Change is good.
My first high speed internet was a 256 KB link that U. S. West offered. I tried to get it for the office, but we were 16,528 feet from the central office (they measured it electronically while talking to me on the phone). The limit then was 15,000 feet. But I could get DSL at home and took it.
It's been almost 60 articles since I wrote about using screen sharing, back in Tech Bit 7. Since then a lot has changed.
Back then, there were very few free options, the one I mentioned was Vyew, www.vyew.com. It is still available for free, with a 10 person watching limit, and has the advantage of being entirely web browser based. It can also support both VoIP and a Webcam to let your viewers see and hear you.
This article is an extension of my last article, “Going Paperless.”
Almost 30 years ago my software company bought the assets of another software company. When the deal was done we flew to Southern California, went to a storage unit and packed up the “stuff” into a rental truck.
I am an information junkie. Actually I’m an information hoarder, which is probably an obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). There’s probably a twelve step program for people like me.
My problem is I’ll read something and think “that information might be useful someday,” so I save it. Sometimes it is useful. Sometimes not. The problem is which is which is virtually impossible to predict.
What does this have to do with going paperless?
I had another desktop in my office fail this summer. I’m not sure it’s down for the count, since the RAM and hard drive both test out fine, yet it randomly reboots. Since it is just one of four desktops I use with a keyboard/video switch, it isn’t totally critical, so I moved the two printers attached to it onto another computer, moved QuickBooks onto yet another and will come back to it when I have more time.
I suspect the problem might be something thermal since the problems are more pronounced later in the day when it is hotter.
I’ve met a lot of small business owners over the years who are being held hostage by their web developers.
Before you become one of them, or even if you are a hostage now, you can do certain things to make sure that you aren’t unwillingly at the mercy of your web developer. And like the recent CarFax ad’s, if your web developer isn’t willing to set your website up this way, question whether you have a reputable web developer.
When you build your next website, I would suggest using a CMS also known as a Content Management System.
To paraphrase the movie 'The Graduate':
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.CMS, as in Content Management System.
For most website owners a CMS is the future—unless you want to continue paying your web developer every time you want a change on your website.
Is your website starting to look “so last century?”
When was the last time you posted new content on your website?
Does it have a date last updated on the bottom that says you have ignored it since 2007? Or longer?
Even if you aren’t Amazon.com or Zappos.com, your customers and potential customers are probably finding you more often by Googling you than looking you up in a phone book, if they still have phone books. Try looking your business up on Google, Bing and/or Yahoo. Does it appear in the first page of results?
I have written several times about backing up (Tech Bits 1 and 39)). If you aren’t backing up your data and/or whole computer regularly, shame on you. You are a disaster waiting to happen.
Even if you are backing up regularly, make sure your backups are working. A good friend was surprised to find when her Mac notebook crashed the automatic backups on her Timeline system had mysteriously stopped a couple of months earlier—without any warning or notice!
I’ve been thinking about what my ideal portable computer would look like since attending the Defrag 2009 conference last fall. I was sitting in a session I couldn’t engage in, looking at all the open computers around me. There were PC’s, Mac’s, and tablets, large and small. None seemed quite right.
I loved the tablet I had a couple of years ago, but it was thick and heavy with limited battery life.
