How to Use Google Calendar for Business

How to Use Google Calendar for Business

Google Calendar is a great free tool to keep up with both your work and personal responsibilities. It’s easy to use and can be synced across all your devices. Here are a few tips for being more efficient with Google Calendar.

Change Your Timezone

If you are working remotely with a company in another time zone, you can easily change the time zone in the settings. This way, you can easily stay on track of events and deadlines in other countries. You can add multiple time zones if needed. Alternatively, you can click on the Show World Clock option to display different time zones on your calendar.

Get Notifications

In the event notifications settings, you can choose which notifications to get about events, canceled events, event changes, and so on. Never miss an important meeting again.

Create an Event Quickly

You can add an event to Google Calendar without even opening it. Just search “add event” or “make an appointment” in your browser bar or on Google.com, and type in the day and time. Google will automatically give you the option of adding an event to your calendar. You can also use Google Assistant on your smartphone for this by using Google Voice commands.

Browse Interesting Calendars

In the Add Calendar option in your settings, you can click on Browse Calendars of Interest in order to add new event reminders to your calendar. You can choose calendars of different religions to be reminded of religious holidays. There are also all sorts of sports calendars if you are a fan of specific sports. You can show phases of the moon as well. Of course, you can simply add a co-worker’s or employer’s calendar as well to stay in touch with work responsibilities.

For more IT help and computer tips, contact us today. 

Tip of the Week: Know Your Cables

Tip of the Week: Know Your Cables

As great as technology can be for a business, there is typically a lot more going on behind the scenes. Therefore, it becomes evident after just a few minutes of looking into it, that cabling is a much bigger deal than you’ve ever considered.

Having an effective strategy in place to manage your cabling initiatives will go a long way toward ensuring your organization’s technology cabling is squared away.

There are two factors that you have to take into account when managing your organization’s wiring and cabling. The first is managing the cables and wires that run your entire IT infrastructure, and the second is managing their replacement wires, adapters, and other cables and wires that run technology you don’t have in use, but might have use for down the line.

Today, we tell you about some products that will help you manage all the cables and wires your technology requires.

Cables

All businesses have wires that connect their computing network and infrastructure together. They typically come in four different types of cables:

Coaxial

There are thin and thick coaxial cable. You won’t see thick very often anymore, but thin coaxial, or what is known as thin Ethernet cable is used quite often. Once the standard cable you’d see, it actually is more brittle and bulky than new cables.

Twisted-pair

You have shielded twisted-pair (STP) and unshielded twisted-pair (UTP). Cheaper and less likely to break than coaxial, they are widely used because they are easy to install and maintain. This type of cable has other variations based on your needs.

Fiber-optic

Made up of conducting glass or plastic. Using light to transmit electrical signals makes fiber-optic cable the fastest cable. It is also known to be the most brittle and has connections that only specially-trained technicians will be able to install.

IBM

This type of cable was created by IBM for IBM networks, this type of cable is a twisted-pair explicitly designed for IBM hardware.

Cables are the arteries of your business’ network and, like arteries, they need to be maintained regularly to function.

In order to properly manage your networking lines, you will need a system that allows you to know what kind of wire is being installed when it was installed, and how long it is in place before it will need maintenance. The best time to accomplish this is when you are configuring your server room because if you do it at any other time, you will likely be looking at a lot of man-hours disassembling your server room.

When maintenance is needed, however, it’s an auspicious practice to organize the wires to ascertain which cable connects what piece of technology with what other piece of technology, making the maintenance process a little simpler and less conducive to producing error and downtime.

Organizing Products

There are many products that can be used to make your wires and cables more organized. Some include:

Cable Sleeving

Sleeving is made of many different materials including metal, fabric, carbon fiber, heat shrink, Kevlar, Teflon, fiberglass, nylon, and more. There is braided sleeving, wire loom tubing, and spiral wraps that cover wires to protect them from a myriad of threats while keeping wires together to keep everything organized.

Cable Tray Systems

For organizations that need to run a lot of wires, the tray is perfect. These trays come as metal baskets, PVC Cable routing systems, and snake trays made from more flexible materials in order to accommodate the twists and turns often found in crawl spaces and ceilings in which much of this wire is run.

Cable Tracks

If you are running wires (and hoses) around heavy machinery, not only is it potentially dangerous, it also leaves cables open to twisting and tangling. Tracks keep important lines from exceeding their bend radius.

Wire Ducts and Cable Raceways

Wires can be complete eye-sores if left exposed. A wire management system like a wire duct or raceway places a protective plastic layer over your wires to protect them from exposure.

Other

Other products on the market are designed to do one thing: organize wires. They include Velcro bands, zip ties, and other fasteners, allowing you to keep your organization’s wiring efficiently.

Wiring may not seem like a big deal until wires are in the way. As with any wired connection, making sure everything is managed, organized, and set up for easy access can go a long way toward keeping from spending more money later on wire maintenance.

If you are looking for a consultation on how to roll out new wires call our professional technicians at (877) 771-2384.

Reach out to us today to see how we can bring value to your business.

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6 Tips for Speeding Up Your Slow Computer or Laptop

6 Tips for Speeding Up Your Slow Computer or Laptop

If you’ve had your PC for any significant length of time, chances are that it is much slower than it used to be. Over time, computers and laptops slow down. However, there definitely are ways to slow down the slowdown of your computer. Here are a few things you can do to speed up your computer.

Scan for Viruses

It’s possible that there is malware or adware that is slowing down your computer. Run an antivirus and an anti-malware scan to clean up your computer. Do a deep scan, not just a quick scan.

Clean It Out

Clean out the fan area of your computer. You’ll be surprised at how much dust there is in there. Dust stops the fan from working properly, which causes your computer to heat up, which slows it down. Use compressed air or a vacuum to clean out the dust.

Clean It Up

Besides cleaning your laptop physically, clean out any unnecessary programs, software, and temporary files that you don’t need or use. These all slow down your computer’s performance.

Do a Task Check

Launch the task manager and check which programs are running in the background. You’ll be surprised at how much CPU they are using up. Close down the programs you don’t want running. On Windows 8 PCs and up, you can also use the startup manager to stop programs from running automatically when you start your computer.

Speed Up Your Browser

Like your computer, your browser can get overloaded as well. Too many browser add-ons can slow it down. Disable and delete those you don’t use. Consider trying a different browser as well, such as Opera.

Expand Your Storage

If your storage is full, it can also slow down your computer. Expand your storage by getting an external hard drive that you can attach to your computer.

For more computer tips, contact us today.

Avoiding The Virtual Attacks

Avoiding The Virtual Attacks

Major businesses and enterprises are not the only ones who face the threats and risks of breaches and cyber attacks. There is a misconception that hackers and cyber attackers are only interested in obtaining information from large businesses in order to gain more money or to capture more confidential and sensitive data. Actually, small businesses are more at risk of security breaches than larger businesses.

Hacking and cyber attacking do not cost a substantial amount of money, so attacking a business will result in a profit, regardless of the size of a business. Hackers and cyber attackers will generally go after the type of systems they are familiar with, so most of the time it is all about undermining a specific technology rather than going after a specific type of business or individual.

As hackers become more sneaky and smarter, the rate of cyber attacks and data breaches will increase. As a small business owner, it is important that you arm yourself with the proper cyber security strategies. You should also make sure you have the right principles and fundamentals in place. What can you do to keep your small business safe from cyber attacks?

Secure Your Network

It is important that your small business monitor the flow of network traffic for any abnormalities like file transfers that have not been authorized or dubious IP addresses. Once the abnormalities have been identified, they can be placed on a block list that will no longer allow them to gain access to the network.

Are You Outsourcing Your Services?

Many companies have discovered that one of the best ways to ensure the safety and security of their business and information technology infrastructure is to outsource some or all of their security operations. Many businesses will find value in the assistance of third-party security expertise to supplement their current security strategies and operations. While using outside security technologies can be essential in helping to secure your sensitive data, it is also important that you combine the technologies with a security monitoring service.

Data Backup

When a hacker places a virus on your computer in order to encrypt files and hold them hostage for money is known as ransomware. Ransomware is one of the major concerns of all businesses and it continues to be a major security threat. This is why it is essentially important that your business backs up your data frequently. It does not matter if you store data on-premise or in the cloud, you will need to keep your data in a safe place. When you store your data in the cloud, you will be able to easily back up your data and maintain security protection.

As a small business, we do not want you to become a target of threats and data breaches. Contact us today if you are ready to protect yourself from virtual attacks.

Everyday Cyber Security Tips For Businesses

Everyday Cyber Security Tips For Businesses

Businesses of all sizes are facing cyber security threats on a continuous basis. Since these threats are evolving each day, it is prudent to consider daily tips that can help you protect your business from such malware. That will not only promote continuity but also protect your valuable investment in the infrastructure you have in place.

Here are some tips you can adopt everyday to make this a possibility.

Educating and Enforcing Accountability Regarding Cyber Threats

Learning does not stop, and as an employer, you should make it your aim to train staff on dangers of exposing details about the company to the public on social sites. Online hackers can use such information to break into the firm’s network system, which is often detrimental to the smooth running of daily operations.

Therefore, it is important to caution employees on the risks of getting into such engagements. Also, commit to guiding them on the responsible use of social platforms each day. Once you do so, you can hold each accountable for their online actions.

Have A Mobile Device Action Plan

Nowadays, the majority of individuals can access their company’s data on mobile devices as employers seek to increase their productivity. In addition to the benefits of such an approach, the danger of losing such devices and finding their way in the hands of criminals still lurks around. To protect against threats of this kind, make use of passwords to gain access a requirement for every employee.

Additionally, encryption of this data is a necessity and installation of security apps will protect against those who hack systems when the phone is on public networks. Daily monitoring of these devices is critical too.

Consider Anti-spyware Installations

Anti-spyware and antivirus software is available from various vendors who provide regular updates for the same as well. As such, you need to install the software for every computer in your establishment and configure it to update automatically.

That will ensure regular update of systems, which is an essential daily procedure. If you need more information on cyber security tips, contact us today.