7 Useful Tips for Getting up and Running with Office 2010

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Michael

Office 2010, the latest office suite from Microsoft, has been out for about a year and a half now. To IT guys like us, that means enough time has passed that the product is probably stable enough to recommend to clients for an upgrade. We’ve been using Office 2010 as well, ironing the kinks out and thinking about how new users might take to the new interface if they were upgrading from Office 2003. That’s why we prepared this list of useful tips and tricks for getting up and running with Office 2010:

  1. Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon
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A Look Inside a Data Center

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Michael

We spend so much time using the web that it’s sometimes easy to forget that the internet is a very real, very tangible thing. We all talk about “the cloud”, but the backbone of internet services – data centers – are not exactly fluffy and white. They are very large, very advanced facilities owned and operated by large companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

There are  a number of videos out there that show the inner workings of a data center, but we thought we’d highlight a couple of the more interesting, better-prduced oens to give you an idea of the incredible engineering and design that goes in to making the cloud stay up in the air:

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Hackers Stole an SSL Certificate from Google: What You Need to Know

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Michael

The Dutch company that issued a rogue digital certificate for all Google Internet domains said today that its network had been hacked last month.

DigiNotar, a Dutch certificate authority (CA) that was acquired earlier this year by Chicago-based Vasco, said it was unaware of the breach for more than a week and had overlooked the in-the-wild Google certificate for over a month.

Multiple SSL (secure socket layer) certificates were stolen in the July hack, said DigiNotar.

“On July 19, 2011, DigiNotar detected an intrusion into its Certificate Authority (CA) infrastructure, which resulted in the fraudulent issuance of public key certificate requests for a number of domains, including Google.com,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

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3 Lessons to Learn from the HP TouchPad Debacle

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Sarah

News has spread like wildfire across the web that HP is clearing out their vast TouchPad inventory by slashing the price to an offer that is hard to refuse. Starting last Friday afternoon, the 16Gb TouchPad will be available for $99, and the 32Gb TouchPad will be $149. That is, until the stock runs out. And they’re going fast.

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Top 5 Ways To Stay Safe on the Web

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Michael

The internet is a not a safe place. Oh sure, it looks like it on the surface, but millions of websites are infected with malware-spreading scripts that make infecting your PC as easy as visiting the wrong web page. Indeed, as the web becomes more and more sophisticated and more commercial transactions utilize the web, the more incentive there is for the creation of new vectors for malware transmission and threats that  no one could’ve even imagined a few years ago. So bearing that in mind, here are the top 5 things to keep in mind to stay safe when browsing the web:

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Portability Meets Power: The Sony Vaio Z and its Power Media Dock

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Michael

Power vs Portability. This classic trade-off has vexed working professionals trying to buy the right PC for years. Though it is true that many laptops are available today that find an agreeable balance between the two, the physical realities of computer design will always necessitate a certain amount of give and take. But what if a new type of compromise were on the table? One where you can have your portability, and your power too. The Vaio Z might just fit the bill.

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IT Expertise For the Mobile Age

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Michael

A few months back I had an interesting, rather humbling experience: I had to ask one of my younger colleagues how to use the touch–based gestures and tricks on my new tablet computer. It reminded me of an anecdote when I was a young IT worker all the way back in 1995, when everyone was moving to PCs instead of terminals. I was the young buck, the hot shot who knew how these new-fangled things worked, and everyone had questions. I recall sitting with the high-powered CEO and walking him through his first double-click with a mouse. Everyone knows how to use PCs these days, and the terminal long since faded away.

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3 Steps to Safe and Secure Browsing on Open Wi-Fi Networks

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Michael

Man, isn’t free Wi-Fi great at Starbucks and Barnes and Noble? Even if you are actually paying for it with those $5 lattes, you might end up paying for it in other ways too.

Digital pickpockets abound, and you never know if that frowning hipster in the corner is actually trying to snoop around inside your PC. (Free hotel Wi-Fi might be even more dangerous, where the thief could be down the hall or three floors up). So, in the interest of keeping you safe as you browse on open connections, here are three steps you can take to lockdown your computer from unwanted intrusions:

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New Google Doodle: Make Some Music This Morning

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Michael

Have you been to Google’s home page yet today? Better jump over there quickly, ’cause you won’t want to miss today’s guitar-inspired Google Doodle which celebrates the 96th birthday of famed guitar designer Les Paul. You’d better be running an updated, modern browser, however, because this doodle is leveraging a number of the latest web standards to pull off its trick.

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Apple WWDC 2011: The Top Ten Upgrades coming for MAC OS X Lion

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Michael

Apple announced today that their next version of OS X will be released in July, and will cost just $29.99 (the same price as the previous upgrade). Unlike previous releases, however, Lion is not going to be released into retail channels. It will be available solely through the Mac App Store. This is the first time a major desktop OS update has not been available as a retail product. This decision may annoy some system administrators for its relative lack of flexibility, but most consumers are likely to see it as a benefit. Another first that should please consumers and business owners alike is the fact that you’re only required to purchase a single license, which can then be installed on any authorized Mac you own. Here’s hoping Microsoft makes a similar move, but that seems about as likely as Steve Jobs turning up for a keynote in a clown suit…

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