Technology Advisor Blog

Many of our clients are pros at Microsoft Excel, but for the beginners, the program can be intimidating.  If you're just getting started, here are a few simple tips and formulas you can use.  We actually get a lot of questions from beginners, so this post is for you! 

If your office is going paperless, one of the things you'll need to deal with is how to handle documents, such as contracts, that need to be signed.  The good news is that electronic signatures can now be easily handled over the Internet.

This sounds like a funny question because who would ever send themself a spam email?  What you really received is a "spoofed" message.  It's actually easy to alter an email to change the "from" address to make it appear that it's coming from someone else.  Basically a forgery.  (This is one of the reasons that if you use a spam filter, you shouldn't necessarily safe list your own address.)

Twice in the past month we received panicked calls from clients - "Help! Our email stopped working and we can't get any emails!" It turns out in both cases, the problem was the result of someone making updates to a web site and making unintended changes to DNS. 

Yesterday was a big "Patch Tuesday" with 17 new security patches released by Microsoft, 9 of which were listed as "critical".  The second Tuesday of each month is known as "Patch Tuesday", and this is when Microsoft regularly releases free security upgrades.  As vulnerabilities are discovered, upgrades are made to the software to prevent hackers from exploiting the vulnerabilities.  Full details on the April 12, 2011 Microsoft Security Bulletin can be found on the Microsoft web site.  

Did you know that you can delay or schedule sending an email?  Let's say you have an email ready to go, but for some reason you'd rather send it at a later time.  Maybe you know the recipient is away and you'd rather not have your email sitting in a giant queue when they return.

If you run into a problem using a web site, one of the first questions you'll be asked is "What version of Internet Explorer are you running?"  At first, you may be stumped because your program will just say "Internet Explorer", but finding the version is easy:

Unless you're already using one of the new solid state hard drives, all of your critical business data is spinning around at 5400rpm or faster on a magnetic disk inside your computer.  Think about it - it's a miracle any hard drive can actually work, and all your data is in a perilous situation!  One of the most common system failures in a computer is a hard drive failure, but it doesn't have to be a disaster for you if you plan in advance.

At the beginning of the year, I made a New Years Resolution to get rid of all the paper on my desk.  Two and a half months into the year, I'm proud to say I haven't had a single single post-it reminder on my desk in all this time!  Where did all the post-its go?  I eliminated all my paper reminders by finally getting serious about using Microsoft Outlook Tasks.

One of the key technologies for your small business is a good document scanner.  Getting all your paper into electronic format is big step for getting organized.