Technology Advisor Blog

The Boston Sunday Globe had some interesting reading yesterday:  "Laptop seizures at customs cause thorny legal dispute".  When David House, a former MIT researcher, returned from vacation in Mexico a little over a year ago, federal agents seized his laptop at customs during a connection in Chicago, and kept it for almost two months.  There was no search warrant, and he wasn't charged with a crime.  The article describes a "Consitution-free zone" where governement agents don't need probable cause or reasonable suspicion to seize property, as long as it's not "invasive". 

When you're collaborating with multiple people on a Microsoft Word document, it may be helpful to mark a draft as FINAL to prevent further edits.  To do this in Word 2010, to to the File tab and under the Info options select "Protect Document" and "Mark as Final".  This lets other readers know that this is a final draft.  When they open the document, they'll see a yellow banner across the top that says "An author has marked this document as final to discourage editing".  Note that discourages editing, but the reader can go ahead and select "Edit Anyway" to make further edits. 

This is the time of year when many people travel.  We have received a lot of questions recently about the latest email security threat:  a new wave of "phishing" emails that are based on flight information notifications. 

You probably spend a big chunk of your day in Outlook with email, contacts, calendar, and tasks.  It's worth a few minutes to customize your layout to get the most efficient workspace that works for you.

In last night's Republican debate, one of the questions posed to the candidates was "What threat might we face in the next few years that no one is talking about today?".  The question was in the context of the 9/11 attacks shortly after George Bush became President, that defined his term in office.  One of the answers that caught my attention was cyber-terrorism.  Instead of a physical attack, our critical computer systems and networks could be attacked by hackers.  When you stop and think about how pervasive computing is in our modern lives, covering everything from banking to delivery of our utilities, it's scary to think of how vulerable we are.

Just about every day we read about a new computer security breach in the news.  The big events draw a lot of attention and generate the headlines, but small business owners need to stay vigilant too!

You've probably heard over and over again how important it is to keep your computer clean from viruses, malware, spam, and other cyber threats, but did you know it's also important to keep your computer physically clean? 

If your inbox is getting out of control with too many messages, it's time to start creating some "rules" to organize your mail. 

If you want to email company letters that have the same look as your company letterhead, its easy to do in Microsoft Word 2010.  You can created "pdfs" to email your company communications, and also print without having to use up your "good" letterhead.  To do this, you'll just need to use some clip art and master the header and footer in Word.

Did you know you can create great looking documents using "templates" in Microsoft Word 2010?