June 4th, 2008
You keep your business premises locked when nobody is there, just as you do with your home. You have security measures in place to discourage theft of your business assets. You probably even have someone come in and check that it’s all working and doing what it’s meant to. If you thought a key was missing you wouldn’t hesitate to get a lock smith in to change the keys just to make sure.
What about your IT security? Do you look for the cheapest Anti-virus software to try and save money? Do you always mean to get around to doing full backups of your data? Do you take the time to educate your staff, and for that matter yourself, about IT security but don’t know what you don’t know?
You aren’t alone, you are probable in the same situation as most small to medium sized business owners.
Start taking action to prevent data loss just as you do your physical assets. Spend the money to get a respected Anti-virus suite installed on all your computers and make sure it is kept up to date with the latest virus signatures. Educate the computer users in your workplace about IT security. If employees transfer files between home and work, especially on removable media like USB keys, make sure they have good security on their home computers. If they need to work from home a lot then it may be worth while supplying the software to them. License options are available for multi user environments.
IT security is cheap insurance for your business data.
Tags: Anti-virus, Information Technology, IT, Security
Posted in Software, Tech Support | No Comments »
May 31st, 2008
Managing Director of IT Made Easy, Mat Dockerty.
Ever the quintessential Australian entrepreneur Mat arrived from England as a fresh faced ten year old. After completing his school certificate, Mat began a life straight out of a Boys Own Annual.
After spending two seasons in the Australian Alps as a High Country Cattleman Mat continued on an agricultural career that took him towards the continents heart. Quickly identified as a horseman Mat was selected to attend the Horse Mastership course conducted by the internationally recognised Heath and Rozzie Ryan. Completing the course with honours Mat went on to be chief instructor at the National Equestrian Center.
Mat become a professional farrier before pursuing a career with the Australian Defence Force as a career soldier and completing a tour of duty on active service with the 5th / 7th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment earning the Australian Active Service Medal, United Nations medal, Australian Defence Medal, Infantry Combat Badge and Returned from Active Service Badge.
Mat is the proud father of two amazing girls, Shannon and Chloe and having performed in a management role for Australia’s largest equine veterinary practice and a consultancy role to a food manufacturing business based in Sydney has opted to launch his own brand in the demanding information technology arena.
Mats’ vision, IT Made Easy, is targeting it’s efforts at fulfilling the needs of regional business requiring a customer focused website development service and information technology consultancy. Mat has an understanding and affinity with business owners and managers garnered from his experiences in his various roles.
Tags: Dockerty, IT Made Easy, Managing Director, Mat, Staff
Posted in Organisation | No Comments »
May 31st, 2008
Many times the only way to help with a computer related problem is to have a techie turn up in your home or office. If you live in a rural area this isn’t always going to happen and if it does what is it going to cost. Thanks to a great new piece of software called GoToAssist and an internet connection IT Made Easy can now offer one on one computer assistance on you computer. With GoToAssist the distance doesn’t matter IT Made Easy can log on to your computer (not without your permission) and walk you through whatever it is. Currently IT Made Easy offers computer support to clients in Far North Queensland, South East Queensland and England as well as locally.
Recently a client was having a problem with their printer and we solved the problem by logging on through GoToAssist and by getting the client to point their web-cam at the printer we solved the problem.
Once again IT Made Easy has found a way to make IT work for you. Surfs up!
Tags: assistance, help, help desk, Remote assistance
Posted in Software, Tech Support | 4 Comments »
May 31st, 2008
If you use Norton Internet Security on your computer you may be missing out on some of the internet and not even know it.
I recently had a client tell me that it wasn’t very obvious what a particular website IT Made Easy had developed was all about. My response was that I thought the banner logo made it fairly obvious, but she couldn’t see it.
This surprised me as the site had been checked on over forty differently configured computers just as every IT Made Easy website is. I opened up remote support session with the clients computer so I could see the same thing as she was (she is seven hours from my office) and there it wasn’t. When I checked the source code on her computer it was missing bits and yet the code on the server was complete.
Norton Internet Security had removed sections of the code because it had assumed they were advertisements!
We turned off ‘Ad Blocking’ and now she gets the whole picture.
Tags: antivirus, content, images, Norton
Posted in Software, Tech Support | No Comments »
May 31st, 2008
Since the introduction of the Australian Business Number (ABN) it has become the single most important number for business to businesses transactions but how many times have you wanted to check another businesses ABN because you either didn’t have it or just wanted to verify the details. The ‘ABNLookup’ web page allows you to enter an ABN, ACN or business name and quickly check the details you have are correct or if that business is registered for GST.
The ABNLookup page is located at www.abr.business.gov.au.
Tags: ABN, business registration, GST
Posted in B2B | No Comments »
May 31st, 2008
If you are anything like the average computer user, and lets face it we all are, then you have a complex system of folders and sub folders in where you were originally going to place all your documents but it became so confusing that you didn’t always use the system correctly and eventually you arrived at a point where it is often hard to find a documents unless it is in your recent files list.
Thankfully there is a useful tool available from our friends at Google that allows you to use the power of Google to find documents on your own computer and you don’t even need to be connected to the net to use it.
Google desktop runs in the background on your computer and quietly indexes all your documents. When you want to find a particular documents press ‘CTRL’ twice and up pops a window where you type in a word or phrase that is in the document title or contained in the document and it will give you a list of matching results. Google desktop will index all your files, emails, instant messenger chats and even you browser cache so you can quickly find what you want. Best of all it will only index when your computer is idle so it won’t slow your work down.
Google desktop is available from http://desktop.google.com/.
Tags: document, find files, lost, management, search
Posted in Organisation, Software | No Comments »
May 31st, 2008
The constant costs of upgrading software for small business can run into several thousands of dollars each year. Spending that amount of money on a business tool you would expect a return on investment through increased productivity but often times upgrading software can result in confused staff as a minimum and even a loss of critical data as people adjust to new was of doing things. Not to mention the cost that can be incurred rolling out upgrades to various computers used in a business.
One of the most common suite of applications used in the office is the Word possessor and spreadsheet. Most people are familiar with the Microsoft© product but now there is a very well supported product called OpenOffice and the best news is that it is free and is compatible with the better known products documents so there will never be a problem opening documents received from others who still use the Microsoft© product. You can even create a new document and save it to the other format.
One of the best features I have found in OpenOffice suite is the ability to save a file in the PDF format with the press of a button. This is great when a document is ready to send to a client.
OpenOffice if available from http://www.openoffice.org.au and the free adobe PDF viewer, for anyone who hasn’t already downloaded it is available from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Tags: open licence, openoffice, word processor
Posted in Software | No Comments »