For the last 10 years, owning a small business server (SBS) was a mark of legitimacy for small companies. A SBS meant you could have your own customized email addresses; you could run your own custom applications—database, office productivity, CRM, finance, etc; you had a secure place to store files; you had a central resource [...]

Can your computer catch a virus from a phone conversation? The answer, actually, is “sort of”. In a devilishly simple twist on the classic scareware exploit, scammers are contacting potential victims by phone–literally by cold calling them. When the scammer reaches a live user, the user is told that an alert from Microsoft (or some [...]

As I mentioned in my previous post, the most reliable way to bring down a network is to depend on regular, manual intervention in your IT systems. However, exposure to human error is relatively easy to address. Technical failure (hardware and software), on the other hand, is a much tougher problem. As it happens, technical [...]

Here’s a common scenario in the world of tape backups: you walk into the server room Monday afternoon, only to find a tape labeled “Thursday” sticking out of the drive. The person who was supposed to change the tapes; maybe she took off early for happy hour on Friday; maybe she went to Vegas for [...]

The saying goes, a picture says a thousand words. I’ll add a corollary to that: a picture says a thousand words *faster*.  Therefore, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to capture information from a window on your screen, rather than typing away trying to explain something. With Office 2010, grabbing an image of a [...]

A few weeks ago Wah had a very informative post about how to backup your email auto-complete list in Outlook. I wanted to share my own tip about the auto-complete list. I wish I had some great advice for you on how to get the most out of your main contact list in Outlook, but [...]

Any of these software worries sound familiar?  “Will my software still work if I get a new server running Windows 2008? Will I have to stay with Windows 2003 forever?” “If I add this software to my system, will it conflict with the database system I already have?” “Who do I call if my critical [...]

A week or so ago I talked about web feeds, what they are, and how to view them. Well here’s the payoff: I’ve made a quick video showing some of the things you can do with RSS feeds in MS Outlook, and how you can use feeds to actually be *more* productive and organized at [...]

Well, you’re on smallbusinesstechtips.com, so you probably know what a blog is, but for blog neophytes I wanted to give a quick introduction to feeds and my favorite RSS feed reader, which happens to be Microsoft Outlook (perhaps you’ve heard of it?). In coming weeks, I’ll elaborate on some neat and powerful things you can [...]

In my work day, there almost no tool I use that I can’t run from a browser – from any computer, anywhere. Whether it’s invoicing a client, reading email, handling support requests—my browser can handle it. For me, an easy-to-use browser is a business-critical matter, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. The first [...]