I was reminded just how useful cameras can be after watching a segment on the news this morning where a young lady was using an inexpensive app on her iPhone that allowed her to check in on her dog by viewing the camera on her PC. She just happened to catch a burglar in the process! More on that HERE. …
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John M. Hoyt’s IT Predictions for 2011
Everyone else has been making their predictions for the coming year, so I thought I might do the same… These predictions are based upon industry news, social media and blog rambling as well as some personal wishes. Will any of it come to fruition? I guess at the end of 2011 you can remind me how wrong I was. A …
Is your smartphone spying on you? #android #iphone
Ever download an app for your phone and see all the access you are giving the thing? You wonder why a certain app would need access to your camera or your location, but you go ahead and install it anyway because you want the latest version of the program. I’ve done it myself, installed some game, which states clearly that …
Slow internet access? Charter Business ups the ante in Greenville / Upstate SC
Tired of waiting for that ISO to download? I know the feeling, even with the 30megabit download speeds we currently have… As if they were reading our minds regarding speed limitations, our Charter Business rep let us know the other day that they have turned it up a notch here in Greenville and are offering two new speed packages. The …
Password security is a necessary inconvenience these days due to various sites being hacked…
It sure has been an event filled weekend regarding security! Several high profile sites have been hacked… The largest is the Gawker controlled sites, Gawker, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and a slew of others where it is estimated that as many as 1.5 million usernames and passwords may have been compromised. Supposedly, the Gawker passwords also allowed Facebook to be used for …
Cloud computing: Is Microsoft Aurora / BPOS right for your small business?
Today you can hardly have a conversation with IT professionals without the buzz words, “cloud computing”, “in the cloud”, “cloud solutions”, etc popping up. What do these terms mean? To over-simplify the definition, it means that something is not stored at your location. It is stored “in the cloud”, or on a remote server, and accessed via the internet. The …
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Samsung Galaxy Tab, Fascinate & Epic 4G Thoughts
Anyone who has been following this blog knows that it was just about a month ago that I bought Android based phones and dumped our (until recently) beloved RIM Blackberry phones… My thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy S Epic 4G after EXTENSIVE use are pretty much what I knew the day we first got them: Short battery life (Have increased that …
Six MILLION dollars for computer virus cleanup? That’s what one man paid!
A New York Times article that was tweeted yesterday by @randomlycb really caught my attention… It involves a well-to-do gentleman who takes his computer to a local (New York) computer repair facility for a simple virus cleanup / removal in 2006, and things go horribly wrong. The owner of the computer service center tells the PC owner that he has …
Don’t forget leasing as an option for your next IT renews
As the end of 2010 draws near, some businesses are planning to refresh and renew tired old hardware such as desktop and notebook computers, as well as servers. Driving the updates are security requirements, new versions of operating systems, company rotation policy, depreciation schedules and more often than not, a need to overcome bottlenecks in performance and insure trouble free operation …
SECURE IT ALERT: FireSheep is proof of concept why public unencrypted Wi-Fi is dangerous
Homeland Secure IT Alert for Saturday, October 30, 2010 FireSheep add-on for Firefox browser is proof-of-concept why you should NOT use public / unencrypted Wi-Fi to access without extreme caution. Last week, a tool was released that makes it possible for anyone to easily hijack your web sessions from within a browser view. When I say anyone, that …