No Blogging For Six Months »

Today it has officially been 6 months since we created a post on this blog. We intentionally stopped blogging just to see how much blogging REALLY helps our rankings across the different search engines.

During this blogging sabbatical, we noticed some interesting patterns relating to comment spam, visits from other countries as well as visits from the United States and we plan on using this traffic data to make our sites even better going forward.

Internet Technology and Web Design has taken some interesting turns over the past few months. It was nice to take a step back and just watch the metamorphosis unfold – seeing the bigger picture. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting about a few of the more interesting things we discovered, so stay tuned.

Centralized Storage for Your Business »

So you have 2 PCs or maybe even 10 PCs in your business. Each person has their own files on their PCs and makes changes to those files when necessary. Though, what if you have files that need to be shared by everyone (or even certain people) in the business? What if multiple people need to make changes to a single file? Things can easily get tangled pretty quickly. Causing time wasted by emailing files back and forth and making sure the person received it, etc…  This is where having a network and a NAS comes in handy.

What is NAS? Otherwise known as a Network Attached Storage Drive, a NAS is basically a hard drive that can be accessed anywhere in your business, wirelessly and even remotely. Being able to work on files from home is always nice. :c) With a NAS, data can be centrally stored and set up with permissions for either all or certain users in your business. This way, files may be shared with ease, both instantly and efficiently. Another great thing about a NAS is that it is easily backed up so that your data is safe and your PCs don’t even have to be on overnight.

If you are interested in having either  a network, a NAS drive, or both set up for your business, please send me an email and I will give you all of the details.   

Disable Startup Programs in XP and Vista »

After using your PC for a while you may notice that it seems to take longer and longer to start up. This can be extremely annoying, especially if all you want to do is turn on your PC for a quick peek at your bank account or quickly gather some information from a letter or email. So, something that may take a minute to do, will now take 10 minutes because your PC has to load up all of those programs at startup. Having a quick-start option just for these reasons would be fantastic. Come on Microsoft!!! As of now, I will show you how to minimize those start-up times to get them closer to being acceptable.

1. For XP: Click Start -> Click Run -> Type msconfig -> Press Enter

   For Vista: Click Windows button ->In the search area, Type msconfig -> Press Enter

2. You will notice the System Configuration Utility pop-up.

3. Click on the Startup tab

4. This lists every program that starts up with Windows

5. Very carefully sort through the list. Some of it may not make sense. For example in XP: Apple‘s Quicktime program is actually called “qttask“. To disable this program from starting up, uncheck the box beside “qttask” -> Click Apply -> Restart the computer. To see a better description of each file, expand the width of the “Command” column, up near the Startup tab. I recommend only unchecking one item at a time, to make sure that nothing goes wrong during the next restart. Please be extra careful with this, as some of these files are necessary for either Windows to work correctly or maybe even your corporate software.

If you have any questions, or are hesitant on doing this, please email me and I will gladly help you through the process.

SpyBossPro: The Latest Spyware Threat »

The latest and most annoying piece of spyware released is called SpyBossPro. This piece of software is pretty sneaky and could cause plenty of headaches for the end user. As a piece of spyware, SpyBossPro will actually record your keystrokes (like when you type in your credit card information), record all web sites visited, take screenshots at regular intervals, as well as send all of this information to a predetermined email address. It does all of this in the background, so you will not even know it’s happening.

So please, keep your Anti-Virus programs up to date. They will detect this nasty piece of software if it is on your machine, or trying to enter your machine and save you many headaches in the future.  

Monthly Tech Support »

As a part of the Crystal Coast Technologies Tech Support program we are now offering monthly tech support service to businesses both large and small. These services are meant to keep your PCs and your network running as efficiently as possible so that you can concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Monthly service plans include on-call support, 1 visit monthly to clean PCs, fix PCs, etc… A fully detailed diagram of your network will also be made to include all of the important information about your hardware and network connectivity. OnSite and OnLine backup solutions may also be added to the monthly service plan to make sure your data is safe and well protected in case of a natural disaster (fire, hurricane, etc…)

Email me for further details.