Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

We live in an age where we are trying to get the most out of our employees, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep up the hard work all day. Productivity applications and software can only go so far when your team is exhausted. Sometimes you might wish you could be back in the good old days of elementary school when naptime was a thing. So, why not give it a try in the workplace?

Have you ever wondered how in the world you’re going to get everything done, only to lose track of everything or get distracted? Some researchers believe that the tomato might be the key to unlocking the latent knack for productivity that lies dormant within us all. Albeit, not a real tomato, but the familiar tomato-shaped timer that counts down from 25 minutes.

If a company neglects network security, they’ll quickly find their network inundated with threats. However, if you fail to protect your business from internal problems as well, you might have a whole other monster on your hands. Some businesses have encountered this problem when employees access certain documents and then accidentally misplace or delete them, causing damage that your organization was not particularly prepared for.

Business is booming, and you are busier than ever. Your company is expanding at a crazy rate. But, what if something were to happen to you? Would your company be able to carry on in your stead, or would it crash to the ground in a blaze of glorious defeat?

Today is known the world over as Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you). We want to take this opportunity to look at the technology of one of our favorite movie franchises. Given how much exciting technology there is in the fictional Star Wars universe, picking just one technology can be difficult. Since we work with computers, let’s look at one of the most important computers in the film, the X-wing targeting computer.

Big data analytics are changing the way that businesses handle their marketing endeavors. You might even have a data collection strategy yourself that’s helped you make changes to your business model. However, do you understand why these changes are being made?

Some business owners rely on their iPhone for a lot more than just work-related functions. With so many applications and whatnot consuming your phone’s processing power, your iPhone’s battery can quickly get drained. This, in turn, drains your productivity. If your phone is always dead, you can’t get much done with it. Shouldn’t there be a way to boost your battery’s efficiency?

You’re at an important lunch meeting when your phone goes off. Do you answer it? It might be a prospective client responding to an email, or it might be an employee needing help. Smartphones might have made every other aspect of business more mobile, including communication; but now, thanks to the power of science, we know that smartphones are indisputably bad for our personal relationships.

With spring arriving, “winter is coming” as the new season of the critically-acclaimed television series Game of Thrones returns to millions of viewers worldwide. Ironically, there’s also a type of malware gaining traction in the online community that matches its bark with its bite, aptly dubbed Dyre Wolf. This threat has the potential to cost businesses as much as $1.5 million per hack, and takes advantage of the ever-common spear phishing tactic.

So you got yourself a shiny new laptop. That’s great, but what are you going to do with your old device? The right thing to do is to dispose of it with a company that handles e-waste properly. Otherwise, if you just chuck it in the trash, you’ll be contributing to an already serious environmental problem.

Sometimes you find yourself in a pinch and you really need a WiFi signal for your laptop in order to complete a task. If you’ve got your smartphone handy, then you can easily turn your device into a WiFi hotspot and give your laptop the wireless Internet signal it needs. Here’s how you can accomplish this from your Android device.

The cloud might be a revolutionary new way to approach business, but some professionals are wary of letting their IT infrastructure fly sky high. This is understandable, since the cloud is still a developing industry. However, you shouldn’t let your fears of cloud computing get in the way of growth and optimization.

No matter what kind of business you run, you’re likely to gain many friends and allies in the war of entrepreneurship. However, you’ll also gain a lot of enemies (i.e. your competitors) that you’ll need to one-up somehow. Of course, you could always just exploit what they are doing wrong, but what about what they are doing right?

Whether you’re purchasing electronics at the store and a salesperson is trying to upsell you on premium cables, or you’re shopping specifically for cables and you’re faced with having to choose between cables of different prices and quality, you’ve likely asked yourself the question: “Are premium cables worth the money?”

Identity theft is commonplace on the Internet, and if you’re not careful with how you approach your browsing, you could potentially leak sensitive information to hackers. Unfortunately, some people are so concerned with protecting their other information, like Social Security numbers or dates of birth, that they forget that their PIN number is just as vulnerable to hacking as ever.

IT can be a tricky concept to the business owner, and we all know how touchy technology can be at times. It can be working one minute, then completely incapacitated the next. This unpredictability is one reason why the concept of help desk support was created. It’s an important way to assist individuals when they need help most.

As the world’s most popular search engine, Google has been known as an innovator for a long time. Google’s worldwide popularity has even turned its name into a verb: “to google,” or to search for something using Google. Despite its rather prestigious reputation, the developers at Google still know how to have a good time, as evidenced by their wide array of hidden Easter eggs.

Have you ever been prompted to change your password, then forgotten what the new one was twenty seconds later? Changing passwords consistently is a good practice, but let’s face it; unless you have them put away somewhere, you are probably going to forget about them at least once (unless you use a post-it note on your monitor, which is never a good idea). Additionally, if passwords are short and easily guessable, you risk being targeted by a phishing attack or other hacking attack.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is one of the most widely used web browsers, despite the fact that it has a tendency to crash from time to time. In order to improve the product and prevent future bugs, glitches, and crashes, IE creates an error report after every crash. Most of these reports go unsent, or so Microsoft thought.

A quick scan of the past year’s headlines will show that a data-loss scenario resulting from a hack can unexpectedly hit any business, big or small. Your company needs to have a data backup solution in place, and it’s imperative that backups are taken regularly. Has it been awhile since you last backed up your data?