Major telcom carriers announced that they'll be providing broadband access to lower-income US residents for less than $10 per month; coupled with refurbished PC's at $150 and you're talking about a very generous and ambitious plan!  

 We're available almost any way these days - Skype, Facebook, EMail, Telephone, smoke signals, etc..  However, a new one that's caught our eye is Thumbtack.com.  It has a complete listing of services provided by local vendors and we're proud to say we're now in the Computer Services and Consulting area.  Check it out and let us know what you think!

 With the AuthToken of Google's Android device laid bare (see link below), that simply means that any data you sync from your Android phone *might* be hackable - though extremely unlikely...  

HOWEVER, for all of you who use a 3rd party (ActiveSync, etc.) technology to sync your mail, calendar, etc. to another source like your Corp. email provider, you are fine...  

For those dependent on Google and needing to keep your information private, here's another example of how the "Cloud" doesn't work for privacy!

  http://blogs.computerworld.com/18304/scary_android_security_hole_in_99_of_phones_panic

Finally - and especially when depending on a "Cloud" or 3rd-party application not in your control, get verification... see this: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216790/Researcher_Dropbox_misrepresents_security_features tp to convince you!

 If you are like so many small businesses (us included), you use some sort of "cloud application" in your business.  Whether its email (GMail,etc), your books/GL package (QuickBooks online), or just advertising through Facebook or other social/search media, if you are at all "in-touch", some portion of your business uses a large-centrally-accessible-yet-geographically-diverse application or service.

     Our only advice to you for what you "out/crowd-source" is to be darn-sure that if it does go down or if the information that application contains gets out, that it will not destroy your business by: A) Stopping a mission-critical function(s) or B) Disseminating confidential (either legally-confidential or just violating your customer/client confidence!) information.  The giants of this space are not immune - Facebook being the most recent victim/perpetrator (wonder how many friends, businesses, and relationships would be destroyed if FB ever REALLY lost data - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216609/Symantec_says_Facebook_site_leaked_information)

    However, lets look at some others recently:  Sony over the past several weeks, and lets not even start on retailers and credit card companies.  "Wait!"  you say, "These weren't Cloud/Outsource apps or providers!".  Well, lets take a look at what they all have in common: they are large geographically diverse applications that contain a virtual universe of personal data; they are touched by incredible amounts of hands in creating, maintaining, and destroying both the data itself - and also the code surrounding it; the code/application surrounding each "virtual universe" of data has common strengths and weaknesses and those weeknesses yield the whole enchilada.   "What about our own apps on our server(s) - why aren't those at risk?"  Confidential information is always at risk, but when locally hosted is not generally in plain view of, easily accessible to,  or even of interest to the estimated 2 billion internet users (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) currently out there.

      The purpose of this comparision is not to say "don't use large apps or services" - just don't make them the core of your business or personal life and make darn sure that A) Every bit of information on there you are ready for everyone to see and/or B) You have a backup plan if its lost!. 

 I just got a cup of coffee from an unnamed restaurant, and was stunned to find it was $1.84 pre-tax (and not a designer coffee or Starbucks)!  Since I did not have that much change, I paid with a debit card.  With a background in restaurant management before I settled into geek-hood, I immediately began analyzing this.

The Food-COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) for a cup of coffee is generally accepted to be ~$.05-$.12 per 8 ounces so this cup would be generously valued at $.24 to produce.   So far, we're good at a gross revenue of 83%.  But wait, its time to put it on the good-old credit card.... for the sake of argument lets say it doesn't matter about the question of credit vs/ debit card - we'll assume a transaction fee of $.25 and 2.2% transaction for a total of $.29.  That in turn means that the COGS just more than doubled to $.53 or 34%!!!  Of course they are not going to just eat that cost-of-credit - they have smart people who crank their averages (I know - I used to do it!) to figure out what those transaction-fees are going to be and then adjust their whole menu-mix accordingly - what that means is whether you pay cash-or-credit, you're paying for everyone else's credit purchases!

So the next time you order that cup-'o-joe, don't forget to mentally prepare yourself for the extra .25 for all of us using plastic - its not bad, but for small products, the transaction outweighs the product!

 We were working with a client on an HTML email issue where the main content of the email was "missing" (invisible).  The underlying HTML code was malformed but still contained the main content (which contained confidential data - but was sent by a 3rd party thank goodness)  and reminded us of something very important: that HTML (or any other code) can mask or hide important/confidential information.  It is therefore our highest recommendation that emails should always be sent in text-only form for really secure installations and/or transmissions.  

Lets face it, most people (including IT folks) don't look at the underlying code of an email any more than they look at their digital-pictures for encoded messages in the pixels (a romanticized-if-not-popular spy tactic).  At least spot -checking your businesses outgoing emails for HTML issues is good practice if not banning altogether.

With explosion of networking applications like Facebook and Twitter, the idea that certain groups of people can collectively give expertise / guidance on fields/disciplines.  The latest is "bloat-ware" or that software that was installed that was unneeded  and can slow down your machine.  By "can slow down", we almost always mean "does slow down" since most of these programs running at least a token presence at all times.  However, can such a "group therapy" approach work on bloatware?  Maybe if its not a strict majority and the hosting company moderates it, it would be little different that a company with "experts", but then that kind-of takes away from the "Crowd-sourcing" doesn't it?  

  The ubiquitous pair of Adobe's products: Flash and Reader frequently receive multiple updates and seemingly on a daily basis recently.  The latest onces happen today for these products and YOU SHOULD ALWAYS APPLY UPDATES FOR THESE PRODUCTS!  Many of them do not require a reboot, but since almost every website has some sort of PDF or Flash content,  you'll always use it (and be at least somewhat blase about updates and loads) - this ultimately leaves your system unpatched and visiting any compromised website will almost certainly guarantee your compromise at some point!

  There have been ALOT of Adobe Reader and Flash updates during the past 6 weeks - mostly to address so-called "zero-day" attacks using these products.  If you are already using Google Chrome as your browser you *should* be updated already - just go to the Wrench and verify the version number as being equal to greater than v.6.0.472.62; if so, then you're all set.  

  Why is a little-known branch of Xerox important?  Xerox was a pioneer in so many more ways than just the "simple" copier and printer - they contributed to mammoth amounts of driving technology throughout all of IT and maybe considered the "JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratories)" of the IT world.  Some interesting reminisces here: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9186198/Xerox_PARC_turns_40_Marking_four_decades_of_tech_innovations