Instead of letting your technology investments continue on underutilized, here are 4 tips for getting the most out of your technology dollars:

1. Put the client in the driver’s seat of communication.

You can improve the quality of customer service offered by your company through the use of simple technology. The more connected you are to your clients, the happier they are with your work. Use technology to give your clients a way to initiate discussion with you, either through blog interaction or a discussion forum. Set up instant messaging so clients can contact appropriate staff members as necessary. It’s simple technology, but will result in improved client retention, repeat customers and better communication.

2. Create a business culture of continuous improvement.

One of the most amazing aspects of technology is how quickly it is updated and improved. Just when you think you have the best of the best, new technologies and processes are created to improve productivity. Even in the sometimes mundane office environments, new ideas will enhance efficiency and productivity. Encourage staff and consultants to let the new ideas flow – continuous improvement is the key for making the most out of your technology.

3. Take advantage of training opportunities.

If the cost of sending staff to training courses is a bit much, and you’re unable to conduct monthly training seminars on your own – consider bringing in vendors and experts whenever a new version of software is released. You can also have managed service providers deliver training virtually as needed, in order to keep your staff up to date with the programs and tools used in the office.

4. Internal email newsletters with tips.

Most businesses recognize the value of sending newsletters to their clients to keep in touch and establish relationships, but what about internal newsletters among staff members? Send a weekly email to your staff with a single technology tip that explains how to do something that will improve their productivity or make their lives a little easier. Keep it fun and add a cartoon or a quick quiz to keep the staff looking forward to their weekly newsletter. Your ideas for topics can come from training and seminars you attend, or from questions staff ask the IT department. If one person doesn’t understand something, there are probably a few others who also don’t understand – but aren’t speaking up about it.

Content by Managed Services Provider University

This is a great way to get any Office document into PDF format, and best of all, its free!

Unfortunately this add-in will not work in previous versions of Office (2003, XP or 2000).

Reduce Costs – Go Green…

Modern Desktop PCs will consume up to 55% less power – this coupled with Power Management Plans from Teklogic can significantly reduce your cost of ownership – far below the costs of keeping old desktops limping along.

Maximize Uptime – Be More Productive

Its a fact that PCs older than three (3) years experience much more downtime than new ones. With a new PC you can experience more uptime, which in turns means more productivity.

Modern PCs are Faster – Get More Done…

Modern “Core 2 Duo” desktops running Windows 7 can run nearly 3 times faster than your old PC – enabling you to get more done – which means real bottom-line dollars for your company.

Leverage Modern Technology – Wait Less…

Windows 7 Professional features like Quicklook 3 and Quickweb, make it possible to access vital information on your desktop or the web in a matter of seconds, without having to boot it up. Also, Windows 7 has been engineered to startup, shut down, sleep and Hibernate faster than its predecessors – which means less time waiting.

Replacing Your PC Can Get You Organized.

Swapping your PC for a new one gives you an opportunity to organize your information, review your processes and clean things up. When we are swapping clients PCs for modern Windows 7 desktops, we will demonstrate how you can take advantage of features like Aero Peek, the new Windows 7 Taskbar and Start Menu to access your information faster – and in a more organized fashion.

Modern Operating Systems are More Secure

The out-of-the-box configuration of modern Operating Systems like Windows 7 are more secure than previous versions. Features like Windows Bit Locker can encrypt your files – even USB Drives. New User Account Controls can prevent drive-by-downloads that infect your computer with nasty malware and spyware.

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If you want to talk about how we can make the PC upgrade process simple and painless for your company – let us know.

Yours Technically,

Justin Carter

• Speed up your Windows Vista / Windows 7 Computer – There is a feature called ReadyBoost present in Vista and Windows 7 that will allow you to use a USB drive to essentially increase the speed of your computer. ReadyBoost creates an extra cache memory on your USB drive. It does seem to be more beneficial to older computers or heavy multi-taskers. Instructions – Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Portable Firefox – Now I’m no Firefox zealot by any stretch but with Portable Firefox, you can take your bookmarks, settings, and plugins with you – basically your whole web browsing “experience” on your thumb-drive. More information and download here.
• Make your files portable and back them up at the same time – Microsoft has a tool they have released called Microsoft Synctoy. With this tool you can configure your computer to automatically synchronize the documents on your PC with your flash drive. This ensures you always have the most up-to-date copy in both locations allowing you to pop out the drive and roll knowing your stuff is all there – and when you bring it back it will update your PC with the changes. Instructions and Download
• Create a suite of Portable Applications to use Anywhere – A portable application is simply a program that will run without being installed – you can use your USB drive to contain the applications and settings and use any computer to run them. PortableApps.com has created a single download that you can extract to your USB drive and have access to 147 different portable applications to run off your USB Drive. This is an awesome compilation that allows you to get all the apps in one download – More Information and download here
• Backup and Encrypt your files – Using the portable version of TrueCrypt (included in PortableApps.com’s package)and Microsoft SyncToy (mentioned above) you can create an encrypted, portably accessible backup of your computer’s files.

Happy Holidays to everyone from your friends at Teklogic!

All versions of Microsoft Windows support the “PR Scrn” or “Print Screen” button. On a standard keyboard this is left of the “Scroll lock” key. When you press this button, a capture of your screen content is taken and copied to your clipboard. You can then paste this information into an e-mail,  a document or even into any picture editing software. If you depress the “ALT” key while  tapping the “Print Screen” button, a capture will be made of the currently selected window only  – as opposed to your entire desktop. This is a neat trick if you have large, or even Dual monitors. It will allow you to avoid capturing an image that is the entire size of your display(s). 

For the “power user” types and other people in an “information worker” position, it is useful to only capture a specific section of your screen instead of a complete window. or maybe you want to make some other notations on your screen captured information. There are a few different ways to do this.

1.) Windows Vista Snipping Tool – This is a free Microsoft utility that is installed in Windows Vista and Windows 7 by default. This app will allow you to “lasso select” information on your screen and capture it to your clipboard or a file of your choosing. It is designed for Tablet PC support.

2.) PicPick - This is probably the best free Screen Capture utility. This application is as fully featured as the best commercial products and is also portable. Being portable allows you to put it on your USB drive and “carry” it around from computer to computer without having to actually install it on each computer.

3.) Snag-it – This is the program I use and its probably the most highly regarded commercial screen capturing utility. It’s not free, but for $39.99 you get truly great utility that has all sort of built in conveniences – like pre-drawn shapes, such as arrows rectangles for use in annotating your captures and will store all of your captures for future reference or use. This is one of my “must have” applications that gets installed on any of my “regular” computers. 

One of the ways that I use screen shots to be more productive is to capture interesting information that I may want to review later. I capture the information and then store it in Microsoft OneNote – which is a whole other conversation about information management. The point here is that capturing information on your screen is a great way to archive things for later reference or to use as a means to more clearly communicate something to someone through e-mail.

Some see Microsoft as a company going for world domination – and this may be true – at least as much most other IPOs looking to please their stockholders!  Competition for features in free services like these is, on the whole, a very good thing.

Both of these services offer the basic features you expect from 411 like the ability to voice search businesses / people, connect your call or send you a text message with the details. The major differentiation is with Google’s – Google Maps integration and a feature on Microsoft’s Bling to search by street intersection. Bling also offers two other features for users without Smartphones. The first is turn directions – you can even save a "home" and "work" location with the service to save time, entirely over the phone. It tells you what highways are involved at each step before rattling off the directions, and you can skip to any those highway steps if you kind of know where you are but just need a little off-ramp clarification. Their Weather service works very similar in that it actually reads you the forecast. In all fairness GOOG-411 can do this as well except that it isn’t read to you, its text-messaged to you or brought up in Google Maps if you have a Smartphone.

The service are accessible from any phone by dialing 1-800-246-4411 (1-800-Bing-411) for Microsoft’s Bing 411 and 1-800-466-4411 (1-800-GOOG-411) for Google’s GOOG-411.

The best part is, it will cost you nothing – the big ole’ doughnut – zero.

This is a great tool to be more efficient or at least something to keep in mind if you are ever in a pinch. Either way these are two very useful products!

-Justin

Hail the Missing Attachment Powertoy! This simple freeware utility basically checks your message for keywords that indicate that you intended to attach a file. You can customize the list of trigger words based on your personal email habits. This utility only seems to work for Office 2007.

See: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/missingattach.html for download.

• S: (n) Google (a widely used search engine that uses text-matching techniques to find web pages that are important and relevant to a user’s search)

Verb

• S: (v) Google (search the Internet (for information) using the Google search engine) "He googled the woman he had met at the party"; "My children are googling all day"
  

I did a write up at the beginning of the month where I wrote about Google Usage Tips and Tricks. I wanted to share a few more uses for Google that I personally leverage all the time to be more productive and quickly find information.

NOTE:  you can save Google in your cell phone’s web browser – enabling you to use these tips wherever you have your phone… This can even be done on plain-Jane phones. That is, it doesn’t require an iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone.

Word Definitions: (define:)

I use this one all the time. If you don’t know a word or want to become more clear on a word’s exact definition, try using the define: operand in a Google search. All you have to do is type define: word in a Google search. This gets you the definition and also will correct your spelling. A very useful feature!

Weather Forecast (weather:)

Ok this one is great too – a simple, no frills 3 day weather report. Just type weather: zipcode into a Google search.

Local Movies Lookup (movies:)

This one is great when you are out and you want to go see a movie but you don’t know what’s playing where. Instead of trying to find a computer to look it up on – or worse -calling the theatre and listening to the recording. Why not use your cell phone and "Google" movies: zipcode .

This will get you a brief 3 liner of the most popular movies that are playing within 5 miles of your zipcode as well as a link to a full list sortable by Movie or Theatre.

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I hope this is helpful to some of you!

Cheers,

-Justin

The most simple example is the usage of a Quotation Mark in your search query. When you use a Quotation mark, Google will match exact phrase in that order, instead of just the individual words in the phrase. There are many other such things you can do to fine-tune your search:

Searching within a specific site (site:)
If you know you like MSNBC you can search that specific site for specific information. For example the query [ pirates site:msnbc.com ] will return pages about Pirates but only from msnbc.com. Queries missing the ’site:’ operand [ pirates msnbc.com] will still work as well, although they might return results from other sites that mention MSNBC.com. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

Excluding Specific Terms (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words ‘anti-virus’ but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the – sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The – sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the ’site:’ operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

Use of ‘Wildcards’ (*)
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google’s products. The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

Google Phone Number Lookup (phonebook:)
Who wants a big fat ugly yellow book sitting around anyway – a phone book? What’s that??? Google allows you to look up phone numbers directly from the search bar. If you start your query with phonebook:, Google shows all public U.S. residence telephone listings (name, address, phone number) for the person you specify. For example, [ phonebook: John Doe New York NY ] will show phonebook listings of everyone named John Doe in New York, NY.

Google Calculator Functions:
Google can do a host of mathematical calculations – even trigonometry! For the rest of us – here are the basics.

 Here is a link to a more comprehensive list of calculation capabilities and usages:

http://www.googleguide.com/help/calculator.html

Google Unit Conversions:

No – not done yet. Unit conversion can be very helpful with currency and even conversion between unit types:

Convert from one set of units to another by using the notation, x units in y units.

• [ three quarters of a cup in teaspoons ]
• [ 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in degrees Celsius ]
• [ 130 lbs in kg ]
• [ 130 lbs in stones ]
• [ 65 mph in kph ] or
• [ 65 mph in km/h ]
• [ 2 meters + 5 feet ]

Convert from one numbering system to another.

• [ 1500 in hex ] or [ 1500 in hexadecimal ]
• [ 64 in binary ]
• [ LVII in decimal ]
• [ meters per mile ]
• [ furlongs per fortnight ]

Google is a great tool for technicians and business-people alike. With a bit of education we can be just that much more productive withour searches. There are several more things I will consider going over in another blog entry… I hope this is helpful!

Thanks!

-Justin