One of the hottest trends of 2012 is cloud storage. Managers and employees are enamored with the idea of being able to work together and share documents from anywhere. To make storage and collaboration in the cloud a little easier, Microsoft recently upgraded their SkyDrive service to meet their users’ needs.

SkyDrive is a free online (cloud) storage service from Microsoft that lets you access your files from multiple locations. It works by downloading a program to your desktop, and allowing you to drag and drop files into it. Files will be uploaded to the cloud and available on mobile phone apps, or on your browser. If you make a change to a document on one of these, it’ll be updated automatically. Beyond that, you can also access files on your PC if it and SkyDrive are both turned on.

SkyDrive is also a collaboration tool, it allows you to create Microsoft Office documents right in the browser, share them with colleagues and collaboratively work on them. You can upload and share files up to 2GB in size from your computer and 300MB in size from SkyDrive.com.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft updated SkyDrive to have better syncing and integration across platforms. They also introduced a new pricing scheme, making it one of the most competitive options available. New users now get 7GB of storage space, with the ability to upgrade to a maximum of 100GB storage for USD 50 per year.

If you have a Hotmail account, or SkyDrive account that was activated before April 22, 2012, you’re eligible for 25GB storage for free. Simply log in to either Hotmail and press SkyDrive, or log in to skydrive.com and select Manage storage. You should have the option to upgrade to 25GB for free. Microsoft has said this is only for a limited time, but hasn’t defined how long “limited time” is.

If you’re interested in setting up SkyDrive in your company, or would like more information, please schedule an appointment with us, we’re ready to help you.

One of the hottest trends of 2012 is cloud storage. Managers and employees are enamored with the idea of being able to work together and share documents from anywhere. To make storage and collaboration in the cloud a little easier, Microsoft recently upgraded their SkyDrive service to meet their users’ needs.

SkyDrive is a free online (cloud) storage service from Microsoft that lets you access your files from multiple locations. It works by downloading a program to your desktop, and allowing you to drag and drop files into it. Files will be uploaded to the cloud and available on mobile phone apps, or on your browser. If you make a change to a document on one of these, it’ll be updated automatically. Beyond that, you can also access files on your PC if it and SkyDrive are both turned on.

SkyDrive is also a collaboration tool, it allows you to create Microsoft Office documents right in the browser, share them with colleagues and collaboratively work on them. You can upload and share files up to 2GB in size from your computer and 300MB in size from SkyDrive.com.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft updated SkyDrive to have better syncing and integration across platforms. They also introduced a new pricing scheme, making it one of the most competitive options available. New users now get 7GB of storage space, with the ability to upgrade to a maximum of 100GB storage for USD 50 per year.

If you have a Hotmail account, or SkyDrive account that was activated before April 22, 2012, you’re eligible for 25GB storage for free. Simply log in to either Hotmail and press SkyDrive, or log in to skydrive.com and select Manage storage. You should have the option to upgrade to 25GB for free. Microsoft has said this is only for a limited time, but hasn’t defined how long “limited time” is.

If you’re interested in setting up SkyDrive in your company, or would like more information, please schedule an appointment with us, we’re ready to help you.

The figure of speech, “Jack of all trades, master of none” can be applied to many small business owners. While many view themselves as masters of all business functions, there’s normally a function that they could use help on. This help normally comes in the form of an employee, but many small businesses can’t afford to hire. Why not hire a virtual assistant?

A virtual assistant is much like any other assistant, just they don’t work in your office. They could be across town, or in another country, and work with you through the Internet. They could take care of your accounting, social media platforms or secretarial work, freeing you up to work on what you excel at. At its most basic form, it’s outsourcing.

Different types of virtual assistants There are three different categories of virtual assistants:

1. Generalist: responsible for rote tasks like data entry and answering calls.
2. Technical: responsible for all your IT related tasks like website design, SEO, updating and installing programs, etc.
3. Specialist: responsible for specialized business functions like HR, accounting, legal, etc.

Virtual assistants can be hired at nearly any cost. Some general assistants can be hired for as little as USD 100 a month. Some more specialists could cost upwards of USD 100 an hour. As an added advantage, you won’t have to pay them local benefits like health insurance, tax and bonuses.

Ways you can leverage an assistant One of the best ways to leverage a virtual assistant is to have them take care of your technology related functions. Managed service providers (MSP) are a form of virtual assistant that’ll look after your network, technical security, backup and recovery. They’re particularly useful if you don’t have the technical expertise needed to maintain support for your business. The majority of MSPs are also a lot cheaper than employing an in-house IT staff.

Another way to leverage an assistant is for bookkeeping. It’s essential that your bookkeeping is done correctly, it’s also one of the few functions that follow strict regulations. While it’s important to have a licensed professional review your books, there’s no need to have them also do the work prior to the review process. A virtual assistant can help you get your books in order so time spent on the financials is minimized.

Having a virtual assistant can help you focus on the important tasks, running and growing your business. Properly leveraged, you could indirectly see higher profits. If you’d like more information on ways you can outsource some functions, please contact us.

The number of hours worked by managers and employees, on average, has risen over the past 20 years. Are we working longer hours because there’s just too much work to be done? Or are we working longer hours to make up for our lower productivity, due to time spent on non-work activities like social media? For the vast majority, it’s most likely the latter. If you had two monitors, you could see your productivity increase.

For those who don’t use dual monitors, it can seem a bit over the top. Why split your work between two monitors when you can concentrate it all on one? As it turns out, there are a number of benefits to using dual monitors.

Productivity bump Many employees and managers spend their day multitasking, it can be hard to do this with just one monitor; constantly switching between programs. With two screens, employees can have a spreadsheet open on one monitor and email, social media or another program on the other. This means less time is spent switching between windows and programs. Several studies have been done on this, and show that productivity can be boosted by as much as 40% with dual monitors.

Spread out a bit The other main benefit of using dual screens is that you have more work space. If you’re working with a program like Adobe Photoshop or various social media websites, you need to have a larger work space to see what you’re doing. You can put your vital resources on one monitor, and the program on another, thus allowing you to work faster.

While dual monitors are advantageous, be aware that there can be negative aspects to a user's health and wellbeing if they have to constantly turn their head to view two screens. Be sure to set up your monitors so that there’s minimal turning of your head.

If you feel that your office could do with an increase in productivity, contact us. We can work with you to reach your results.

The Internet has become one of the most important tools in our personal and professional lives. It’s hard to imagine what life would be like without it. There’s a chance that may happen for users who’ve been infected by the DNSChanger Trojan. This nasty Trojan has infected many computers around the world and has forced the FBI to take drastic action.

While the source of DNSChanger has been removed, essentially killing it. There are still infected users out there who may have their Internet cut off in July if they don’t deal with it by then.

What is DNSChanger? DNSChanger is a Trojan that hijacks a user's Internet, at the most basic level, the DNS. If a user enters a web address, DNSChanger will return a similar looking page, but with ads that are owned by hackers. Thus allowing them to manipulate online advertising to make money, around USD 14 million by the time they were shut down.

Aside from that, it also prevents users from visiting security websites, like mcafee.com, and downloading program and OS updates. As many as four million computers, including some Fortune 500 and government computers, have been infected worldwide.

What’s a DNS? A DNS - Domain Name System - is a cruical service that converts domain names like www.google.com into code that computers can understand. The DNS essentially makes it easier for computers to talk with one another. Without it, any program or action that uses the Internet wouldn’t work.

What did the FBI do? Because the malware affects the DNS, the FBI couldn’t just shut down the servers that the infected users’ computers talk to, as they wouldn’t be able to access any Web pages. So, they replaced the DNS servers that the hackers used with new ones. These servers will go offline in July, at which time, any user still connecting to the DNS servers, or who is still infected irregardless of their location, could be affected.

What should I do? If you’re infected by this malware, and don’t remove it by July 9, your Internet access could be shut down. To prevent this, it’s important to contact your IT service provider and work with them to ensure your systems are clean, and security’s up to date.

Update

Google plans to warn users they are infected by DNSChanger. When a user accesses one of Google's functions, like search, Google will show a message informing the users they may be infected and give some tips on how to get rid of it.

If you think your systems or network aren’t secure enough, please contact us, we are ready to help.

Think about the worst presentation you’ve even seen. Chances are high the audience was either asleep or completely disinterested. What made it so bad? Was it the presenter or was it the slides the presenter used? More times than not, it’s poorly prepared slides that ruin a presentation. Don’t let this happen to you.

Here are nine tips on how to prepare a good Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

1. Choose a relevant layout. When you choose the layout or template for your slides, pick something that’s simple and non-distracting. If you’re presenting yearly earnings, a background of flowers probably isn’t the best choice. Under no circumstances should you put your company’s logo as a background, this can make slides incredibly distracting. Put it in the header or footer instead.
2. Colors. It’s important to pick a good colour scheme for your slides. The keyword here is, “contrast.” Pick colors that contrast and are easy on the eyes. A white background with black text is good, a red background with black text is bad. If you want to use your company’s colours and they don’t contrast well, pick one of your colors and another that’s a good contrast.
3. Images. Pictures and graphics capture our attention, text puts us to sleep. The general rule of thumb is to have more visuals than text. Don’t have images for the sake of images, instead pick ones that convey what you want to say. Many good presenters will have a slide with nothing but an attention grabbing image, and use it to talk about their main idea.
4. KISS your text. KISS stands for Keep It Stupidly Simple. Text should be kept to a minimum, at most five lines or bullet points per slide. The best presentations use only keywords or showcase the utmost important data and save explanations for the presentation.
5. Eliminate animations. It can be tempting to have text or images pop up every few seconds. Resist the temptation, as it’s incredibly hard to match your presentation speed with that of the animations. Having to speed up or wait for animation will make you look unprofessional.
6. Remain consistent. If there’s one key rule with presentations, it’s remain constant. This applies to everything in your presentation. Keep the font size, font, image type, colour scheme and layout the same throughout the presentation. If you put your logo in a header on one slide, it should be in the header on all the slides.
7. Audience. When developing a presentation you should always keep in mind who your audience is. If you’re presenting to a marketing firm, they probably don’t need to see more than one or two slides with financial information. Beyond that, be sure to prepare a version of the slides for your audience. Any explanations and extra information should be put in here as well.
8. Keep the file size down. If you’re presenting on another system or will be emailing the slides, it’s a good idea to ensure the file is as small as possible. The bigger it is, the slower it’ll load and the higher the chance it will stutter or crash.
9. Practice. Go over the slides ahead of time and be sure you know the content inside and out. Another benefit to practicing is you will often catch mistakes and knowledge gaps that you can fix before you present.

By following these tips, you should be well on your way to producing a good presentation that will captivate your audience and make you look like a star. If you have any other questions regarding PowerPoint, or any of Microsoft’s other products we are here to help, please contact us.

As our devices and workflows become more and more technically advanced, the amount of data available to a company of any size has increased exponentially. For small businesses that have been using spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel, this data could quickly overwhelm your Business Intelligence (BI) efforts. To avoid this, many software vendors have introduced Software as a Solution (SaaS) apps specifically for small businesses.

Here is an overview of four Business Intelligence SaaS apps that you could use in your business:

KPI KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a company that offers a cloud based dashboard that integrates with your CRM or ERP software. It provides a way for businesses to visualize, analyze and report real-time data from your business’s key metrics. All the results can be viewed on your computer or on your mobile device.

GoodData GoodData is an on demand BI provider that offers users a base service that they can add apps to as and when needed. The whole service and dashboards are stored and run in the cloud, and are considerably cheaper than traditional BI services.

Bimotics Bimotics offers an on demand BI service for businesses in almost every major sector. They offer one suite that has data connectors, an established BI engine and analytical tools that should meet most small businesses’ needs. The suite can also be accessed by almost any mobile device.

Tibco Silver Spotfire Silver Spotfire is a cloud based SaaS aimed at individuals and small businesses. It lets users create interactive dashboards and visual analytics without the need of costly infrastructure. This app also integrates with major social media services, allowing users to put live dashboards on their blogs.

These are just four useful apps that you can use in your business. If you’re interested in how you can integrate BI solutions into your business, please contact us.

It’s common to see companies showing confidence in their security systems. Their networks are protected from external threats, which can often lead to a false sense of being secure. With this attitude, they may stop thinking about security and fail to establish internal measures within their networks, and this is a grave mistake.

In recent years the majority of security threats and compromises have come from within the company. A common threat to companies is the logic bomb - malware that targets IT systems and deletes data. As a logic bomb is introduced from within the network, the blame often lies with a disgruntled employee with full access to internal systems.

Insider threats Giving employees full access to the network when they don’t need it is a common mistake often made by companies. There’s little need for an employee who does graphic design to have access to weekly sales records. This practice could set your company up for a considerable security problem in the future.

Dawn Cappelli, an insider-threat expert at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute stressed, "These types of insider attacks happen to businesses of all sizes, from small companies to very large corporations." This is an important issue businesses should be aware of if they want to remain secure.

Take Precautions Security threats can be a particularly harsh nightmare for small businesses, as many don’t have an IT department or staff with the technical expertise needed to maintain a secure network. If you’re one of these organizations, it’s a good idea to hire an outside consultant to help you with your network security. With consultants, it’s important that you maintain close contact with them to ensure any issues that crop up are dealt with expeditiously.

If you don’t work with an external company there are a few things you should do when you have an employee leave the company. First, their accounts should be deleted immediately and their access privileges should also be revoked. Second, if you have accounts with shared passwords, you should change them to ensure an ex-employee can’t gain access to the system.

If you’d like to learn more about internal security, and measures you can take to ensure you are safe, we are ready to help you. Please contact us.

If the past 10 years has taught us anything, it’s that many managers are woefully underprepared for disasters of any kind. We’re resilient though, and will always find a way to survive. One of the keys to a business’s survival during times of hardship is the Business Continuity Plan (BCP). A vast majority of organizations have one and believe it to be effective, but is it?

Here are six key non-IT functions and processes that need to be in place to ensure your company is ready to effectively execute your BCP.

Easy to use plans Many continuity plans have been developed mainly for the IT department, as such, they can be a little complicated to understand and follow if employees don’t have a technical background. You should aim to have a plan that’s easy to follow and can be understood by all employees.

Communicate plans Remember that your plan encompasses all facets of your organization. It’s crucial that every employee knows their role and the relevant actions to take when the plan is executed. To do this, you need to ensure that all employees have access to a copy of the plan and any changes or updates are clearly communicated.

Test plans Beyond communication, it’s important to conduct regular tests, with every quarter being sufficient. The tests should be as real as possible and span all departments within the organization. This will ensure that employees are aware of how they, and the systems, will react under duress. It’ll be beneficial to your business if the first time the employees execute the plan isn’t during an emergency.

Short term and long term plans Your BCP should consist of both long term and short term elements that can be easily adapted to meet changing business environments and the emergence of new threats. You should aim for an even mix of short and long term solutions that cover as wide a variety of situations as possible.

Ensure buy-in from all levels If you’re in the process of instituting a BCP you should ensure that the whole organization is onboard with the plan. If an employee is unsure about the validity of a part of the plan, take the time to find out why and ask for suggestions. An uninformed or uncooperative employee could be the difference between survival and failure in a disaster situation.

Update and Review After every test, staff turnover and technological update, you should review the plans and make changes if necessary. Essentially, if anything in the company changes, review and update the plan. Remember: just because you have an effective plan this month, doesn’t mean it’ll be so in the future.

Continuity plans are only as strong as the weakest link. In an emergency, the last thing you want is an employee following the wrong process or be unsure of what they should be doing. If this happens, you could see an exponential growth in recovery time and costs. We’re ready to tell you more, so please contact us if you would like to talk continuity planning.

In 2009, the video game industry recorded revenues of USD 60.4 billion dollars, double that of the movie industry. One of the biggest draws to games is not the story or gameplay, it’s the competition and sense of achievement one gets when they beat their friend’s score, or a hard level. Many businesses have started applying game mechanics to non-game situations.

The term to describe this trend is gamification, but what is it, and how can businesses use it?

What is gamification Gamification is the application of game design techniques and mechanics to non-game applications. Foursquare and its badges is a good example of this - users check in at locations to earn points, unlock badges and compete with their friends. Do they win anything? Nothing physical, but there’s something satisfying with competing with other people to be the best.

While gamification got its start with technological related operations, it has since been integrated by businesses of all sizes. Business that have adopted elements of gamification have seen improved user engagement and ROI.

How can businesses leverage gamification? Gamification is interesting because it can be applied in a variety of different business situations. For example, here are three such uses:

• To increase employee engagement. It can be hard at times to keep your employees engaged while they’re doing mundane tasks. One of the most common uses of gamification is deploying badges to act as a motivator to encourage employees to put effort into their job. When an employee reaches a predetermined level they are recognized for their achievement. This will go a long way in improving engagement.
• To create brand advocates. You can use gamification to turn your customers and fans into brand advocates. Before they start singing your praises, they need to be given a reason to do so. The best way to do this is to create a points/reward system. For actions such as purchases or reviews, customers gain points that can be spent on other services. Think of it as akin to the points system used by credit card companies.
• To generate traffic. Many SMBs are dependent on their websites for revenue but struggle to get traffic to their site. Gamification techniques can be employed to encourage people to spend more time on, and return to, your website, almost like a modern loyalty program.

There are many uses for gamification and we’ll continue to see new and innovative ways to deploy it in organizations. If you’re interested in ways you can implement aspects of gamification in your business, or would like to learn more, we are here happy to sit down with you for a chat. Please contact us.