office 2010: Word

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

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

Exchange Defender has New Features

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.

Cloud Services? Virtualization?

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.

Internet Lingo Dictionary

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.

Incompatible Quickbooks 2009 Update Coming

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

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

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

For the Student

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know your legal system is broken when…

Microsoft barred from selling Word in U.S.

Canadian firm wins latest round of patent dispute

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

CBC News

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

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

 

Full Article

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

Office 2010 Technical Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

Windows7 – 50% off pre-orders

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

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

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