Real Bytes…

Where is your cloud?

Everybody is talking about the cloud.  Google Docs, Zoho, Microsoft Office Small Business, and the list goes on.  The world it seems is moving to the central storage model where your data is stored on a server somewhere on the interweb and you access whenever, wherever you need it.  That is, as long as the tubes don’t break.

I love the cloud concept, but you should review your data requirements before jumping into the cloud.  Things to consider:

How long can I go without my data? (for when the clouds are not available)
Does the service allow for local syncing? (so I can get access to some of my data even without the cloud)
How stable is the cloud provider? (will they still exit in in 2 years when cloud providers are commodities)
How do I get my data out if I want to move to another cloud? (am I locked into this one provider)

We use several clouds in our business.  We have our email hosted via our Hosted Exchange provider, our CRM system is Autotask, our accounting system is Quickbooks run via VMWare in our office that is available via LogMeIn to both our internal staff and our external accounting folks.   So, we have opted for both a local and remote cloud.  We decided that we wanted the full functionality of Quickbooks (not the watered down Quickbooks Online), but, we wanted the covenience of being able to access it whenever and wherever we needed it, and to share it with our external financial folks.

Think about how and who you want to access your data and use that to drive your cloud migration…

Simplify your Outlook email filing…

…with SimplyFile.   Along with Xobni (see previous post), I use SimplyFile to help manage the constant flow of email.  SimplyFile helps you file Outlook emails into folders automatically.  It learns where items are typically filed and then offers to file them with a single click.

Another excellent feature of SimplyFile is appointment scheduling.  Say you receive an email and you need to create a meeting based on the contents of the email.  A single click one the SimplyFile toolbar will open a new meeting dialogue, include the original email and also invite the email sender.   An excellent tool for email management.  More info on SimplyFile here: http://www.techhit.com/SimplyFile/

Zombies are bad, XOBNI is GOOD!

Zombie bad, Xobni good.

This is for those folks who use Outlook to manage their email, contacts and calendar, and, like me, don’t organize it as well as we should.  XOBNI is a free utility that manages Outlook in a way that just makes sense.

Here are some features:

• Fast email search
• Threaded conversations
• Attachment history
• Phone #’s extracted from emails
• Navigate email by person/conversation

Lets review each quickly just to clear any confusion:

Fast Email Search: It is fast, accurate.  Nuff said

Threaded conversations:  Ever want to find the 4th email in a trail of a dozen emails you have had on a single topic with someone?  Well, you can follow the conversation thread easily with Xobni and drill into the one you want easily.

Attachment history:  You need that PDF that so-and-so sent you last friday.  Just search for so-and-so, and under the results will be every attachment they sent you, with the date.  One of the best features!

Phone #’s extracted from emails:  This means that even if the contact isn’t in your Contacts database, Xobni will find the phone #’s of contacts from within their email signature and display them under their profile.  Really nice for one-off email contacts, etc.

Navigate email by person/converstaion:  You can find all emails from a certain contact, and then follow conversations you have had with that contact over time. 

At this time of year, beware of Zombies, but don’t fear the XOBNI

Grab the bucket of sawdust…

Back in the day when I was in grade school, there was a janitor at our school with a keychain full of keys.  You could hear him walking down the hallway, the mass of keys clanging away.  There was something else that the janitor was known for.  His bucket of sawdust.

If a student was, well, sick in class or the hallway, the janitor would arrive promptly with his bucket of sawdust.  He would sprinkle it around the affected area and come back a short bit later to sweep the area clean.  A very effective method.

We have our own bucket of sawdust here at Computer Troubleshooters.  Tools that we use to fix up a system that is, well, sick.  Below is a list of what we keep in our bucket.

ccleaner: Cleans temp. files, Windows Registry, Secure delete, etc.

jkdefrag: an open source, disk defrag utility.

malware bytes: One of the newest, and best, malware cleanup and prevention tools.  Free to try, but a commercial product.

These 3 utilities form a core of our bucket.  There are many more utilities we use, but on a daily basis, this is our sawdust.