North Florida Technology Consultants

Come visit us at the 2012 Business Showcase

Blog, featured | No comment

Once again this year, we will be at the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce’s  Business Showcase. Stop by to visit us in the east wing and be sure to enter our drawing where we will be giving away  a tablet bag and a portable battery pack that will recharge your phone or tablet. See below for more information from the chamber.

Join the Chamber on Thursday, May 17 from 4 – 7 p.m. for the 2012 Business Showcase at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

Business Showcase provides an interactive environment for the community to meet and mingle with more than 70 of Gainesville’s finest businesses. With more than 400 guests each year, Showcase helps local businesses create strategic connections with other businesses and the community.

In addition to meeting dozens of great businesses, visitors can enjoy a cash bar, delicious food from David’s Real Pit BBQ, Gator Domino’s, Take Away Gourmet and Willy’s Mexicana Grill. The University of Athletic Association will bring Albert and an entourage of UF cheerleaders, so make sure to get your picture taken!

Registration is not required for those looking to check out the latest ideas from local vendors and make new business connections. Tickets are $12 at the door. 

So You Want To Buy a Smartphone?

Blog, featured | No comment

Smartphone choices can be overwhelming. Should you choose between Blackberry, Android or the iPhone? The answer to that depends on what you want out of your phone.

If you are a current Blackberry user and love your Blackberry, you may want to stick with that but there are some down sides. The biggest issue in my opinion is that all of the data goes through the RIM servers in Canada. Now I’m not just ripping on Canada here, but there is a single point of failure which can be an issue. As Blackberry users have been recently aware, there was an issue with those servers and blackberry users were not able to get corporate email or access the internet for a couple of days. The other issue to me is that you have to run the blackberry enterprise server software to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server which adds an unnecessary level of complexity, iPhone and Android don’t require this.

Android phones have been a fairly popular choice mainly because of the relatively low cost for a smartphone. The main complaints I have heard about Android phones is that the can be a little flaky and the battery life is not that great. Android has become more stable, but it is hard to know which version of Android is running on a given phone and it is up to the phone maker and the carrier as to when and if a phone will be updated. Android phones are great for email (including native connection to a Microsoft Exchange Server) and web browsing, and they have lots of apps for doing tons of other things. The Android Marketplace does not have the strict rules that the iOS App Store making it more open but also making it a little less secure (you could get an app that crashes or makes your phone act in an unexpected way). There are tons of choices when it comes to Android phones that include keyboards or large screens, cheap or free phones or the latest bleeding edge technology phones. All of the choices are great but can be confusing. Adding to the confusion is that the same phone may have different names on different carriers. The best remedy for all of this is to go into a store and try the phones to find one that you like.

Many people choose the iPhone because it is very popular, but there are other reasons to get the iPhone. One of the biggest problems with the iPhone was that it was only available on AT&T, but it is now available on Verizon and Sprint (sorry T-Mobile folks). The iPhone is great for email (like the Android it supports connecting to a Microsoft Exchange Server) and web browsing, and has the most apps of any of the phones. Apple does have a strict approval process for it’s App Store but most end users don’t seem to mind. You can find a lot of apps for productivity as well as games (not that you would need games on your phone). There aren’t many choices especially if you have Sprint (just the iPhone 4s), Verizon (iPhone 4 and 4s) and the prices are at the top end for phones. In my opinion the iPhone is the easiest to use and apart from the initial setup I very rarely have to support them.

Hopefully this will help you make a decision when looking for a smartphone and shed some light on the similarities and differences.

P.S. I know I have left out Windows, Nokia phones, and probably others but I honestly don’t see those out in the wild and have little experience with them.

Disaster Preparation: Are You Ready For Hurricane Season?

Blog, featured | No comment

It’s hurricane season once again and here in Florida we are no strangers to what that can mean for our safety and our livelihoods. One of the things people often forget about when preparing for a disaster is their IT infrastructure. There are a few simple steps that you can take to ensure that the computers and servers in your business have the best chance of surviving a storm.

The first thing to do is make sure you have a good offsite backup. If it looks like a storm is headed your way, stop and make an extra backup and take it to a secure place. There is no such thing as too many backups.

You will also want to make sure that all of your computers that sit on the floor are placed on top of a desk. It doesn’t take more than an inch or so of water to completely destroy a computer sitting on the floor.

Make sure that the server and any other equipment is covered with a heavy duty plastic in case a leak develops in the roof above.

When you leave before the impending storm, turn off all equipment and unplug the power cables. Make sure that the network equipment is unplugged as well to prevent a power surge going through the data network and damaging the computers and servers.

The above items should be just a small part of an overall disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Help for developing a plan can be found at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety http://www.disastersafety.org/ofbInfo?execution=e5s1&type=ofb_basic

Simple Solutions: Chrome Web Apps

Blog, featured | No comment

One of the things I get asked quite frequently is if I can recommend an inexpensive software to do a certain job. I can usually answer these questions with an open source alternative to a comercial package but lately I have been looking to the Chrome Web Store for these types of solutions.

The Chrome Web Store is linked to Google’s Chrome web browser that is stedily gaining popularity. Once you have Chrome installed you have access to a large number of web based applications. The apps are usually inexpensive or free and can perform a number of tasks from photo editing and mind mapping to drafting and just plain old time wasting (I’m looking at you Angry Birds).

One of the benefits to using web apps is that you dont have to install anything onto the hard drive of your computer and have 8 different free photo editing packages cluttering things up. Also since most of the apps are free there is not much to lose when trying them out and you can usually read revies and see what is popular with other users. The success of Apple’s App Store has changed the landscape a bit for finding quality applications and that has been applied here to thousands of web based applications making it easier to find the apps that meet your needs.