November 2011
In this issue
►Letter from the President
►Controlling Social Media
►Emails Falling in a Black Hole
►The Future of Windows
►Video Tip: Pivot Tables in Excel 2010
►Business Continuity Tip
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Video Tip:
PivotTables in Excel 2010
reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center
 Need a way to summarize a large amount of data or crunch numbers better? Enter the PivotTable feature in Microsoft Excel 2010. A PivotTable takes your dataset and lets you choose the fields and filters to build a report and PivotCharts.
Learn more about this powerful way to glean meaning from your data in this video tip.
Business Continuity Tip
How Smart Is Your Phone?
Millions of BlackBerry users around the world had their work, business, and social lives severely affected recently after a server crash that disconnected smartphone users across the globe. The three-day outage interrupted email messages and Internet services for customers spanning five continents.
In today's world of continuous communication, a network disruption can be detrimental to your business. Below are some simple tips to keep you and your employees connected during an outage.
► SMS Text Updates: Regardless of the severity of the interruption, it is important you have a way to notify employees, clients, and stakeholders. SMS text messaging has proven to work when other mobile functions are down.
► Backup Contacts: Keep your contacts updated across all channels, including phone, email, and social media. This will make it easy to reach out to the right people quickly.
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Laugh a Little
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As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
- John F Kennedy
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Letter from the President
Tim Rettig
An iPad and Mickey Mouse
This month, my wife Mary and I took our two kids, Ethan (eight) and Lauren (six), to experience all that Disney and Universal Studios have to offer in Orlando, Florida. This was our fourth family vacation to the Sunshine State, so at this point, between our other trips and my wife’s research, we are pros at running the Disney gauntlet.
However, the one area that always seemed to be stressful was the arrival at the Orlando airport and subsequent transportation to the resort. After a flight with kids, the last thing we want to do is spend time in lines waiting for taxis, shuttles or rental cars. So this time I decided to prearrange a car via Town Car Now. Since there were four of us, the cost wasn’t much more than a shuttle or taxi, and the promise of having a car waiting upon our arrival sounded like just what we needed.
A day or so before our departure, I arranged for the car via the company’s website. I received a confirmation email back, instructing me to meet the driver in the baggage claim area. When our flight touched down in Orlando, I turned on my phone and received a text message from Kristin welcoming us to Orlando, and instructing us to meet her by baggage carousel number six. We made our way to that carousel and found her holding up an iPad with our name in lights.
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Controlling Social Media in the Business Environment
by Courtney Kaufman, Marketing Manager of Accent Computer Solutions, Inc.
 Everywhere you turn, you hear something about "Follow us on Twitter," or "Like my Facebook Page." Social media is a communications platform that is here to stay, and if you're like many business owners, you're wondering "what does this mean for me and my business? How do I use it in my business without it becoming a distraction?"
Social media should be a part of your business's marketing plan, and controlling employees' usage on these sites will help keep them productive instead of allowing them to use company time for personal interaction.
But now that businesses are effectively using social media as a marketing and communications tool, the question becomes whether to allow employees to use social media while at work or on work equipment.
Social media can be a distraction and it poses IT security risks. These sites are known to bring viruses and malware into organizations, so if you decide to allow employees to use social media for business or personal reasons, there are options to mitigate the risks.
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Are your emails falling into a black hole?
reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center
 It’s so frustrating: you regularly send out emails and then sit staring at your computer, waiting for some sort of response. Don’t you sometimes get the feeling that you’re just sending words out into a black hole?
Of course, you can never "ensure" that emails are going to be read or acted upon. It’s a sad result of the information overload we suffer from. People who sit working at their computers for hours every day might have the time, energy and interest to open the numerous messages which fill their inbox—or they might not. So what is it exactly that tips them over the delicate, crucial line between “read” and ”leave for later/delete”?
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The Future of Windows
written by David Tan, Chief Technology Office, CHIPS Technology Group LLC
 Microsoft held their first ever Build Conference in Anaheim in September. It’s a new annual event for Windows developers to gather and learn about building applications for the Windows platform. This one was special not only because it was the first, but also because leading up to it, all the buzz was about how much of Windows 8 Microsoft would show and what details we would learn about the next version of the most popular operating system in the world.
Microsoft did not disappoint. They have showed demos, talked about features and functions, and even made an open beta immediately available to all who are interested to download, play with, and Microsoft hopes develop applications for. The buzz leading up to the conference has grown into a fever pitch with partners, developers, and customers all extremely excited about the next Windows release. What is it about this platform that Microsoft is doing right, and why is everyone so excited?
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