1. Proper disposal of electronics

E-waste contains all kinds of nasty stuff, including lead, mercury and cadmium. Sadly, much of this waste gets shipped to landfills and smelters in developing countries, exposing tens of thousands of people to harm.

Your first question when seeking to get rid of office equipment should be this: Can someone still use this stuff? If yes, post it on Craigslist or eBay. It’ll be gone in a New York minute.

If it’s beyond repair, you’ve got a few options. The best is to find a recycler that’s involved in the Basel Action Network’s e-Stewards program, a group of companies that have vowed not to export hazardous waste to poor countries.

Another option is to give it back to the manufacturer. The problem with this approach is you can’t be sure they’ll use a morally sound recycler.

To sum up, here are your options for disposing of electronics the right way:

• Best: If the device is still operational, sell or donate it.
• Second best: Find an electronics recycler near you that is an e-Steward member.
• Third best: Use the manufacturer’s take back program.

Resources:

• Craigslist.org: Sell or donate your unwanted (but functional) electronics. Craigslist
• E-stewards.org: Lists recyclers that have pledged not to dispose of hazardous e-waste in developing countries. E-stewards
• Epa.gov: Find local recyclers. View a list of manufacturer take back programs. EPA

2. Buy a water cooler

These aren’t just for idle chitchat! By quenching your thirst at the water cooler you avoid having to buy plastic water bottles—the scourge of Earth. According to this story in Outside Magazine, there is a flotilla of plastic garbage the size Texas in the Pacific Ocean—wait, scratch that: the “Eastern Garbage Patch” is actually twice the size of Texas. Link to story

3. Don’t go to work

Don’t jump to conclusions here, we’re talking about telecommuting. The minimal technology required is cheap and readily available:  Skype, Google Wave, GoToMeeting, etc. And there’s no better way to lower your carbon footprint than to reduce your highway time.  If you must go in to the office, consider carpooling a day or two per week with a coworker. Do us a favor though, just promise us that when you start telecommuting you won’t be that guy in his pajamas jabbering into his cell phone at Starbucks.

So you’re in the mood for a pizza. You turn to Google (because no one uses phonebooks anymore, right? LMGTFY). Instantly, 10 local pizza parlors are displayed in your search results. You order. It’s a win-win. You have your pizza, and the pizza parlor owner has your business.

What made this so easy? Local search—a type of search engine query that’s intended to produce local information, often about nearby businesses, products and services. What it does is help customers in your own town, city and neighborhood find you quickly and easily.

All of the big players—Google, Yahoo and Bing—have local search capabilities. So do the Internet Yellow Pages, various business aggregation sites and review sites, as well as directories created specifically for different cities. Your city might have its own directory, so it’s well worth investigating.

I want my local listing!

So how do you get listed? There are two ways: Navigate the process of submitting your business information to each of the local search engines yourself or save some time and hassle by hiring professionals (Sentinel IT) to do it for you. Either way, getting listed on local search doesn’t happen automatically.

So many directories, so little time.

It’s not a matter of if you should submit your business information to a local search directory, it’s a matter of choosing which ones. To help you make the best decision, consider these points:

1. Location. Be sure to understand which geographic region or regions the directory serves. Some are very specific.
2. Price. Many directories are free, or charge a nominal fee to enhance your listing or include additional information. If it’s free, why not list? If there’s a cost, make sure you understand what extras you’re getting for your dollars.
3. Relevance. Make sure a relevant category exists for your business.  Some directories focus on a single industry, like hotels. If you own a gourmet restaurant, you don’t want to be listed under fast food. Be thorough. If the specific category doesn’t exist, don’t list there.
4. Popularity. One characteristic of a good local search directory is the amount of traffic it gets. More traffic potentially means more potential people will find you. A quick way to determine this is to go to a web traffic metrics site, like Alexa. The higher the ranking, the busier the site.

No matter what you’re selling—computers, sandwiches or shoes—local search can help bring local customers to your door. That is, people who could possibly return again, generating repeat business, and tell their friends and family about your business. But they need to find to be able to find you. Local search makes it possible.

After this historic winter I’m sure many businesses in this area including the Federal government are reviewing their teleworking policies. Thankfully due to the nature of our business we have a robust remote access solution in place so “snow days” do not cause a big disruption to our business.  Is your business able to control how phone calls are routed, access your critical files and applications remotely, and collaborate with your colleagues and customers when others must shut down due to the weather?  We all like a snow day every once in a while but no small business wants to lose a whole week like some did this February.

If you do have any of these tools setup, I would recommend meeting with your management staff to discuss how well they worked for your business and where your telecommuting solution was lacking in functionality.  Contact us if you would like a free evaluation of your remote access capabilities and our recommendations to improve your productivity for the next “blizzard”.

photo credit: 92084018@N00

While economists contend the recession is over, many small businesses still feel vulnerable.

A recent CDW survey of small business owners found that fewer than half of the respondents were optimistic about their growth potential over the next five years. That mood is reflected in small business hiring plans, or the lack thereof. Earlier this month, George S. May International, a management consulting firm, reported that 74 percent of the small businesses it polled had no immediate plan to boost headcount. Of that group, 62 percent of the survey respondents said they had “no confidence in the economy sustaining the need for more employees.”

Smaller companies continue to feel economic pain, but a surprising number of them fail to protect themselves from situations that could inflict further damage. Backup provides a particularly glaring example. The same CDW small business report discovered that 73 percent of the firms with computing networks possess neither onsite nor offsite data backup.

Companies that fail to backup data are riding their luck. A severe data loss can wipe out a company in the best of times. Backup should take its place alongside IT security as a key component of any company’s data protection plan.

Getting Started

And as with IT security, a good place to start a data backup strategy is assessing what you have and where it’s located. Where does a company’s customer, transaction and financial data reside? Is it all on a server or does critical data also reside on PCs and mobile computing devices?

Company leaders must also weigh the importance of different types of data. The value of data will help shape the backup schedule and approach. A nightly backup may adequate for many organizations, but some firms may not want to potentially risk losing a day’s worth of data — in those cases more frequent backups are in order. In storage-speak, the backup period an organization finds acceptable is termed the recovery point objective.

The recovery time objective, meanwhile, deals with how quickly a company seeks to have data restored. The desired timeframe will drive the backup media selection. The need to recover rapidly, for example, will probably dictate a disk-based solution, which offers faster recovery time than tape storage. However, tape storage, still cheaper than disk, may prove the better choice for infrequently accessed data.

Backup Layers

Onsite backup can be fairly straightforward. Backup software for PCs abounds. Such products let users select what they want to backup, where the backups will occur — on an external hard drive or CD, for example — and how frequently they will take place. Small businesses with servers to backup might consider investing in a network-attached storage (NAS) device.

The backup job doesn’t end with the on-premise gear, however. A fire or other disaster can foil the best conceived on-site plan, so companies need to consider an off-site approach. Off-site tape is one way to go. Such a scenario might involve backing up an NAS device to a tape library and sending the tape cartridges to an outside facility for safekeeping.

With storage moving into the cloud, online backup provides another take on off-site storage. If you are interested in hearing about Sentinel IT’s on-site and off-site backup services contact us at 888-470-7487, option 1 for sales.

For further reading on backup, SNIA, a storage industry association, has a selection of storage publications including one on choosing a backup solution: click here

So far, 2010 has been the year of the tablet. The recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas featured tablet PCs from HP and Lenovo. The word among Apple-watchers (that’s pretty much all of us, right?) is that the latest must-have product from Steve Jobs will be a National Geographic-sized computer called the ‘iSlate’.

Tablets aren’t new—Bill Gates introduced Microsoft’s first attempt way back in 2000. But could 2010 be the year that this technology finally takes off?

I’m not so sure. With e-readers, smart phones and netbooks already popular, will the tablet find a way onto people’s wish lists? What will it offer that isn’t already available? After all, many devices on the market today—from the Amazon Kindle to the iPhone— offer portability and easy Internet access.

By replacing the keyboard and trackpad of standard laptops, the tablet is able to shed some bulk and weight—a nice feature for travelers and denizens of coffee shops. But when it comes to actual typing—the basis of productive computer usage—most touch screens fall short. (Of course, I wouldn’t bet against Apple’s ability to once again revolutionize the touch screen and make entering text a breeze.)

I suspect that the tablet PC will find a niche in the consumer market while not quite breaking into the business world. The tablet’s allure seems mostly limited to passive engagement—watching videos, scanning Facebook feeds reading e-books, etc. In other words, not exactly productive activities from a business standpoint.

Windows 7, Microsoft’s new operating system just released, and with all the advertising buzz that Microsoft has created, many business owners are looking to know more about it. Here’s a list of Do’s and Don’ts for helping to determine whether or not a Windows 7 upgrade makes sense for you.

DO – Find out if all your software programs will be compatible.

Anytime Microsoft creates a new operating system, software companies often scramble to make their package work properly with it so there are no errors, glitches, or data corruption (a.k.a “your information deleted”). Some software companies are faster and better at this than others, so be sure to check with your software manufacturer to make sure you won’t end up with more problems than when you started.

DON’T – Hold back from getting the new computers you need.

Maybe you want to wait until Windows 7 gets the bugs out. Or, maybe it’s because you’re worried about buying a computer now that will be considered “old” when Windows 7 is officially released. The good news is you don’t have to wait. For a limited time when you buy from Microsoft-approved vendors, your new computer purchase will come with the ability to upgrade to Windows 7 for free, giving you the flexibility to have the upgrade option now and install it when you choose. Also, if you participate in Microsoft’s “Software Assurance” program for your operating system, you’ll be entitled to the new version for free as well.

DO – Know how to “shake” it.

Have you ever had a bunch of windows open on your computer and felt like it was out of control and you couldn’t find anything? Then Windows 7 might be for you. It is designed to save time for people who work on multiple documents, spreadsheets, and web pages at once by allowing you to simply shake your mouse vigorously and make all those open Windows drop to the bottom of the screen and clear up your workspace. In addition to the “shake” feature, Windows 7 also makes it easier to view and use two programs side-by-side with just one click.

DON’T – Expect miracles.

Windows 7 does truly make using your computer faster since many of the features Microsoft has rolled out to help business owners and their teams work on multiple projects at once easier to use than ever before. Initial studies are showing that it might add one to two hours of productivity to your week over previous versions. But, if you expect Windows 7 to actually do the work for you, you may be disappointed.

Google Wave, Google’s newfangled collaboration and communication application, has fans that insist it’s a game-changer and detractors that insist it will fizzle out faster than New Coke.

What exactly is Google Wave? On the screen, it looks a fairly standard email inbox, but it fuses email, instant messaging and wiki-esque collaboration. Communication between collaborators happens in real time and with total transparency. For example, if you’re using Google Wave to jointly edit a document with others, you can see their changes as they type.

Online tech talking head Steve Rubel says, “It’s slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve?” Answering this question, a columnist from TechCrunch offers the following:

Brainstorming, early concept creation and discussion is what I see Google Wave being used for extensively in the near future. It can also serve as a multi-user note-taking platform for meetings and sessions in your company or university.

So is Google Wave the wave of the future? Will this multifaceted application kill wikis, email and instant messaging applications? Probably not anytime soon. And Google is being somewhat stingy with invitations to the trial version, which may dampen participation and hurt its chances for fast proliferation. Google Wave may turn out to be a tsunami, but for now it’s still just a ripple.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is quickly replacing traditional advertising for good reason—it works. But it is right for you? Before you decide, you need to know exactly what is and what it can do. So here are the answers to your top 10 questions.

1. What is it?
PPC advertising, or paid search, is a way to advertise your business on search engines, content sites like blogs, and advertising networks. You, as the advertiser, pay the host only when someone actually clicks on your ad, hence the name.

2. How does it work?
Typically PPC ads are displayed when someone does a search using one of your keywords. These ads are sometimes called sponsored links or sponsored ads and, with Google, usually appear above or to the right of the organic results on the results page.

3. Who sells this kind of advertising?
Almost every search engine provides some form of PPC advertising, but the top three are Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN. There are also PPC-specific search engines, such as Overture and FindWhat.

4. What are the cost structures?
There are two primary pricing models for PPC advertising: flat-rate and bid-based.

5. What is flat-rate PPC?
With flat-rate PPC:

• You and the publishing site agree on a fixed fee
• You pay the publisher a flat rate each time someone clicks on your ad
• Prices vary depending on where on the web page/site the ad will be displayed, the value of the site’s content and the value of the keywords

Content and keywords that attract and drive more visitors usually command a higher PPC but, oftentimes, you can negotiate a lower rate if you’re willing to commit to a long-term or high-value contract.

6. What is bid-based PPC?
With bid-based PPC:

• You compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by the publisher for certain keywords or phrases related to your product or services
• Prices depend on many factors, including the level of competition and how often it is used in a search
• You inform the publisher of the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a given ad spot and keyword
• The auction runs automatically and is triggered every time someone uses the keyword in a search
• Winners are determined by all the bid price, the geographical area of the searcher, and the day and time of the search

Since search engines, such as Google, usually have more than one ad spot, there can be multiple winners. The advertiser with the highest bid will often get the top spot, with the second, third and fourth highest bidders getting the second, third and fourth spots. Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN each use a bid-based cost model.

7. How do you determine the value of PPC advertising?
To help determine the value of either flat-rate or bid-based PPC, consider the potential value of a click from a given publisher, whether it’s a search engine or advertising network.

Before you settle on a publisher, ask these questions:

• How targeted is the publisher’s audience?
• What type of individuals could you expect to receive as visitors to your web site? Do you want these types of visitors?
• Where are they most likely to live? What could you gain?
• What is the short-term and long-term revenue potential?

Just as in traditional advertising, targeting a specific audience is critical for success. If you can do this with your PPC advertising, its value is potentially high.

8. Why should you consider PPC advertising for your business?
Compared to traditional advertising methods, PPC is:

• Controlled. PPC advertising is relatively simple, gives you a lot of control over your ad campaigns, and lets you reach a targeted audience very quickly.
• Trackable. With analytics, each campaign can be tracked and measured so you’ll know exactly which ones are working and which are not. Then you can make adjustments to improve performance.
• Effective. Most importantly, PPC advertising can help you generate leads. The best campaigns drive users to a special landing page where they can sign up for events, download products, or submit contact forms.

Targeted advertising with clear ROI? It’s easy to see why PPC continues to gain in popularity.

9. How do you get started?
Planning and research are the keys to an effective PPC campaign:

1. Make sure you understand who your best prospective customers are, where on the Internet they’re likely to be, and what products, services or solutions they’re looking for.
2. Research the keywords your targeted audience is most likely to use in their searches. Try to use two- or three-word phrases when possible. Learning which keywords work best will take time and experience.
3. Take the time to write succinct, persuasive ad copy (the maximum allowed is usually 130 characters) along with a well-written landing page. Your audience will click through to this page, and if it doesn’t substantiate your offer or solution, your ad may not be allowed.
4. Find the best place to advertise. Consider the audience the publisher attracts, the amount of traffic it gets, and whether any of your competitors advertise there.

10. Where can I learn more?
To learn more about PPC advertising and specific programs, visit each of the top search engine’s PPC program page:

• Google: www.adwords.google.com
• Yahoo Search Marketing: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/overture.php
• MSN Adcenter: www.adcenter.microsoft.com

For guidelines, standards and research, you can also visit the Internet Advertising Bureau at www.iab.net.

Pay-Per-Click advertising may be the perfect complement to your other online marketing efforts. Before you take the plunge, do some research. Find out what your competitors are doing. Talk to search engine optimization specialists. And maybe experiment with a short, simple campaign. The results could pleasantly surprise you.

Organizations contend with a staggering volume of email. This year, worldwide email traffic will amount to 247 billion messages per day, according to the Radicati Group. The total worldwide volume of email traffic will reach 507 billion messages per day by 2013, according to the market researcher.

Small businesses rely on email for a range of activities. Preserving important transactions and documents — quotes, contracts, and customer correspondence to name a few — embedded in that mass of email is a growing concern for companies of all sizes.

That’s where email archiving comes in. This solution stores and indexes email so administrators can search for individual messages. The archiving solution integrates with an organization’s email server.

Benefits
The presence of a central email store provides a backstop when messages go missing. IT administrators, or a designated user, can locate and retrieve email when users inadvertently delete messages from their inboxes. But there’s another key benefit: the ability to preserve email to meet regulatory requirements or discovery requests during litigation.

Recent state and federal laws highlight the need for records retention. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley, which applies to public companies and accounting firms, calls for the retention of relevant financial documents including those in electronic format. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), regulations governing civil law suits, also put companies on retention alert.

Amendments to FRCP, make “electronically stored information” subject to the discovery process. The amendments apply to federal courts, but a number of states are including e-discovery language in their rules of civil procedure. DiscoveryResource.org provides a summary.

Implementation Approaches
Small businesses taking the email archiving route have a couple of options. They can purchase software, for one. Ferris Research portrays a large and growing market for packaged archiving software. The company expects the sector to reach $650 million in revenue this year and estimates that the market will expand at about a 20 percent annual clip through 2012.

In some solutions, the archiving software ships pre-installed in a specialty hardware device. Such products are termed appliances.

Small businesses should also consider the expected arrival later this year of Microsoft Exchange 2010. The email server includes a personal archiving feature, which some customers may find sufficient for their email retention chores. Small businesses looking for elaborate e-discovery features, however, may still prefer a third-party product. In addition, some third-party solutions archive files — word processing documents and PDFs, for example — as well as email, an all-in-one approach that small businesses may find attractive.

Finally, a hosted email archiving solution offers an alternative for customers who would rather not run an in-house system. In this case, the small business transfers email to a service provider through a virtual private network link. The service provider then stores the incoming email on its archiving server.
The choice for a small business boils down to the level of control they want to have over the archiving solution. The buyer must also determine whether the upfront licensing costs of an in-house solution or the ongoing monthly fees of a hosted solution makes more economic sense.

For further research, the 4sysops Windows systems administration blog keeps a list of email archiving software providers. CMS Watch, which evaluates content-oriented technologies, offers a listing of what the company views as significant software and software-as-a-service players.

The statistics are gloomy: 50 percent of companies that loose their data for 10 days or more file for bankruptcy within that same time period.Ninety-three percent file for bankruptcy within one year. Now that we’ve got your attention, now’s the time to start preparing for disaster, before you become another statistic! The first step is:

1. Who will be responsible for the plan and who will perform the actual recovery of the data? The time for pointing fingers is not when disaster strikes. The person who creates the plan and the person who performs the actual recovery may be the same—or not. Determine who’s responsible for what early in the plan to avoid confusion and misunderstandings.
2. How important is your data? Data varies in importance, helping you determine how and when it should be backed up. For instance, critical data, like a customer database, will likely require a plan that’s more elaborate, with more frequent and redundant backup sets that go back several backup periods. Less important information, such as daily user files, may simply need routine backups so you can recover the information when needed. Sift through your data and identify your most important and least important information.
3. What kind of information does your data contain? Data can contain everything from mundane, everyday information to highly sensitive and mission-critical information. Additionally, information that’s not very important to you might be important to someone else. Identifying the type of information your data contains will help you determine how secure your backup system needs to be, as well as when and how frequently your data should be backed up.
4. How frequently does your data change? The answer to this question determines how frequently you should back up your data. Information that changes daily should be backed up daily. Information that changes every few days should—at the very least—be backed up every few days. And so on.
5. When is the best time to schedule backups? Over the weekend? During the evening hours? In the morning? Backing up data generally takes less time when system use is low. Unfortunately, you may not be able to schedule backups to occur at these times. Carefully consider the best time and day to back up your information, keeping in mind that automated technology makes this easier while minimizing administrative time.
6. How quickly will you need to recover data? Apply the old adage here: time is money. Some businesses may function relatively well for a day or two without access to their systems and data stores. Others may crumble in a matter of hours. If you fall into the latter category and need to get access to critical systems immediately, create a plan that lets you do this. Prioritize which systems you need first, second and so on, and make sure your recovery solution delivers.
7. Should you store backed-up information off-site? The answer for most businesses: yes. This is especially important if you operate in an area prone to natural disasters such as tornadoes or hurricanes. In addition to storing your tapes or disks off-site, make sure you store copies of any software you need to re-establish operations, and that multiple people have the keys or access code for that location.

Avoid saying, “If only …”
No one anticipates a disaster. But we can plan for it. Today’s backup and recovery technology makes protecting your critical business information and systems easier and more affordable than ever. So stop making excuses. Start planning. Information is one of your business’ most important assets. Protect it.