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Google to Charge Small Businesses for Apps

ebiianov — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:49:43 +0000

From Computerworld 12/10/2012

Google has ended a free version of its Google Apps online application suite for small businesses, saying it wants to provide a stronger and more uniform experience to users.

The Internet giant said Thursday in a blog post that now even small businesses with 10 or fewer users will have to pay to use its online app platform, a group that up until now has been free. All businesses will now be charged US$50 per user, per year, for the service.

Google Apps will remain free for individual users, as well as existing business customers that currently use the free version.

“Google Apps for Business,” the company’s paid offering, provides its email, calendar and online office suite as an all-in-one service, allowing them to be used on private domain names and adding features such as 24-hour phone support. It also offers features such as an archiving service and additional storage for extra fees.

Click here to read the rest of the article about Google Apps for Business.

To find out how ingenuIT can help you evaluate whether or not Google Apps is right for your small business, click here.

We offer technical support and consulting to businesses throughout NYC – Manhattan, Queens, Long Island City, Brooklyn, Union Square, Gramercy, Chelsea, Midtown, Downtown, Financial District, Murray Hill, Upper East Side, Tribeca, NoHo, East Village, Little Italy, Battery Park City, Hell’s Kitchen, Upper West Side, Long Island City, and others. We serve the following zip codes: 10004, 10038, 10013, 10002, 10012, 10014, 10003, 10009, 10011, 10016, 10001, 10018, 10017, 10022, 10065, 10021, 10028, 10128, 10029, 10019, 10023, and 10024.

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Quick Guide to Malware Types

ebiianov — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:48:39 +0000

From InfoWorld on 10/23/2012

When it comes to security, people tend to play fast and loose with the terminology. But it’s important to get your malware classifications straight because knowing how various types of malware spread is vital to containing and removing it.

Viruses
A computer virus is what most of the media and regular end-users call every malware program reported in the news. Fortunately, most malware programs aren’t viruses. A computer virus modifies other legitimate host files (or pointers to them) in such a way that when a victim’s file is executed, the virus is also executed.

Pure computer viruses are fairly uncommon today, compromising less than 10 percent of all malware. That’s a good thing: Viruses are the only type of malware that “infects” other files. That makes them particularly hard to clean up because the malware must be infected from the legitimate program. This has always been nontrivial in the best of times, and today it’s almost impossible. The best antivirus programs struggle with doing it correctly and in many (if not most) cases will simply quarantine or delete the infected file instead.

Worms
Worms have been around even longer than computer viruses, all the way back to mainframe days. Email brought them into fashion in the late 1990s, and for nearly a decade, computer security pros were besieged by malicious worms that arrived as message attachments. One person would open a wormed email and the entire company would be infected in short order.

The distinctive trait of the worm is that it’s self-replicating. Take the notorious Iloveyou worm: When it went off, it hit nearly every email user in the world, overloaded phone systems (with fraudulently sent texts), brought down television networks, and even delayed my daily afternoon paper for half a day. Several other worms, including SQL Slammer and MS Blaster, ensured the worm’s place in computer security history.

What makes an effective worm so devastating is its ability to spread without end-user action. Viruses, by contrast, require that an end-user at least kick it off, before it can try to infect other innocent files and users. Worms exploit other files and programs to do the dirty work. For example, the SQL Slammer worm used a (patched) vulnerability in Microsoft SQL to incur buffer overflows on nearly every unpatched SQL server connected to the Internet in about 10 minutes, a speed record that still stands today.

Click here to read the rest of the artice on the different types of Malware.

To find out how ingenuIT can help your small business stay secure, click here.

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The BlackBerry as Black Sheep

ebiianov — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:41:27 +0000

From The New York Times 10/17/2012

Rachel Crosby speaks about her BlackBerry phone the way someone might speak of an embarrassing relative.

“I’m ashamed of it,” said Ms. Crosby, a Los Angeles sales representative who said she had stopped pulling out her BlackBerry at cocktail parties and conferences. In meetings, she says she hides her BlackBerry beneath her iPad for fear clients will see it and judge her.

The BlackBerry was once proudly carried by the high-powered and the elite, but those who still hold one today say the device has become a magnet for mockery and derision from those with iPhones and the latest Android phones. Research in Motion may still be successful selling BlackBerrys in countries like India and Indonesia, but in the United States the company is clinging to less than 5 percent of the smartphone market — down from a dominating 50 percent just three years ago. The company’s future all depends on a much-delayed new phone coming next year; meanwhile RIM recorded a net loss of $753 million in the first half of the year compared with a profit of more than $1 billion a year earlier.

Among the latest signs of the loss of cachet: One of the first steps Marissa Mayer took as Yahoo’s newly appointed chief executive to remake the company’s stodgy image was to trade in employees’ BlackBerrys for iPhones and Androids. BlackBerrys may still linger in Washington, Wall Street and the legal profession, but in Silicon Valley they are as rare as a necktie.

Click here to read the rest of the article on how business users are moving away from BlackBerry devices.

To find out how ingenuIT can help your small business evaluate which of devices can maximize your business’s productivity, click here.

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10 Reasons the Desktop PC Will Live Forever

ebiianov — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:59:59 +0000

From PCWorld 10/9/2012

Steve Jobs piqued consumer curiosity when he unveiled the iPad and declared “the post-PC era has begun.” And now with the imminent release of Windows 8 RT tablets—low-powered slates running a touch-friendly version of Office—it might seem that perhaps the world actually can live without desktop computers.

It’s an intriguing proposition, but don’t count on mobile devices killing off your desktop PC any time soon. While mobile gear is certainly convenient when you’re trying to conduct business on the go, it’s nowhere near as convenient as a desktop when you’re trying to complete serious work in an office environment.

Sure, your phone, tablet or even laptop might conveniently fit in your pocket or backpack, but all these devices are fraught with compromises, whether it’s computing power, screen size, or, well, a really expensive price tag.

No, friends, the so-called post-PC world is not yet upon us. But if you’re still not convinced, here are ten reasons you shouldn’t give up your desktop any time soon.

Click here to see the 10 reasons why the desktop PC will live forever.

To find out how ingenuIT can help your small business evaluate which of devices can maximize your business’s productivity, click here.

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10 Things Every User Should Know

ebiianov — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:23:13 +0000

From Lifehacker 9/17/2012

No matter how tech savvy you are, there are certain things every one of us has to deal with when using a computer—and we don’t always deal with them in the most efficient ways. Here are 10 things that everyone can (and should) learn to keep their computer fast, safe, and easy to use.

Here at Lifehacker, we take a lot of the simpler stuff for granted: how to avoid viruses, use keyboard shortcuts, or even just keep your data backed up. Even if you’ve mastered all of these tricks (and there’s a good chance you haven’t), you may want to send this along to some of your less computer-savvy friends. After all, the more they know how to do, the less they’ll call you for help.

10. Set Up a Simple Backup System

We all know we should back up our computers, but it’s always one of those things that you’ll set up “one day”. Setting up a backup only takes minutes to do, though, so you can do it right now and forget about it until you need it—and when you do need it, you’ll be glad you set it up. If you’re just backing up to an external drive, you can just use the simple tools built in to your computer, like Windows Backup or Apple’s Time Machine. However, that’ll only keep you safe if your computer fails. If you lose your home in a fire, get all your gear stolen, or experience any other kind of disaster (God forbid), you’ll have lost all those important documents, family photos, and other files forever. So, we recommend using a service like CrashPlan to back up your computer online. That way, it can back up no matter where you are, and that data will be safe no matter what happens to your hardware.

9. Do Everything Faster with Shortcuts

The great thing about computers is that they can do a lot of things much faster than a human. Say you’re looking for a specific word on a web page. Instead of scanning it yourself, all you need to do is press Ctrl+F and type the word you’re looking for. There are mountains of shortcut like this, from pressing Ctrl+S to instantly save the file you’re working on, Ctrl+P to print it out, or Ctrl+T to open a new tab in your web browser. It may seem like more trouble than its worth at first, but after you use a shortcut one or two times, you’ll wonder why you ever did anything with the mouse. Check out our list of six shortcuts everyone should know, as well as our shortcut of the day series for even more tricks.

Click here to see the rest of the tips and tricks to keep your computer fast, safe, and easy to use.

To find out how ingenuIT can improve your business’s productivity, click here.

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Security Alert: GoDaddy Hacked

ebiianov — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 21:22:25 +0000

From International Digital Times 9/10/2012

GoDaddy, the internet’s largest domain registrar, was hacked on Monday morning by a member of the Anonymous hacking group. Although it was not clear how many websites were affected, “DNS” or Domain Name System, “GoDaddy” and “Anonymous” are trending on Twitter, as thousands of clients and observers comment on the outage.

A hacker identifying himself as the Security leader of Anonymous claimed responsibility shortly after the attack. @AnonymousOwn3r said he hacked GoDaddy because: “I’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that I can not talk now.”

Also on Twitter, GoDaddy customer service representatives said they were overwhelmed with complaints, but were working on the problem.

Click here to read more about the attack on Godaddy.

To find out how ingenuIT can help your small business stay secure, click here.

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Security Alert: iCloud and Amazon Hacked

ebiianov — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:15:36 +0000

From CNN 8/07/2012

On Friday night, Wired technology journalist Mat Honan was brutally hacked. In a chain of events that Honan would unravel in the following days, hackers took advantage of security holes at Amazon and Apple to gain access to his iCloud account. They then took over his Gmail account, remotely wiped all data from his MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad, and took over his Twitter account as well as the Twitter account of his former employer, Gizmodo.

The incident might seem small on its surface — just one person’s information, not a huge data breach of credit card numbers. But this one very public incident, thoroughly documented by Honan in a Wired article, could be a wake-up call to many who store their information with cloud-based services, including Amazon, Apple and Google.

“My experience leads me to believe that cloud-based systems need fundamentally different security measures,” said Honan. “Password-based security mechanisms — which can be cracked, reset and socially engineered — no longer suffice in the era of cloud computing.”

Click here to read the rest of the article on the Cloud Storage Services hack.

To find out how ingenuIT can help your small business with secure data storage, click here.

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Security Alert: Dropbox Hacked

ebiianov — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:03:36 +0000

From The New York Times 8/01/2012

A spam attack on users of Dropbox, the cloud-storage service, has been linked to a password that was stolen in a breach on another Web site.

That is the conclusion of a two-week-long investigation by Dropbox into reports that a security breach may have caused its users to receive spam messages. The problems first surfaced July 16 after Dropbox users complained that spam messages had been sent to e-mail addresses they reserved exclusively for their Dropbox accounts. The fraudulent e-mails appeared to be from gambling sites.

In a blog post, Dropbox said that user names and passwords exposed in breaches on another Web site were tested on Dropbox accounts. And in one case, hackers used a stolen password to log into a Dropbox employee’s account that contained a document with users’ e-mail addresses. Spammers used those e-mail addresses to send spam.

Click here to read the rest of the article on how Dropbox was hacked and the resulting damage.

To find out how ingenuIT can help you secure your small business’ data and evaluate cloud storage services, click here.

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Top 10 features in Microsoft Office 2013

ebiianov — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:47:23 +0000

From NDTV 7/30/2012

Microsoft Corp. unveiled the customer preview of the new Microsoft Office that
features an intuitive design that works with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard
across new Windows devices, including tablets.

“We are taking bold steps at Microsoft,” Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft said
at the press conference in San Francisco. “The new, modern Office will deliver
unparalleled productivity and flexibility for both consumers and business
customers. It is a cloud service and will fully light-up when paired with
Windows 8.”

Here’s our list of top 10 features that the new Office has to offer.

1) Touch everywhere – The new Office responds to touch as naturally as
it does to keyboard and mouse. One can swipe their finger across the screen or
pinch and zoom to read documents and presentations.

2) Inking – Use a stylus to create content, take notes and access
features. Handwrite email responses and convert them automatically to text.
Stylus can also be used as a laser pointer when presenting. One can also add
colour to their content and erase mistakes with ease.

3) Apps – OneNote and Lync represent the first new Windows 8 style
applications for Office. These applications are designed to deliver touch-first
experiences on a tablet. A new radial menu in OneNote makes it easy to access
features with finger.

Click here to read about the other new Microsoft Office 2013 features.

To find out how ingenuIT can help your small business upgrade to the new Microsoft Office 2013, click here.

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Office 2013 Will Not Support Windows XP or Vista

ebiianov — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:30:20 +0000

From ComputerWorld 7/17/2012

Microsoft confirmed yesterday that the new Office 2013 will not run on older PCs
powered by Windows XP or Vista.

“The new Office will work with Windows 7 and Windows 8,” a Microsoft
spokesperson said Monday in an email reply to questions about Office 2013 and
Office 365. “Vista or XP will not support the new Office.”

Users running those operating systems will not be able to advance beyond
Office 2010, the suite that launched about seven months after Windows 7.

The omission of the two operating systems means that more than half of all
Windows computers — 54.6%, to be exact — now in place will be locked out of
the upgrade, according to statistics compiled by Web metrics company Net
Applications.

Windows 7 does not yet have a majority of all Windows PCs: In June, it
powered 45.1% of all PCs that went online, said Net Applications. Windows 8,
which has not been released except in preview formats, accounted for just 0.2%
of all copies of Windows.

Click here to read the rest of the article on Office 2013′s operating system requirements and features.

To find out how ingenuIT can help you evaluate which productivity software is right for your small business, click here.

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