Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps

Do you want a quick review of the difference between Microsoft’s newly released Office 365 and Google’s Offerings? I ran across a good feature showdown in Lifehacker that gives you a good overview between what the companies offer you. In summary, looking at the major differences includes a tiered cost system with Microsoft that allows you to choose the services that you want, Microsoft is more feature rich in many of their applications, you can incorporate office pro plus as part of your package for full featured document creation.

If your organization already makes heavy use of Microsoft Exchange for mail and Microsoft Office for productivity, Office 365 will appeal to those who want a familiar, robust tool. Google Apps, and specifically Google Docs, feels barren and plain by comparison, even if it's more accessible and open.

Lync, a feature rich communications program, in Office 365 incorporates a unified communications interface with desktop and whiteboard sharing.

Office 365 requires a little workstation setup to be used fully where Google just needs a compatible browser.

Microsoft centers it file storage around SharePoint. Depending on how you feel about this it is either a good thing or a bad thing. One benefit, Office 365 with Office on the desktop grants offline access whereas Google Apps with Google Docs does not. Google says that they will be turning this ability back on this summer but at the time of this writing it is not available.

I feel that Microsoft has made a good stab at being a solid competitor to Google with Office 365. I have signed up for the trial version and as I work my way through all of different offerings I will continue to write about what I find. Meanwhile, take a look at the Lifehacker article and at both Google’s and Microsoft's sites for more information.

How To: More Special Windows Keystroke Functions

Here are some more keyboard shortcuts that you may find useful.

Shift + Delete	If you want to delete the highlighted item and bypass the Trash Can, use this key combination. The downside is that you won’t get the opportunity to easily restore the file from the Recycle Bin if you later decide you want it back, but you also won’t have to bother emptying the Recycle Bin if you use this method to ditch unwanted files.
Windows + (+/-)	Want a closer look at whatever’s on your screen? Hit Windows and + to zoom in for a magnified view. While you’re magnified, moving the mouse around the screen will move you to the far corners and bring them into view. Windows and - zooms you back out again.
Windows + 1, 2, 3, etc.	Windows 7 introduced a new feature that lets you pin apps to your Taskbar for quick access. An even quicker way to access those apps is with this slick keyboard shortcut. Press Windows + 1 to launch the first pinned app in your Taskbar (from left to right). Windows + 2 launches the second one, Windows + 3 launches the third one, and so on.
Windows + T	Windows + number launches pinned apps in your Taskbar, but if your apps are already open, there’s a quick way to scroll through them. Press Windows + T and you’ll highlight the first open app in your Taskbar. Press it again and you’ll move to the second open app. As you scroll through them, you’ll get a preview box just as you would if you were hovering over the icon with your mouse. When you get to the app you want, hit Enter to bring it to the foreground. This shortcut only works with open apps, and ignores unopened apps that you’ve pinned to your Taskbar.
Windows + Spacebar	If you need to take a quick look at your desktop use this keyboard combo. All of your windows will clear and you will be able to see your desktop. Why might you want to do this? Maybe to see the file you just saved to the desktop… Press Windows + Spacebar, and all of your open windows will turn transparent so you can see right through them. This even works with maximized windows and full-screen views. To return your view to normal, simply let go of the keys.
Windows + Shift + Left or Right Arrow	If you use a dual-monitor setup to maximize your screen real estate, you might like to use one monitor as your primary working screen and the other as a holding pen for active windows. Or maybe you just need to move a window from one side to the other for some reason. In either case, hitting Windows + Shift + Left Arrow will move a current window to from the right display to the left, and using Right Arrow will move it from the left display to the right. If you only have one monitor, these commands will dock your window to the designated side of the screen.
Windows + Shift + Down Arrow	Do you want to minimize the current window to work on something underneath? Using this Keystroke combination will Minimize the current Window.
Windows Logo + L	Do you have sensitive information on your screen that you don’t want others to see when you walk to the coffee machine for a refill? Use this key combination to instantly bring you back to a login screen. You will need to have put in a login/password for you account for this to work this way.
Alt + F6	If you’ve got multiple windows open within a given app, this handy shortcut will let you quickly switch between them, so you don’t have to waste time clicking around in search of the right window. This doesn’t work inside an application like a browser where you have multiple tabs open to different sites. The application must be in separate windows.
Windows + M	We all have a tendency to leave program windows open as we move from application to application during the day. If you want to clear the screen to get back to your desktop this key combination will Minimize all your windows to get to your desktop quickly.
Shift + CTRL + N	Windows 7 Explorer window is easier to use to create new folders but using this keystroke combination will create a new untitled folder in the current folder location.The new folder will appear with the name ‘New folder’ already highlighted so you can type in your own name for it and hit Enter to move on to the next task.

Microsoft Word Tip: Alternate Method of Moving Text

This tip is probably most useful when you're working in a table, although you can use it to reorder paragraphs outside a table, too. Let's say you decide you want the third row of a table to be the top row. Just click within the third row, hold down [Alt][Shift] and press the up arrow key twice. Each time you press the arrow key, Word will move the row up one. You can select multiple contiguous rows to move them as a block, and you can use the down arrow key if you want to move text down instead of up.

Using this shortcut gets a little tricky if you're moving big pieces of text outside a table. It's easy to lose track of what's being relocated where, and you might find it easier to take a standard cut-and-paste approach in those situations. But when the text is small and manageable, the shortcut is great. For example, if you need to move an item up or down within a bulleted or numbered list, you can just click in the item's paragraph and use the [Alt][Shift] and arrow key combo to move the item to the desired spot.

Another Source of Fraud: Urgent notice of Intellectual Property protection

Internet Scamming is rampant and here is yet another way these guys are trying to separate us from our hard earned money. A client of mine received an email stating that someone in the China/Asia are wants to file for a domain name that was already held by my customer. They wanted confirmation that my customer was the trademark owner. The message was as follows:

Subject: Urgent notice of Intellectual Property protection

Dear Manager:

This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally in China and Asia.
On July 4th 2011, We received Tianhua Ltd's application that they are registering the name "[Customer’s Domain Name]" as their Internet Keyword and " [Customer’s Domain Name].cn "、" [Customer’s Domain Name].com.cn " 、" [Customer’s Domain Name].asia "domain names etc.., It is China and ASIA domain names. But after auditing we found the brand name been used by your company. As the domain name registrar in China, it is our duty to notice you, so I am sending you this Email to check. According to the principle in China, your company is the owner of the trademark, In our auditing time we can keep the domain names safe for you firstly, but our audit period is limited, if you object the third party application these domain names and need to protect the brand in china and Asia by yourself, please let the responsible officer contact us as soon as possible. Thank you!

Best regards,

John
Oversea marketing manager 
Shanghai Office (Head Office)
3002, Nanhai Building, No. 854 Nandan Road,
Xuhui District, Shanghai 200070, China
Tel: +86 216191 8696
Mobile: +86 136615 29704
Fax: +86 216191 8697
Web: www.ygnetworkltd.com

Here is a great article that goes through and picks out all of the pieces that may help you in the future to determine if email like the one above is real or a scam.

Intel SSD 320: Taking Reliability To The Next Level

Interesting post about Intel’s SSD technology…

Intel SSD 320 drives include redundant flash memory. Should any of the drive's blocks go bad, they can be remapped to the surplus storage transparently. The new SSDs also include an array of capacitors able to keep the controller running during a power loss. Cached information is quickly written to non-volatile flash to maintain data integrity.

We all know SSDs are fast. They're so fast, in fact, that many enterprises dependent on high-performance storage have replaced cabinets full of mechanical disks with just a handful of solid-state drives to achieve similar I/O throughput. But, in a business environment, uptime is often even more important than speed.

Intel already has a fantastic reputation for delivering reliable SSDs. Its drives are increasingly being used in mission critical environments specifically because they're proving to be so dependable. Real-world data from the company's reseller partners help quantify those claims—Intel's second-generation mainstream X25-M came back .59% of the time, while competing SSDs demonstrated a greater than two percent return rate.

And now that we're looking at the third-gen SSD 320, Intel's reliability story gets an even more substantial emphasis. To begin, SSD 320 drives include redundant flash memory. Should any of the drive's blocks go bad, they can be remapped to the surplus storage transparently. The new SSDs also include an array of capacitors able to keep the controller running during a power loss. Cached information is quickly written to non-volatile flash to maintain data integrity.

Those improvements add up a product in which customers should put even more faith. In fact, Intel recently fortified its warranty coverage on the SSD 320, extending it from three years to five.

Evernote News…

If you are using Evernote you probably have gotten this email notification from them. First off there is a new update available. To force an update on your desktop client click on the Help menu option and choose Check For Updates. You will be prompted to download and run the update if you don’t have the updated version already. While many of the changes are cosmetic, Evernote tells us that it should be more user-friendly to use.

What! You don’t have Evernote?

If you are running around with many different kinds of devices, you may want to consider looking at this program. This program has front end program interfaces for the iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It is a great way to share notes between all of these devices. Start with the free version and see if it is a good fit for what you do. I think that you will.

And…

If you have an iPad 2 you might be interested in the new Evernote Peek. This learning application works in conjunction with an iPad 2 and a smart cover.

Connect Peek to your Evernote account and brush up on a language, make flashcards for a quiz or test your trivia knowledge, all by simply peeking under the Smart Cover.

Take a sneak peak at how it works:

iPads for all! Sort of…

As reported by the Huntersville Herald, the town of Cornelius, Colorado has fond that a new pilot program to replace paper with iPads is helping them save money, production time and helping them be more green. Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte and the town’s five commissioners were each issued an iPad 2 recently paid for by the town.

The iPads all plug into the town’s NovusAgenda Software, and provides the commissioners with all of the necessary meeting materials, including budget worksheets, zoning maps and PowerPoint presentations. In previous instances this was comprised of an average of 210 pages of printed material for each commissioner other recipients totaling a total of 19 copies. These packages had to be developed, printed, copied and package for each meeting.That’s a lot of work and cost involved to do this.

Town Manager Anthony Roberts says he’s amazed with how much sense it makes to use iPads and digital material instead of paper. “It’s just a no brainer,” he told the Huntersville Herald. “We used to print all those agenda packets and people threw them in the recycling bin after the meeting.” Plus, Roberts says, going digital helps transparency, since “the beauty of this system is you have everything online. It’s there forever and a day, and the general public sees everything.”

We are starting see more and more applications that have web based interfaces that allow the end user to interact with multiple kinds of endpoint devices that they can use. This is a trend that will help bring down the cost to the end user especially those that have small budgets and allow them to act as big as their much larger counterparts.

The Toshiba Thrive will be shipping soon.

The Toshiba Thrive (strange name) will become available towards the middle of this month from which you can pick from one of three models (8, 16 and 32GB). Priced at $429.99, $479.99 and $579.99 respectively. This appears to be a WiFi only machine at this time and doesn’t show any 3g or 4g radios as part of the package. It is running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) and touts having a bright responsive multi-touch, high resolution 10.1 inch screen. The LED-backlit display is well-sized for surfing the Internet, and engineered with exclusive adaptive display technology, which adjusts brightness and contrast to the surrounding light conditions. Thrive not only has a well-sized display, but really rises to the occasion when it comes to expanded entertainment. Use its built-in HDMI port to share on a big screen TV all the stuff you've captured and carried around - in up to 1080p Full HD resolution.

Main Specifications:

• Product Type: Tablet - black
• Operating System: Android 3.1
• Dimensions (WxDxH): 10.7 in x 0.6 in x 7 in
• Weight: 1.6 lbs
• Display: 10.1" TFT - LED backlight - 1280 x 800 - Multi-Touch
• Processor: NVIDIA Tegra 2 1 GHz ( Dual-Core )
• RAM: 1 GB
• Memory (depending on model): 8 GB, 16 GB or 32 GB
• Supported Flash Memory Cards: SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card, SDXC Memory Card
• Wireless Connectivity: 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 HS
• Digital Camera: Rear + 2 Megapixel front
• HD Video Recording: 720p
• Supported Digital Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
• Supported Digital Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, MIDI, AMR, AAC +, OGG
• Sensors: Ambient light sensor, gyro sensor
• Manufacturer Warranty: 1 year warranty

Software - Clock, Calculator, Quickoffice, Virtual Keyboard, Google Talk, Gmail, YouTube, Adobe Flash Player, Swype, Google eBooks, Android Browser, Android Market, Android Music Player, Gallery, Google Music, Google Places, Google Latitude, Google Search, Google Calendar, Google Calendar Sync, Google Contacts, Google Contacts Sync, Google Voice Search, LogMeIn Ignition, Hardwood Backgammon, Hardwood Euchre, Hardwood Solitaire, Hardwood Hearts, Hardwood Spades, MOG Music, Printer Share, Need for Speed Shift, Toshiba App Place, Toshiba Book Place, Toshiba Start Place, Toshiba Media Player, Toshiba Service Station, Toshiba File Manager.

What is a Zettabyte?

recent Engadget post demonstrated just how big a Zettabyte is. Cisco things that by 2015 will be the commencement of the Zettabyte era. Other ways to visualize how big a Zettabyte is:

“you can alternatively think of it as the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs, 36 million years of HD video, or the volume of the Great Wall of China if you allow an 11oz cup of coffee to represent a gigabyte of data. So "zetta" must be Greek for one hell of a lot, but what Cisco expects is that we'll be pushing that much information around the web each year by 2015.”

I still can get a sense of how big a terabyte is, and I can barely imagine the amount of storage that a single petabyte is.But going up two more factors to get to a zettabyte is just mind boggling and to think we will be pushing that much data around the Internet in another couple of years is amazing.

Astaro Acquisition by Sophos Completed

We received an email detailing primarily that there will be little change in the overall function that we have with Astaro and the products that we work with from them. What we will see is a different email format for our contacts, a new logo and updated marketing material but for the most part it will be business as usual.

We look forward to the expanded product line and adding the long list of Sophos products to our arsenal. As we become more familiar with these products look for more information in this blog as we explore these new products.

How To: Some of my favorite keyboard shortcut commands

When it comes to Windows I am totally old school. Whenever I find a keyboard shortcut that I can use instead of going through a menu system I definitely use them. Here are 10 of my most often use keyboard shortcuts that can be used in many different Windows Programs as well as Office.

1. Cut, Copy and Paste are usually some of the first commands that you learn the shortcut keys for. They can be used not only when editing documents but in many utility situations as well. Cut – will delete your selected text or item and place that selection into the memory buffer that is called the clipboard. You can perform this operation with a mouse one of two ways, by selecting it of the edit menu or ribbon bar, right mouse clicking on the selection and choosing Cut on pop-up menu or by holding down the [CTRL] key and pressing [X] simultaneously.
2. Copy – the keyboard shortcut is [CTRL] [C]
3. Paste – the keyboard shortcut is [CTRL] [V]
4. Select entire contents can be done with [CTRL] [A]
5. To force a save press [CTRL] [S]
6. To center a line press [CTRL] [E]
7. To align text to the left press [CTRL] [L]
8. To align text to the right press [CTRL] [R]
9. To undo the last command press [CTRL] [Z]
10. And for my last one I will give you a twofer, [CTRL] [I] applies Italics to the selected text and [CTRL] [B] will Bold the selected text.