Keeping Information Safe

Do you realize just how much information there is about you on the web at this very moment? What is more shocking is just how much people are willing to pay for it. We all know that when using passwords, you have to use different one for every account. In reality, it is nearly impossible to remember every single unique password. The solution? A password manager of course. It will not only remember all your passwords, but will generate super strong and unique ones and automatically fill them into login fields with the click of a button. LastPass is an excellent and free choice. “What is your mother’s maiden name?” or “In what city were you born?” are common questions websites often ask you to answer so as to supposedly keep your account safe from intruders. In reality, there’s nothing secure about such generic queries. That’s because someone who wants access to your account could easily do some Internet research to dig up the answers. Not sure you can remember your lies? You can create “accounts” in your password manager just for this purpose. All of this goes for internet phone services as well because there is nothing worse than someone sending messages on your behalf.

Video Conferencing Growth

The number of telepresence rooms installed at companies worldwide has grown from an estimated 2,000 at the end of 2008 to about 7,000 today. Although most of today’s multi-screen, high-definition audio and video systems are used privately by vendors for “in-person” meetings, hotel chains and conference centers are also embracing telepresence so that business customers can collaborate over a converged network. Video conferencing solutions are also gaining traction with an estimated quarter-million units being shipped per quarter. Despite this impressive turnaround, the difficulties of interoperability and protocols continue to negatively impact widespread telepresence and video conferencing adoption. Today’s increasing demand for interoperability among key market players like Cisco, Polycom, Microsoft is easy to understand. People want to be able to use any device or platform that they want in order to conduct their business in order to increase efficiency and not worry about the technical problems associated with trying to integrate systems.

Web Design

A great web design is worth more than a lot of the marketing you can do. he more dependent we have become on the Internet for information, the likelier we are to suffer from its design deficiencies. Bad design can be infuriating, inconvenient or damaging in any field. When it comes to web development, you have to be able to make a user friendly web site and one that is intuitive. There are certain things that the website needs to have. On the efficiency front, given that the most important purpose of most Web sites is to enable us to access information, helping us to find it effortlessly is essential. You would be surprised to see just how many sites fail to achieve this. A lot of companies actually prioritize style over substance. Other common mistakes are that the web developers like to go overboard. They use the most sophisticated technology which might look great on state of the art computers but not so much on smartphones or lower end models.

Cloud PBX

If you are starting a business, one of the first things to consider is how you are going to reach out to your customers. This includes having a great professional image that you can present to the public. With cloud services, you will be able to create the appearance of a larger organization even if it is run right from home. You will be able to have features such as an auto-receptionist welcoming callers, extensions, and calling options that the caller can use to be forwarded to any number of phones, computers, or mobile devices. Another great aspect of the cloud service is that you can fully customize it to meet your needs and business goals, along with your own music on hold and announcements. You can also create a custom caller experience based on the time and date of calls, business hours, caller ID information, and more. Since AB Soft is partnered with RingCentral, you would also be getting an internet fax number.

Chill Out

Have you ever come home from work just mad at the whole world and cannot even stand yourself? Stress can have many damaging and sometimes deadly effects on people. Other than lashing out at loved ones, a person might start to get different aches and pains. The cardiovascular system is possibly the most at risk for damage from stress. It increases blood pressure and even plaque buildup. There was a study done on the demographics of people with stress and without. As it turns out, the people who depend on social interactions and situations as a means of survival are the ones that are more aggressive in nature and are at a higher risk. This means that the people that work in the business field better watch out and most importantly chill out. Get a cost efficient phone service and web development team that can take some of the burden off of you. That way you would not feel so overwhelmed. And even more importantly, take a deep breath and a good look around you. That little child in the picture on your desk has to be the most precious thing in your life.

What 2013 Holds According to Science

Science has come a long way in the past century, there is no doubt about that. It has brought us information at an exponential rate, in part due to the internet and the availability of sharing, because of mobile application development, all that wonderful information. More people are paying attention to what is going on in the science world. Best part is that they do not have to worry about taking a test afterwards. In surprising numbers, people posted, viewed and searched for science-related topics last year — sharing news from space and undersea, commenting on new discoveries and uploading photos and video in a full-out embrace of the ability to communicate with thousands of others about global subjects in real time. And I know you most likely watched that Mars rover landing with just as much excitement as the people in the control room. Admit it.

Cloud Outages

Last week Amazon's cloud-based infrastructure went down hard, knocking Netflix offline on what should have been one of its most heavily trafficked days of the year, starting Christmas Eve and running well into Christmas Day. This week it's Microsoft's turn to suffer a severe cloud outage. At 3:16 PM on December 28, Microsoft reported that its Azure Storage service for the South Central US region was experiencing "partial availability." In an update a few hours later on its service dashboard, the company noted that the outage was affecting its worldwide Management Portal. I'm not aware of any cloud-based service that offers a 100% uptime guarantee, because such a promise is impossible to keep. If you can afford redundant storage in multiple zones, that's a good alternative, but that option is too expensive for anything but mission-critical services. As more and more services move to the cloud, this sort of outage is inevitable (but hopefully rare). And on the part of customers, responding to it with equanimity and professionalism is essential.