Norton Business Suite

Many Interconnected Technologies clients know about Comcast Business Class internet service because they’re already using it or we’re in the process of moving them to it. One of the small benefits of the Comcast Business service – in addition to the much more important speed improvement and cost savings – is Comcast’s inclusion of Norton Business Suite (NBS). NBS is essentially a re-branded version of Norton 360, which is a superset of Norton Internet Security, the standard antivirus and firewall package we’ve used and recommended for years.

Comcast Business clients receive 25 “free” non-expiring licenses of NBS as part of the service package. It takes a little setup work to get to the point where one can download and use the software, but we’ve set up so many of these that it’s a snap for us to do it, and the result is the best protection available, at no additional charge, with licenses that don’t have to be renewed each year. All we need is the Comcast account number. Once we have that, we create what Comcast refers to as a “portal” account from which we can download and install NBS. It’s a good thing.

Address books in Outlook

We get contacted all the time about the topic of addressing email using Outlook.

Outlook, depending on how it’s used, has several different methods of addressing emails:

1. Typing in an email manually.
2. Using automatic fill in of previously-entered email addresses from the Nickname File (pre-Outlook 2010) or Suggested Contacts (Outlook 2010).
3. Using automatic fill in from Contacts.
4. Using the To... or Cc... buttons.

This article addresses the 4th of these. We’ll address the other three later.

If your contacts are in your Outlook Contacts folder, as they should be, you can use the To... button or Cc... buttons when sending an email to view and select addressees from your Contacts folders. By default, if you are using Outlook as an internet email client, the Outlook Contacts folder will be what’s shown when you select the menu or toolbar button to view address books. If, on the other hand, you use Outlook with a hosted Exchange account (an option chosen by many Interconnected Technologies clients because of the additional capabilities available through doing so), by default you will see the Global Address List (the list of all addresses in your company who also use Exchange) as your first choice for selecting email addresses, and have to use the pulldown menu to select your own Outlook Contacts folder.

Most non-corporate users of this configuration would prefer that their Outlook Contacts folder be the first choice.

This can be changed as follows:

1. Open the address book (in Outlook 2010, this is done by selecting the Address Book button on the Home Ribbon Bar).

2.  Select Tools, and then Options, and you will see the following:

3. In this windows you can specify which Contacts folder is selected by default when choosing email addresses.

Choose the behavior you wish, and enjoy!

OK, THAT’S COOL!!

Every now and then I come across something that just works well and is very cool. Such a thing is the new feature of Dropbox wherein its Android app automatically uploads pictures. No longer do we lowly Windows / Android users have to feel jealous of the image in the Apple ads that shows someone taking a picture on an iPhone and having that picture show up on a computer and a tablet.

And we don’t have to deal with iCloud.

And we don’t have to pay for it either! Dropbox for basic use (and that’s all it’s really suited for, given recent security lapses) is free.

There is a tool called DropSync which I’ve not yet investigated, but which may offer expanded function beyond this specific cool feature which is included in Dropbox.

Not only does this make pictures taken on an Android device almost immediately available on one’s computer, it also serves as a functional backup for pictures captured on the phone.

N.B. There are some considerations:

1. This tool uploads all of your pictures into one big folder, called Camera Uploads. It does not distinguish between or among various folders on a single device or multiple devices. Everything ends up in one folder. If the goal is to eventually take the pictures from the camera and file them away like one does with a “regular” digital camera, this is fine.

2. To accomplish #1, above, this tool *renames* all of your photos to a standard which I happen to like: yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss. It’s about as close to the ISO standard for date and time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601) as one can come in an operating system that doesn’t allow the colon “:” character in a file name (what were those ISO people thinking?), which is good. It’s a naming standard that allows for varying sources to contribute to a common folder with unique file names, as long as you’re not taking pictures with two different devices at the exact same second.

3. It’ll use your bandwidth, if that matters to you. By default it uploads pictures and videos.

4. There may be other aspects of this (what happens if I delete a picture in one place or the other, or start moving pictures out of the Camera Uploads folder into my nicely organized pictures folders?) which I haven’t probed thoroughly, but which may affect you as a user. Beware!

Given the other file syncing and access mechanisms available to Interconnected Technologies’ clients, this is one use for Dropbox that really shines, and is a reason to use it!

Online disks and how to use them

Interconnected Technologies’ clients enjoy the power of the types of I/T infrastructure employed in large companies, but without the suffocating overhead and lack of custom fit required to provide such an infrastructure to the employees of a large company. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm that is referred to as “a file server” or “group file sharing” or, more recently, “files in the cloud”.

For the past 5 years Interconnected Technologies’ clients have employed the services of a company called Jungle Disk for several purposes, among them file repository and sharing (“virtual file server” or “online disk”). These services have strengthened and been refined over the years to provide small companies, individuals and teams with a cost effective, powerful way to share files without the process and architecture changes required of services like Google Docs or Windows Skydrive. Jungledisk is also far more secure than either of these two mechanisms (or indeed any of its competitors), with all files encrypted in flight and at rest, and with that encryption under user control.

From a user point of view, once set up, these services appear as one or more “disks” in either Windows or MacOS. In Windows, these disks have a drive letter (Z:, for example) and a name (“MyCompany”, for example). In MacOS, they appear as named drives (“MyCompany”, for example).

Using these disks is almost as simple as using any other disk in or attached to a given computer. With the Windows version, the disks show up under Computer (or My Computer, in Windows XP). In MacOS, they show up as named drives on the desktop or in the Finder, depending on how the user configures them.

These disks appear to be local disks on the computer, but in fact anything placed on them is actually being placed on an online disk accessible to others in the organization to whom similar, secure access has been given. This makes these disks an excellent way to share files for a whole organization, a team, or just an individual with multiple computers. Users can create shortcuts to the disks themselves, or to subfolders or files on the disks, just like they do with a local drive.

The combination of price, function and security makes Jungle Disk an unbeatable product for a wide range of Interconnected Technologies clients. It’s a bit complex to set up for the novice, but that’s where Interconnected Technologies comes in – we’ve done it so many times, it’s a snap to do! Once it’s set up, it’s very simple to use, and gives small business clients the power of big business infrastructure without the big business overhead.

Egnyte File Server - 5 types of access

Egnyte’s online file server is a winner for many clients. It epitomizes the type of powerful but simple service that InterConnected Technologies believes allow small businesses to maintain a simple, manageable I/T environment without the burden of “big business” overhead.

Egnyte offers users 4 ways to access files, which I’ll describe here.

Access Type	Description / Use	Advantages	Disadvantages
Power user – Personal Local Cloud	This method mirrors to the local hard drive some or all of the files to which the user has permissions, and keeps them in sync: files changed on the file server are mirrored to the local disk, and changes to files on the local disk are mirrored to the server.	Fast, local access to files. Access to files when the computer is not online.	Files accessible if computer is lost or stolen. Increased likelihood of parallel changes to a single file.
Power user – Network Drive	This method creates a network drive that operates in a manner similar to a typical drive on a network server.	Users can manipulate files in largely the same way they manipulate files on the local computer. Files are not on the local disk in case of loss or theft of the machine.	Access to files only when the computer is online. Performance inferior to accessing local files. User may be prompted for file access credentials.
Power user – Manually Mapped Network Drive	This method is largely similar to the Network Drive option.	Similar to those of Network Drive. Specific Windows drive letter can be chosen and adjusted.	Similar to those of Network Drive. Awkward implementation of file access controls.
Power / Standard user – Web Access	This method uses a well-designed web-based interface to provide upload/download access to files.	Simple access to files from any internet-connected computer. Plentiful Standard User accounts are provided at each plan level to allow more limited team members to participate.	No ability to open/change/save files direction – files must be downloaded for editing and then uploaded manually afterward.
File / Folder sharing link	Power or Standard users can be allowed to create and send links to files and folders via email.	Allows users to send links to files too large to email.	Could expose sensitive files to inappropriate access if not used properly.