Just like your house needs some freshening up for the spring months, your computers and other devices can also use a good sweeping from time to time.

For only $99, we will have a trained expert perform a “Spring Cleaning” of your computer or network to make it run faster and with fewer problems.  For only $99, we’ll come onsite to perform a system maintenance check to:

• Detect and remove hidden spyware
• Check your privacy settings, firewall and network security
• Perform various system checks and maintenance to speed up your computer and network
• Block annoying pop-up ads and check your online security settings
• Check for system errors, conflicts, or other problems
• Verify your data backups

Normally we charge $395 for this maintenance service, but it’s yours for only $99. But you have to hurry…this special is only good through the end of May, so call today!

831-207-4323

On March 1st, Google implemented a new, unified privacy policy that affects the browsing history and information Google has on you, both past and present. Prior to this change, your Google history of the searches you made and sites you visited was not shared with Google’s other services, particularly advertisers. Naturally, Google is one of the biggest media and marketing companies in the world, and your preferences and search information is pure gold from a marketing standpoint. Marketers armed with that information would know exactly what products and services to display to you as you use the search engine.

However, your search history can reveal a lot about you including details on your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your web history with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your web history and stop your web history from being recorded in the future. To do this, sign into your Google Account and go to the “History” section, then select “Remove All History.”
Of course, clearing the web history in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing your preferences, searches and information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be obtained and used against you by law enforcement.
With web history enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented. This brings up a whole other topic of what kind of information should you post about yourself (or store) online. Facebook is another site that gathers tons of personal information about you, including your location, date of birth, friends and family, age, preferences and much, much more. In the future, I believe that cyber security will become an increasingly important issue for all of us.

A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.
~Tenneva Jordan

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the payment is pure love.
~Mildred B. Vermont

A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.
~Peter De Vries

The phrase “working mother” is redundant.
~Jane Sellman

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.
~Rajneesh

Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.
~Pearl S. Buck

Seems like just yesterday phones were simple devices for making and receiving phone calls. These days, smartphones are as functional as full-fledged desktop PCs and hold valuable applications, e-mail messages, photos, videos, documents and, of course, phone numbers and contact information. If losing the data on your phone would be a true disaster, then you’ll want to back up your phone as regularly and carefully as you do your other devices.

Major smartphone platforms can back up their data to a computer or to a cloud backup via the Internet. Here are a couple of resources you can use with popular Android smartphones to ensure that all of your data is properly backed up.

iPhone
iCloud is Apple’s new service for backing up your iPhone and other media you purchase through iTunes. When you sign up, iCloud will automatically backup the mail, calendar and contacts on your iPhone, as well as any music, books, apps, videos or media on your iPad, Mac or even your PC. iCloud uses the power of cloud computing to sync your devices automatically, so you don’t have to dock your device to keep things in sync.

Android
Start with the settings on your phone; go to “Settings > Privacy” on your phone and make sure the “Back up my settings” and “Automatic restore” options are checked. Next, go to “Settings > Accounts” and sync, open your Gmail account, and check off all options. With these settings in place, your contacts, system settings, apps, calendar, and e-mail will be restored whenever you set up a new Android phone with that same Gmail account. However, this is only a basic backup; it won’t save the photos and text messages on your phone.

For a more complete backup, you might try MyBackup Pro ($5 plus 50 MB online storage for free and $1 to $2 per month for more online storage). The program runs automated scheduled backups, supports a wide range of Android phones and will back up app install files that do not have copyright protections programmed into them.  If your phone is rooted, you might consider Titanium Backup ($5.99 for Pro), which backs up all apps, all data associated with them and the Android Market links that show you’ve paid for them. It also saves most phone Pro versions and will integrate with Dropbox.

Route All Your Calls From Various Phones To One Device: Whether it’s a standard desk phone, mobile device or Skype, fumbling between phones can be a thing of the past with the Plantronics Calisto 835.

At about $200, this desktop speakerphone device uses Bluetooth to connect to your cellphone, USB to hook up with your computer, and the wall socket to link to your phone line. When a call comes in from any of your devices, it’s instantly routed to this easy-to-use speakerphone that sits on your desk.

The backlit screen is bright and responsive, giving the Calisto a flashy, futuristic feel. It comes with a clip-on microphone that allows you to take calls while freeing your hands to type or to walk around your office.

Hopefully by now you realize you need to keep a close watch over the security of your PC and other devices (or you’re smart enough to hire us to do it for you). Either way, cybercrime is BIG business, and small business owners are seen as the low hanging fruit by attackers who are looking for easy-to-steal financial data, passwords and the like. Some do it for profit, others do it for fun.

But there’s a much bigger threat to small business data security that can not only leak your information out to the masses, but can also corrupt or erase data, screw up operations and bring everything to a screeching halt. What is it? Surprisingly, it’s your employees.

“Human error” is the #1 leading cause of data loss, system failure and virus attacks. In some cases, it’s an innocent “Ooops! I deleted it.” Other times it’s a malicious act of revenge from a disgruntled employee who didn’t get the raise they wanted or simply feels taken advantage of. Recently, a disgruntled employee working for oDesk, a third party content management firm, leaked Facebook’s highly detailed rulebook for flagging inappropriate posts. This document contained shocking guidelines regarding sexual content, death and disfigurement as well as racially charged content. Apparently, sexual acts should be blocked, but crushed heads are okay.

The above incident, while a problem, is a mild case. Often employees seeking revenge will steal and post client data, financials or other competitive information online. In some cases, they sell it. Other times, employees delete critical files to either cause harm to the organization or to cover their tracks. And when it’s your client’s data that gets stolen or compromised, you have a major PR nightmare to deal with aside from the costs and problem of recovering the data.

At a minimum, first, make sure you back up all critical data remotely. Second, monitor employee’s usage of data. Simple content filtering software can detect not only when employees are visiting inappropriate sites, but also detect if they delete or alter large amounts of data–all signs that something could be amiss. And finally, it’s worth a little bit of money to find a good employment attorney to help you craft various policies on using and accessing confidential information.

If you are relying on tape drives, external hard drives or USB devices to back up your data, then it’s critical for you to get and read this informative eBook. You will learn what most IT consultants don’t know or won’t tell you about making sure your company’s critical data is safe from loss, corruption, cyber criminals, natural disasters and employee sabotage, in addition to:

1. The only way to know for SURE your data can be recovered if lost, corrupted or deleted—yet fewer than 10% of businesses have this in place.
2. 7 critical characteristics you should absolutely demand from any offsite backup service.
3. Where tape backups fail and give you a false sense of security.
4. The number one cause of data loss that businesses don’t even think about until their data is erased.

Claim Your FREE Copy Today:
831-207-4323 Or www.ShorelineIT.com/bdr

Believe it or not, Batman has more than one lesson to teach entrepreneurs. One of those lessons is the how and why of a dedicated personal assistant—an Alfred. Do you have an “Alfred”? If so, do you utilize him or her properly?

I have posted a brief video to help you learn the four steps you can take to determine whether or not you need an assistant, and how to set that person up to succeed through his or her assistant job description. Check out the video here: http://tinyurl.com/batmanandalfred

After you watch the video, here are a few action steps:

• Decide if you really need a personal assistant vs. an employee
• Follow the order of offloading
• Document the position
• Follow the 75% rule
• Share your perspective or ask questions on that page

Here are the key principles to pick up on from this concept:

• Personal Assistants are dedicated to you 100%. Their job is to help you and no one else. If you need someone to focus on a specific part of your business then what you really need is an employee or perhaps a contractor
• If you don’t follow the order of offloading, you may hire an assistant prematurely.
• A Position Agreement is a documented system that describes in detail what a personal assistant does.
• The 75% rule states that your personal assistant should have tasks that do not require your constant attention for At least three quarters Of their work hours.

Guest article provided by:

Dave Crenshaw is an author, speaker and CEO coach. He has appeared in TIME magazine, Forbes, SIRIUS XM Radio, and the BBC News. His first book, The Myth of Multitasking: How ‘Doing It All’ Gets Nothing Done, has been published in six languages and is a time management best seller. His latest book, Invaluable: The Secret to Becoming Irreplaceable, is also an organizational behavior and motivational bestseller. For videos and articles from Dave, visit www.DaveCrenshaw.com

Did you know our planet is losing 50,000 metric tons every year, even though we gain 40,000 metric tons due to gravity pulling in space dust? Why the loss? Here are the numbers according to Dr. Chris Smith and Cambridge University physicist Dave Ansel:

Earth gains about 40,000 metric tons of dust every year, the remnants of the formation of the solar system, which are attracted by our gravity and become part of the matter in our planet.
NASA says that Earth gains about 160 metric tons of matter a year because the global temperature is going up: “If we are adding energy to the system, the mass must go up.” Oh, those crazy thermodynamics.
But here the biggest reason for our weight loss: about 95,000 metric tons of hydrogen and 1,600 metric tons of helium escape Earth every year. They are too light for gravity to keep them around, so they get lost in space.

What about all those buildings we construct and trash we create? Apparently that has a zero sum effect since these items are being made of matter that already exists and is merely being transformed.

Despite all the spam, e-mail is still the workhorse of online marketing. As a business owner, the lure of fast, cheap and easy communication to hundreds if not thousands of customers is too hard to resist. But e-mail is certainly not a “perfect” media. Response percentages are low to non-existent and you can quickly make a lot of people angry if you don’t use it properly.

First and foremost, get your customers to give you their permission to e-mail them. Sounds obvious, but many salespeople are using LinkedIn or other sneaky ways to garner e-mails online for prospects they’ve never met or talked to. If you don’t mind making a handful of people REALLY angry with you, this might be an okay strategy. However, if you want to build a good relationship with the people you are trying to sell your services to, then work hard to EARN their attention, not steal it.

So how do you do that? By offering some type of valuable information or entertaining content to them in exchange for their e-mail address. This could be a “how to” webinar, white paper, eBook or buyers guide. For example, a realtor could offer a monthly newsletter on home sales and home values for their neighborhood. A vet could offer a free report on “How To Solve The Top 3 Misbehaviors In Dogs,” or “How To Choose The Perfect Cat.” A restaurant could offer coupons and specials exclusively for their newsletter subscribers along with recipes and invitations to VIP client events. This type of information should be offered on what’s called an “opt-in” page. You can see one of ours by going to: www.ShorelineIT.com

Once you have their e-mail address, don’t abuse it by sending boring, off-target spam. That means you’ll have to work hard to consistently come up with good, valuable and interesting content or subscribers will ignore, delete and opt out of your list fast. And finally, make sure you have clear opt-out instructions on every e-mail you send along with your full contact information; the law requires this and it’s just good online etiquette.