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!

Windows XP support from Microsoft ending in early 2014

Microsoft has announced already that certain older versions of Windows have been removed from support:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/end-support

This is one of the few places I've seen an official, albeit tangential, statement that Windows XP SP3 - the *last* version of Windows XP - will be out of support on April 8, 2014:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307853

That seems a long way off, but if you have a corporate strategy that still includes Windows XP - either by preference or due to an application requirement or limitation – or if you have an old Windows XP machine around that’s just sitting there providing some function it’s always provided just fine - it's time to have a firm plan now to upgrade from Windows XP in the next calendar year. Yes, that a year ahead of the official termination of support. Still, that is our recommendation – no sense running into an externally imposed deadline.

Having an operating system exit support may not sound like an urgent matter, but it is since it means that updates will no longer be provide. This includes *security* updates, even for identified security problems for which there is no defense.

It’s important. Windows 7 is a very solid, very usable system. Windows 8 will be out this year. Windows Vista is a memory. Windows XP is a relic. 

It’s time.

We can help!

Twitterfeed testing

Always looking for ways to make people (myself included) more productive, I'm trying out Twitterfeed.com - a mechanism to automatically post my entries here at Interconnect Now to the Interconnect Now Twitter and Facebook pages.

Let's see how it works!