Erich Stauffer

Category: Technology

  • What is Autotask?

    Some people call it a “hosted business automation solution”, a “complete business management solution”, a “complete business management platform”, or a “hosted business management software to streamline and optimize business processes” – but all of that sounds like a bunch of words strung together that don’t really mean anything. So what exactly is Autotask?

    When I worked for a local IT firm we used Autotask for tracking IT tickets and projects, but it can do much more than that. It can store inventory, track time clock information, and integrate with Outlook and Quickbooks. It can also integrate with quoting software like Quotewerks and remote monitoring software like N-Able.

    If you run a business (especially an IT business), whether by yourself or under a company, one day you might need an automated management software to help run the daily tasks of billing, scheduling and managing tasks. That’s what Autotask does well. It takes care of tracking the little things so your business can focus on bigger things.

    What is Autotask?

    Autotask is an IT Business Management Software that helps value-added resellers (VARs), management service providers (MSPs) and IT Service providers to sell, implement, deliver and bill for their services. It’s similar to Parallels Business Automation Standard, which is the industry’s leading, billing and hosting automation solution.

    How does Autotask Work?

    You can streamline and automate your workflows, increase your productivity and optimize the value of Autotask. From lead generation, to winning new business and setting up contracts, to managing projects, supporting your clients and simplifying the invoicing process, Autotask delivers proven techniques and customizable best practices to help you work smarter and more profitably.

    You can create and format custom reports, leverage other Autotask System Reports, and add simple charting into your reports. And these are just some of the processes and tasks they do for you without requiring you to analyze each data you enter. Because everything is kept in one database, it gives you the power to mine your data to answer virtually any other question about your business.
    Autotask

    • What’s due
    • What’s billable
    • What needs to be scheduled
    • Which employees are under-utilized
    • How long specific tasks are taking
    • Which clients are most profitable

    Why use Autotask?

    When you keep business management and maintenance overhead costs low, you directly increase revenue on top of acquiring new businesses because of great over-all customer experience. When you keep your clients happy or your business running smoothly and efficiently, everything else follows.

    With this automation standard you take care of three essential components for your customers: business, operations and management. When you address these three components, you have one very satisfied customer. Every business can profit from Autotask – from freelancers, small businesses, mid-sized businesses, non-profit organizations, public administrations to large enterprises.

    Alternatives to Autotask

    GoServiceProIn addition to Parallels Business Automation Standard, there are other complete business management solutions such as Tradepoint Enterprise Business Management Software with Integrated CRM, ShareComplete Business Management Software, BusinessMan (which is based on FileMaker Pro), WORKetc’s business management software, ForgeWorks, Arquila, and Insight Business Management Software. If you’re looking for a field service management alternative to Autotask for mobile field service technicians, consider GoServicePro.

  • The White Album Problem

    In Men in Black (1997), Kay is showing Jay some new alien technology and says, “This is gonna replace CD’s soon; guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again.”

    The White Album Problem

    At the time of this writing I’m 33 years old, but in my lifetime I’ve seen the progression in music from vinyl records, 8-tracks, and cassette tapes to CDs, MP3s, and Streaming audio. But in the computer world, the change is even more dramatic. I grew up with hard-drive-less PCs that ran off of 5 and 1/4th inch floppies to 5 MB hard drives to 3 and 1/2 inch floppies to ATA to SATA to Flash hard drives.

    I started writing on a DOS-based PC using PFS Write and when Windows 3.1 came out I had to convert my book to Windows by using PFS to “print to file”. This allowed me to open the unformatted files and save them in Microsoft Write. When Windows 95 came out I converted the book again to Microsoft Works, which came with the computer. After Windows 98 came out and I got Microsoft Word, I again had to convert the book to Word.

    Then came the web.

    It was one thing to have to worry about the files stored locally on your hard drive. With the introduction of web applications, we now had to manage digital archives in the sky. My first encounters with web storage was with email, which I accessed via Telnet to Pine. Soon after I started using Eudora as an email client followed by Juno, which was my first personal email address. I didn’t use AOL mail, but that along with Prodigy and Compuserve were popular webmail clients at the time. My first experience with webmail was Hotmail, followed by Yahoo! Mail, and finally Gmail. It’s important to note that with the exception of Gmail, ALL OF MY EMAIL IS GONE. Because I didn’t backup or convert my old email from Pine, Eudora, or Juno and because of Hotmail and Yahoo’s aggressive email deletion policies at the time, all of my past email has been lost. The only archives I have from that time exist in paper letters I saved, audio tape recordings, printed photographs, and VHS tapes.

    I was still writing paper letters to my girlfriends, my mother, and my grandmothers up until 1999. Even though I had a Juno and Hotmail account at the time, the other parties didn’t. I can remember making lists of people’s email addresses in high school because so few people had them – and those who did have them were usually shared with their parent’s as part of their family’s ISP account. I can remember getting in trouble with one of my girlfriend’s dads for a joke I sent her via email in high school. One AOL product I did end up using a lot was AOL Instant Messenger. It’s how I kept in touch with friends sitting next to me and across state lines after high school. It’s also how I met my wife, but that’s another story. Like my old email, no conversations were ever recorded, kept, or archived. I don’t have them. They are gone. This loss of digital history is part of the reason people still want to know what happened to collegeclub.com. It had all of their emails, pictures, and chats stored there went it went offline. Imagine if Facebook went offline tomorrow – how would you feel?

    Sometimes, digital archive management can even be a problem within a single site. Take Youtube for example. It started out as a site that had it’s own login. People didn’t really realize how they would eventually use it or what exactly it was for at first. They setup accounts, posted weird stuff, sometimes forgot about it, and then came back and setup another account later. Eventually Google bought Youtube and started forcing users to login with their Google Account, which they also had multiple logins for. So now people had multiple Youtube accounts and multiple Google accounts and now Google was forcing you to reconcile the two. Videos uploaded to Youtube could not be transferred between accounts. If you wanted to delete the account, but keep the videos, you had to manually download them and re-upload them again. Then came Google+ and Google wanted you to stop caring so much about your channel name and start using your real name, which caused even more confusion. Despite Facebook’s massive growth and change over the years, their product has remained relatively consistent compared with Google’s products.

    Digital Preservation is a huge problem going forward. As more and more data is created, it first has to get stored, but it then has to be read over time. That either means preserving the devices and programs that can access the data or constantly converting the data over time. That essentially is the White Album problem. In MIB, it is alluded that Kay first bought the White Album on a vinyl record, then bought it on an 8-track, followed by a cassette tape and finally a CD (in 1997 MP3s were not popular enough to mention on a movie). If Kay had not bought the White Album on the latest format, he would have to maintain the older system that was capable of playing the music in the format he originally bought it on. If I were to have saved my old email, I and the service providers would have to have maintained the computers and servers capable of displaying that email information or I would have to had downloaded and converted the data into a suitable format. Does it matter? Maybe not for me, but as a society we have to wonder what is going to get saved and what is going to get lost?

    There is a lot of talk about the “reverse 15 minutes” rule where instead of everyone being popular for 15 minutes, everyone gets to be anonymous for 15 minutes. I don’t know. A LOT of the stuff I’ve created has been deleted and though it may exist somewhere, if you can’t find it on Google or your own hard drive, by all practical purposes, it doesn’t exist. This applies too to those VHS tapes you had converted to DVD in the early 2000’s. If you’re not converting them to Youtube or some other form of digital media you risk losing (yet again) the information you previously sought to keep. In regards to social media, yes, the data is there, but the more data you add, the harder it is to find things. Have you ever tried to look up one of your old tweets? The server only shows you the last 50 tweets or so at a time and loading more old tweets takes a long time, however if you know what you’re looking for, one search can bring back tweets from 2009. Facebook’s Timeline feature made it easier to go back in time, but unless you’re going all the way to the bottom or scrolling slowly, you can’t easily see everything and Timelines aren’t searchable (Update: Facebook Now Allows Users to Search Timelines). While the problems with a lack of a “delete” button on the Internet is not the topic of this post, I’d argue that it’s less of an issue than it might seem. While the government will always have access to whatever information they want, individual companies will go out of business, files will get deleted or not converted, or databases will not be indexed or searchable making the data irrelevant over time.

    What You Can Do to Preserve and Convert Your Data Over Time

    If you’re looking for a place to store your digital files, consider Dropbox for general file storage online. 100 GB is currently $9.99 a month, which probably isn’t enough for all of your files, but for pictures there is Flickr, which can store up to 1 TB of images per year online. Google Drive is another option and one that can convert your Word, Excel, and Power Point files into an editable document. This is one way to keep files ‘always converted’ as long as Google Drive still exists (Google has been known to shut down services often so beware). The bigger Google gets the less likely I am to invest my data with their systems. While I still use them for email (via Google Apps), I use Dropbox for image and document storage and sharing. I also have a second backup hard drive in my computer, an external hard drive, and a network hard drive connected to my home PC. I still have the first digital picture I ever took of myself in high school, but to do that I had to copy that file from a floppy disk to a computer I had in the late 90’s and to every computer I’ve had since. Just one misstep along the way would have meant that file would have been lost. And is there any value to keeping it? Maybe, maybe not.

    When I used to do computer repair, the #1 most heard request when fixing a computer was, “save my pictures”. These people were saving their digital images on their computers and no where else. This is still the case for the most part. The difference is that most people’s pictures are now on their phones and when they drop them in the toilet, their pictures go down the drain. This again is where Dropbox comes in handy as it can automatically upload pictures from your phone to Dropbox. However, there is an obvious and real cost to all of this data storage. Whether you continually buy new hard drives or you continue to pay month after month to Dropbox to store your data there, you are assigning value to the preservation of that data. And storage of the data does not equate with retrieval of the data. If enough time passed and you were no longer able to open a JPEG image with any available software, that data would have become useless. As each new software and hardware platform comes along, we will always have the White Album Problem and those who do not keep up risk losing access to their data, forever.

    The Snapchat Generation, the Forgotten Generation

    The EU recently blocked a bill titled the Right to Be Forgotten, which would have granted users the right to ask service providers to delete the personal information. But Snapchat users aren’t waiting for a law, they’re simply not storing anything online. While it’s technically possible to retrieve the data, for most purposes this means that for a generation of social media users, no data will be stored online. So what will their history be? How will they remember these times? Maybe there are still places online where they will store their pictures and maybe they’ll occasionally use email to communicate, but when your primary mode of communication is text, Snapchat, Skype, or some other form of ephemeral communication, what legacy are you leaving? Maybe they don’t care, but should we?

    Update from Vint Cerf 2/13/2015

    The following are excerpts from Google’s Vint Cerf warns of ‘digital Dark Age’:

    I worry a great deal about that,” Mr Cerf told me. “You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.

    “And so what can happen over time is that even if we accumulate vast archives of digital content, we may not actually know what it is.”

    ‘Digital vellum’
    Vint Cerf is promoting an idea to preserve every piece of software and hardware so that it never becomes obsolete – just like what happens in a museum – but in digital form, in servers in the cloud.

    If his idea works, the memories we hold so dear could be accessible for generations to come.

    “The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future.”

  • Seektivity – My First Failed Startup

    This is a story about Seektivity, the idea I had for an activity and event locator app that I worked on, but never completed. While I did a lot of fun things growing up, I wouldn’t say I had a lot of fun. I grew up in an environment of scarcity. There was never money to play games or buy snacks. While I got to participate in bike rides, Boy Scouts, church activities, and the occasional trip to an amusement park, I didn’t go to as many movies, arcades, and social events as I would have liked to growing up. #firstworldproblems

    Kids Park

    The summer before I entered 3rd grade my parents moved to Indiana and by 5th grade I was walking with a neighborhood friend back from the store when we came up with the idea for an activity park for kids. It would have the “normal” stuff like arcade games and go-karts, but also weird and dangerous stuff like hot air balloons, hang gliding, bicycles that fly, recumbent bicycles, and a zip line. It would also have spa-like attractions such as a lounge, a pool, and an indoor eating area.

    Kids Park

    In August of 2012 I had an idea for an app that would “facilitate play”. The idea was born out of a desire for anyone to improve where they live (wherever they live) by communicating and facilitating activities in their community. I proposed an app called Seektivity or Outure or something else as a new business for me to run. I began looking for feedback and criticism of this idea (and whether or not they wanted to be a part of it). Initially nobody gave me any feedback at all and no one wanted to help. I began defining what the app would do:

    • It will allow people to create paths/routes for others to follow based on GPS tracking (gamification and/or nature trail creation from public streets and paths)
    • Incorporate geocaching element if wanted (again with the gamification element to outdoor activities)
    • Allow others to find and post activities to do (based on a Foursquare-like interface where users can add activities, set them to reoccur or occur once)
    • Facilitate the creation of activities/games (allow users to turn their life into a game, their town into a game, but basically just make their lives better/funner)
    • Allow users to upload/add what equipment they have (this allows users to find activities that match their equipment ie. pickup hockey games)
    • Monetized by selling equipment/things to upgrade/do activities (affiliate links or ads) or by selling app
    • Predict and announce upcoming activities based on likes/equipment/past history (push notifications / emails)

    I didn’t know how to program and so I decided to create a minimally viable product (MVP) using an architecture I was already familiar with to begin building the app: WordPress. Although it would eventually be a mobile app also, I decided to first build it as a website (or web app). The thinking went that worst-case scenario the mobile app would simply be a ‘wrapper’ that displays the website’s content. This is similar to how Facebook’s app initially worked.

    I was able to cobble together pre-existing parts in WordPress to create an MVP that did most of the things I was looking for the app to do. I experimented with several different plugins and custom post types, but settled on GEO my WP, which “Adds location to any post types, pages or members (using Buddypress) and creates an advance proximity search.” It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but logged in users of the site could add locations and anyone could search for locations.

    The primary benefit the application was supposed to provide over similar apps like Foursquare was the ability to add activities and events to a physical location. WordPress would allow users to add a location via a post and tag it using WordPress tags, but those who followed behind wouldn’t be able to add tags or events to that location without having editor permissions or by using the comments functionality of WordPress. This was enough to have users start to use and test it.

    Seektivity

    I loaded up the database with several places and activities so that there would be something to search for, but it didn’t survive the first interaction with a user. She typed in “tennis”, which wasn’t in the database anywhere so she saw little value in the application. Welcome to the chicken and egg problem. One way to get around this would be to attach this application onto Foursquare’s database and use it for locations, and then adding events and activities on top of that.

    In January of 2013 I contacted a local iPhone app developer and said:

    I am looking for a developer to code an app that is like Foursquare for activities and events rather than just places. It will need to store user account information on a web server and be able to use GPS mapping tech to locate the user in space. They should be able to browse activities and events around them or do custom searches without logging in. With an account they can add activities or events. Places should exist as close to once as possible in the database so an address lookup feature would be necessary. Each event should also have privacy settings and be able to invite and get checked into. Users should also be able to comment or add meta tags to an activity or event. Activities can occur based on a set of criteria I’ve come up with. I have tables and diagrams and wireframes on how all this works, I just need a developer to help code it up.

    He said it would take at least 2 months at $10,000 a month to get to a MVP. I decided to wait, but that first user, Joy, thought the idea was good enough to urge me to keep working on it so I thought I’d take 2 months and learn Ruby on Rails, which I started to do in March. I was working through Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial, but I couldn’t even get through the first chapter. Even at the most beginning levels, it was still over my head.

    Reflections on a Failed App

    Joy thought it would be a good idea for me to document my thoughts on the development of Seektivity at this moment so that when people are writing a book about my future success they will be able to give a correct account of how the company and app got started. Even though this probably will not happen, I thought it would be a good exercise in figuring out what went wrong. Before that I’ll start by describing a little bit about our backgrounds, how we met, and what we have been up to lately.

    Joy grew up around presidents, astronauts, and famous writers. Her father ran a large Christian organization in Colorado and is well connected. She helped friends make millions of dollars with one of her ideas and one of her friends ended up marrying a millionaire. She married an Air Force pilot and after having four kids, started her own interior design company. After dating a NFL player from Wisconsin, she ended up marrying a dentist in Indiana and that is how she met me.

    I grew up around computers, the Internet, and farmers. My father worked for General Motors in Indiana and was well liked at his job. I helped friends start businesses and helped small business owners survive and thrive. One of these businesses was called Neighborhood Geeks, where I worked part time as a computer technician. After moving to Indiana, Joy called Neighborhood Geeks to help setup her children’s computers for school and that is how we met.

    I worked for Joy off and on for several years at her home, until eventually also taking over the website management and marketing functions for her husband’s dental practice. Years later I would also take over the IT work at the office and then assist with a staff transition period when Dr. Reese was between managers. It was during this period of time working in the dentist office for 9 months when I first shared the idea of Seektivity with Joy.

    Before I worked full time at the dental office I was a business analyst at a regional bank. During the day I would daydream about starting new business ventures all while running a side business of IT and web consulting at night. One of these ideas was a search engine called Seektivity. The idea didn’t get very far – just a search engine that used Google search to deliver Google Ads via search results, but I liked the name enough to hold onto the domain.

    The summer I started working at the dental office as interim manager I would go on long walks through Tipton to exercise and think. It was during one of these walks that I decided that I should start an e-Commerce business – one that sold stuff to “facilitate play”. I thought I’d use my Outure™ brand to make an outdoor adventure company, but after doing some customer interviews found that there was more of a need for finding and sharing things to do, which brought me back to Seektivity.

    Joy initially thought the idea was good and encouraged me to build it. I worked on the specifics and even created a web version as a prototype, but when faced with programming obstacles beyond my reach I dropped the project to focus on areas where my web design and IT skills could be better used: eCommerce. I began to work on building the original Outure idea and went looking for a partner. Joy was excited to help, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Seektivity.

    Immediately after New Years 2013, while vacationing with her family in Hawaii, Joy finally had time to clear her head and it was through this clarity that Seektivity came back to mind. At the same time, back in Indiana, I was explaining the idea to a group of friends when one of them turned to him and said, “You know, I still think that’s a really good idea and even if you can’t build it yourself, you should try and pitch it to someone.”

    When Joy came back she asked me to meet. I came to tell her that I couldn’t work with her anymore and that I was moving on. She understood, but wanted to share how she had come to think about Seektivity while on the beach in Hawaii. She said that a group of people wanted to go fishing, but had no way of finding someone to fish with. It was something that Seektivity would have fixed and this is how her interest was renewed.

    Her interest in the project inspired me to ask her again if she’d like to be a part of making something great. She said she wanted to change the world and that she believed that the business had the capability of connecting people and creating experiences that simply would not occur without the app. She believed it would help bring people together and to be more active. It is in this way that Seektivity was born.

    I AM thinking ALL THE TIME about possibilities with Seektivity…as I travel, ideas and options for the app become so evident!!! It is an Erich “DUH” moment — why it has taken us this long to capitalize on it is mind boggling!! -Joy

    There’s nothing like doing something to realize what you need to do next. This happened to me when I was first developing Seektivity. When I actually could use the thing, my perspective changed a lot on what the product actually was. Design sure does matter a lot. Obviously Apple is a cliche example, but I’m thinking “Eventbrite” vs. “Foursquare”. Both allow user-generated content, but one is ‘cool’ and one is not. The difference? Design.

    I considered making Seektivity using Foursquare’s API but even in the briefest of research I glimpsed that the idea violates their API terms. In other words, you can use their data like a data set and run analysis’ on it and make your own ‘pivot tables’ out of it or you can publish to it, but you can’t use it as a address database for a whole other service like I’m wanting to. I’m not sure I’d want to spend all that effort doing that either since one click would disconnect my whole app.

    By February of 2013 somebody else made a Seektivity app called Shoutt. It wasn’t exactly the same but pretty neat and it actually worked. I signed up. I think my idea has more sticking power in the midwest where I live. My use cases are more practical I think than theirs. It’s all about the use cases. But use cases don’t matter if your app doesn’t work. As of this writing their app is still up and running. Meanwhile I’m writing this blog post.

    Epilogue

    By September of 2013 Joy and I had started an ecommerce company called SkinnyCoconutOil.com with her son. I was onboard as an SEO and IT advisor. My bio reflects what I was trying to accomplish at Seektivity:

    I’d like to help people meet more people and do more things. I hear so many people say they don’t know what there is to do and don’t know who to do them with. I’m not talking about boyfriend/girflriend matchmaking – I’m talking about the question of how to make new friends and how to find new things to do. In a world with an overwhelming amount of information, people are more isolated than ever. I want to help fix that.

    This problem is not from a lack of information, but from a lack of organization of that information. If Shoutt is not successful, someone else will be. In December of 2012 Foursquare added the ability to add events to a location. This problem is real and software like Foursquare, Shoutt, or Meetup can help bring people together and make the world a better, funner place. It’s all about #community.

  • AVG CloudCare Best Practices

    AVG is antivirus software and AVG Cloud Care is the website that helps to manage installations, threats, updates, and scans. AVG Cloud Care organizes various AVG installations by “Customers”. Each Customer can also have “Groups”. Templates can be assigned to Customers and Alerts can be assigned to groups. Devices are the names of computers. Devices can be assigned to Groups. Alerts can also be assigned to Devices.

    AVG CloudCare

    Managing Templates

    There are two types of templates. One is at the “Partner” level and the other at the “Customer” level. The Partner template does not propagate down to the Customer level. Any changes made at the Partner level template must be manually copied and applied to the Customer level on a per-Customer basis.

    As much effort as possible should be taken to keep the Partner template up to date so that it can be used to apply to new Customers when they are first set up. It can also be applied to existing Customers by saving the Partner template and applying it to an existing Customer in the Policies tab.

    Managing Policies

    There are several top-level categories for policies, but the ones we use for Anti-virus are General and Antivirus. The General policy should “Require confirmation from the user” and update every 4 hours.

    The Antivirus policy’s Advanced Settings should, “Enable Resident Shield”, “Ask before removing threat”, “Report Potentially Unwanted Programs and Spyware threats”, “Scan boot sector of removable media”, “Scan files referred in registry”, “Enable Instant Messaging and P2P downloads protection”. Under “E-mail Scanner”, “Scan incoming messages” and “Scan outgoing messages” should be unchecked.

    Managing Exceptions

    1. Log into the CloudCare Portal
    2. On the Policies tab, select the policy you would like to manage.
    3. Click on Anti-Virus to expand the menu.
    4. Go to the Exceptions tab.
    5. Click Add Exception if adding a new exception. If editing an existing exception, select the object to edit and click the Edit or Remove button.
    6. Select the exception type; i.e., file, folder, or URL.
    7. Enter the path or URL of the exception. If it’s a username-specific folder, choose “Any Location”.
    8. Choose the components for the exception to apply to.
    9. Click Close and Save.

    The global, partner Policies do not override or propagating down to customer policies. They only copy when a NEW customer is created. This means every customer needs touched every time a global policy change is made.

    The “partner” policy is a template. This police is used when a “New” customer is created this is the default policy for the new customer. This does not propagate down to existing customers only to newly created customers.

    AVG Support

    866-402-9806 AVG CloudCare Support
    828-466-5757 Support for Business
    866-833-5727 ext. 417. This will take you to the tech support operator. She will create a case for the techs and transfer you to the next available tech. You can also email cloudcaresupport@avg.com

    Tools to Use

    Responding to Threats

    Determine if the threat can or should be excluded. You can use a tool like Virus Total to determine if the file is actually a virus. If you are completely sure, first exclude the file at the Customer level. If that doesn’t work and it is a very-specific folder, then exclude it at the folder level. If the file is not currently infected, but could be in the future, exclude the file at the device-level on the actual computer with the issue, NOT in the AVG Cloud Care website.

    Marketing Email Response to Virus Alert

    There may be a time when you’ll need to respond directly to a client before making a change to their computer. Use the following template as a guide:

    Dear [Name],

    We are all aware of the changing threats on the Internet; identity theft, viruses, adware, data theft and many more. To address these challenges we are, and have been upgrading our desktop management tools. However, we now detect and report on a variety of web browser plug-ins that are not a specific threat, but are being reported as potential issues. Example, many web sites would like to have their search tool on your Web Browser to drive traffic to their advertisers.

    These are commonly installed if you are not careful where you click. Install Adobe Reader, and if you’re not careful, they’ll install Google Chrome Browser. Everyone wants to slip something on your PC.

    Please review the following file to determine if you would like us to:

    A) Allow this threat to remain on your PC
    B) Allow us to assist you with removing the threat

    Threat: [Ex. “Friends Checker” toolbar.]

    How to delete threats remotely in AVG Cloudcare?

    If the threat had been moved to the virus vault, then yes, you can remove it from the device’s virus vault…

    • Devices
    • Click on device name
    • Under Device Details, click on “Virus Vault”

    However, if the file is bigger than 4MB, or if AVG can’t remove the file due to blocked access, you may need to attempt manual removal. Also, modifying the following policy settings will change how AVG handles detected threats, by eliminating asking the end user to automatically moving all detected threats to the virus vault so you, the administrator, can decide if the threat is legitimate or a false positive…

    1. Policies tab
    2. Select policy group name, such as “Default”
    3. AntiVirus tab
    4. Advanced Settings
    5. Uncheck the “Ask me before removing threat” box
    6. ID-Protect tab
    7. Select “Automatically quarantine detected threats”
    8. Save

    If you have more issues or questions, please call us at 1-866-833-5727, Monday through Friday, from 8 AM to 8 PM Eastern; and have your AVG case number ready when you call.

  • Mobile Device Management Tools

    I had a client that was looking for an “active sync monitoring/reporting/blocking tool for BYOD email access in an Exchange environment” so I researched the following solutions:

    iPhone Mobile Device Management-mdm

    Apple Mobile Device Management

    As the massive growth of iOS devices continues to rise, more IT decision makers are implementing innovative Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions to efficiently manage large-scale iOS deployments while improving user productivity across the board.

    The MDM framework built into iOS gives MDM solutions the ability to wirelessly interact with iOS devices that are managed by organizations. Third-party vendors use this framework to build MDM servers that communicate seamlessly with iOS devices.

    MDM gives IT departments the ability to securely enroll devices in an enterprise environment, configure and update settings, monitor compliance with corporate policies, and remotely wipe or lock managed devices. Using an MDM server gives organizations a simple way to get users up and running with access to company services regardless of who owns the device.

    McAfee Enterprise Mobility Management

    “McAfee Enterprise Mobility Management (McAfee EMM) enables businesses to empower their work force with mobile productivity in a secure, simplified, streamlined way.”

    This service blocks, “Unauthorized, unsecured, and modified devices like jailbroken iPhones, and meet audit and reporting demands with enterprise-class reporting.”

    Free MaaS360 ActiveSync Admin Tool

    “Gain Visibility of Mobile Devices within Your Exchange ActiveSync Environment.” In the era of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), more users than ever are connecting to Exchange through ActiveSync without ITs knowledge. With the MaaS360 ActiveSync Admin Tool from Fiberlink, you can easily view all of the devices connecting to your Exchange servers through ActiveSync and remove old device associations with ease.

    The MaaS360 ActiveSync Admin Tool lets you:

    • Quickly identify the number ActiveSync device associations
    • Export mailbox and device information for reporting and maintenance
    • Remove orphaned ActiveSync devices in bulk
    • Best of all, no PowerShell knowledge is required.

    Air Watch Mobile Email Management

    “Prevent access for blacklisted devices and operating systems with device” says Air Watch, “Block access for un-enrolled, non-compliant or compromised devices”

    “Through Secure Gateway, companies can secure and manage their corporate email infrastructure by defining the business logic for connectivity. IT can allow or block both selected mobile users and approved devices and classes as well as create rule sets that require users to access mail using only approved Webmail clients and services.”

    According to Air Watch you can, “Block unmanaged devices…Discover existing unmanaged devices…Block client, user, device model or OS…Exchange 2003/2007”

    Air Watch is the largest provider of enterprise mobility management in the world. They specialize in Mobile Security, Mobile Device Management, and BYOD. They are used by companies like United Airlines, Lowe’s, Delta, US Army Corps of Engineers, NHS, and Skanska. This might be a good place to start looking.

    Exchange Server 2010 Mobile Device Management

    Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync offer many different features for both users and administrators. As an administrator, you can create allow lists, block lists, and quarantine lists specifying which mobile devices are allowed to access your Exchange mailboxes. A quarantine list lets you allow only a user’s assigned device to connect to the Exchange server.

  • Crypolocker Ransomware Alert

    Beware of new Crypolocker ransomware that encrypts all your files after you open an email attachment.

    cryptolocker

    This virus encrypts all of your files and then forces you to pay $300 in bitcoin to unlock your files. If you don’t pay, they delete the key after 72 hours and your files are essentially gone. All files that are writable/editable by your user account are affected, including files stored on a network and all USB backups. It’s able to get past most antivirus programs, but there are things you can do:

    • Restrict network access as much as possible
    • Inform users to beware of attachments
    • Keep regular OFFLINE backups

    Here are some reference links about the Cryptolocker Ransomware:

    Here is an example email you can send to your staff or clients:

    Recently there has been a new type of cyber attack on computer systems that has the ability to compromise an entire network of computer files. The virus/malware comes in through an email attachment and then promptly encrypts all network files so that they can not be accessed. The idea behind this virus is for companies to pay $300 or more to have the writers of the virus so they can decrypt the files for access again.

    Despite having security systems in place, the openness of certain environments such as your email program and your web browser can still allow this type of attack to occur. While we will continue to develop new systems to protect your organization, we need everyone to be aware of the part they play in keeping the network secure while in their email and while online.

    Here are 4 simple ways to Avoid Getting a Virus:

    1. Don’t open e-mails from people you don’t know (even if it seems like it’s from a company you normally deal with)
    2. Don’t open attachments in e-mails unless you were waiting for the attachment
    3. Don’t go to websites/click links that you don’t fully trust
    4. Don’t download and execute files that you don’t fully trust

    Please note that even if the file extension says “PDF” it may actually be a ZIP or EXE file that could potentially run and cause harm to your computer files or files on the network. We all have a part to play in helping to keep our computer networks secure in an ever-evolving security landscape.

  • How to Sort Emails in Gmail

    Gmail originally came out in 2007, but believe it or not there are still people learning how to use it. I recently created this guide for one of my clients and thought I’d share it here to help others who might be learning Gmail for the first time. Here is a guide on how to use Gmail’s filters, labels, and search functions.

    Gmail uses Labels and Filters to help sort email. Filters are like Inbox Rules in Outlook and Labels are like Folders in Outlook. Filters can be used to delete, ignore, or label emails. There are a couple of different ways to setup email filters.

    Setting Up Email Filters from within an Email

    If you look in the right-hand corner of each email, you’ll see a “More” drop-down and one of the choices is “Filter Messages Like These”. When you click that you’ll see options to create filters. Gmail will guess as to what you’re trying to filter (usually by auto-filling in the email sender or the to:address), but you can change these. At this point you can decide what you want done with the messages and do it for all emails in the past or just the future.

    Gmail Filters

    Setting Up Email Filters from within Gmail

    If you’re not in an email message (or even if you are), you can click on the ‘cog wheel’ Settings menu in the upper right and click on “Settings”. From there you’ll see links across the top like General, Labels…and one of them is Filters. This is mostly used to edit existing filters, but you can also add new filters by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page.

    Setting Up Labels

    If you like the idea of color-coding your emails or sorting them in a way that makes sense to you, such as with Adsense emails, you can always label things. This makes it easier for you to find things later because you can always go to the search box and type “label:[label name]”. I’ll cover searching in a bit, but to continue on with Labels, these can be applied to any email by clicking the “Label” button above the email or through a filter. Once a label is setup, it’s color can be changed on the left menu by clicking on the color box.

    Using the Search Box

    As you would expect from Google, this is one of the best features of Gmail. Here are some example searches to show you how it works. For this example, we’ll suppose there is a label named, “Square”. This search will show you all emails labeled with “Square”:

    label:square

    Fun fact: all emails in your inbox have the label “inbox”. When you archive an email, the “inbox” label gets removed. When you delete an email, the “deleted” label gets applied. All deleted emails are deleted permanently after 30 days unless you manually delete them. This search will show you all emails from erich@domain.com:

    from:erich@domain.com

    This search will show you all emails you’ve sent to joynreese@gmail.com:

    to:you@domain.com

    Answers to Your Specific Question

    Q, How do I make a folder that will hold all of my emails from a certain sender?

    A. Create a Label for that sender and Filter to assign that Label to that person’s email address. The easiest way to do that is to find an email from that person, use the “More” menu in the upper-right of that email, and click “Filter messages like this”. Make sure the person’s email address is in the From box and click, “Assign a label”. If a label does not already exist, click “New label” and then assign that label. You will then have the opportunity to assign all emails in the past or just the ones going forward.

  • The Rise of the iPhone

    It’s easy to forget how far technology has come in the last 20 years. From the rise of the World Wide Web in 1994 to web-based email in 1996 to blogging in 2003 to Facebook in 2004 to text-messaging in 2005 to the rise of the smartphone in 2007. The smartphone is, in some ways, the pinnacle of this technological arc, allowing us to access all of the previous technological innovations in one device. Although I’ve owned a HTC Hero (1,2) and other smartphones, the most popular smartphone is the iPhone, I thought I’d reminisce about my personal history of the iPhone.

    CRT monitors and Samsung Flip Phones Can Be Fun
    CRT monitors and Samsung Flip Phones Can Be Fun
    Back in October 7 of 2007 I had the idea to link a trucker’s CB radio to their laptop to allow them to see and talk to other truckers in similar area via Internet location, rather than CB channel. I would also (through Skype I assume) allow them to call their family/friends from that same CB radio interface.

    This has all since been supplanted by the iPhone, which came out 3 months earlier on June 29, 2007. I guess I didn’t know the power it would have to supplant and replace so many different hardware and software elements of our lives – and I didn’t anticipate how widespread [smartphone’s] use would be.

    ———- Forwarded message ———-
    Date: Sun, Oct 7, 2007 at 10:21 PM
    Subject: Telablue Ideas

    Hydermill Ideas

      USB CB/Skype

    • Trucker’s Skype. Enables use of CB Radio over laptop
    • Location by IP
    • Half-Duplex
    • Clear, Static Free Sound
    • CB uses USB
    • Buddy List For talking to specific trucker friends on the road
    • Family Land Line Access – Call Family at anytime over the road using CB Radio
    • Trucker Band and Police Band Access – Enables normal use of CB Radio, with clear sound.

    The following is the first message I ever got from a person with the email signature “Sent from my iPhone”. It was from sent on October 24, 2007 from one of my friend’s iPhone. He didn’t even tell me he got a new iPhone, he just started sending out messages that said “Sent from my iPhone.” Brady.

    ———- Forwarded message ———-
    Date: Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 4:12 PM
    Subject:
    To: Erich Stauffer

    Sent from my iPhone

    This is the first message I ever sent from my first iPhone. It was October 30, 2007 and I had just started working at AllThingsIT for the first time. I recently recycled it to get my current iPhone. Sprint gave me $35 credit for it if I remember correctly.

    Yahoo! Mail added it’s own email signature underneath the iPhone’s email signature. This is partly why I don’t use Yahoo! Mail anymore. I was using Yahoo! Mail instead of Gmail on my iPhone was because Gmail only worked via POP or IMAP, but eventually Google came out with a Gmail app.

    ———- Forwarded message ———-
    From: Erich Stauffer
    Date: Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 12:52 PM
    Subject: Router problem
    To: Erich Stauffer

    Sent from my iPhone
    __________________________________________________
    Do You Yahoo!?
    Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
    http://mail.yahoo.com

  • Jobs, Grants, and Everything Else

    This is a blog post about jobs, work, getting grants, writing books, watching movies, the state of the Maker culture, and everything Elon Musk is doing nowadays. It started with a conversation I had last night with my wife’s cousin’s husband about these things. This is a summary of that conversation and of my current interests and this blog in general.

    How to Be Happy at Work

    Erich Stauffer Jobs, Grants, and Everything ElseHappiness at your job comes from being really good at what you do. Being really good requires deliberate practice to rise above the performance plateau that most people reach at their jobs. Once you’re really good you’ll be able to look back at all the good work you’ve done, all of the people you’ve helped, and you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness.

    Ultimately, you are in control of your own emotions. No one else can make you feel a certain way. You always have a choice of how you react to external factors. The hard part is changing the habits that cause these reactions, but if you can replace the action within the habit, you’re one step closer to managing your own actions.

    How to Apply for a Government Grant

    Anyone can apply for a government grant, but for most people the process is too long, complicated, and shrouded in mystery, so this is brief introduction to the grant application process. First you’ll need an EIN (employer identification number) from your state’s IRS and a DUNS number from Dunn and Bradstreet. Once you have these, you can start applying for government grants.

    How to Travel the Glory Trail Across America

    There is a path across America that strings together some of the most scenic parts of the western United States. If you’re starting in Indiana, you first go to Chicago, then Madison, Wisconsin, through Minnesota, across South Dakota into Mount Rushmore. From there you continue heading west to Yellowstone in Wyoming and up through Montana and Idaho into Seattle, Washington. From there you head south through Portland, Oregon to Sacremento, San Francisco, and Los Angelas, California. After driving through Las Vegas you finally reach the Grand Canyon in Arizona. At that point you can either choose to go back through Denver, Colorado and Kansas City, Missouri or keep south through New Mexico and Texas. I recently did the first leg of this trail in a tw0-day trip, but expect to spend at least two weeks to do the whole thing.

    One recommendation my wife’s cousin’s husband had was to buy a National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass that gets your vehicle into any national park for one annual fee. You don’t have to buy it in advance, just make sure you buy it at the first park you come to so you can take full advantage of the price benefits. One other tip is to rent a vehicle for this trip rather than to use your own vehicle. It will cost you between $30 and $50 a day depending on the vehicle and any current specials, but considering the amount of miles you’ll be traveling, the wear on your vehicle, and the amount of things that could go wrong along the way, it makes sense to rent a vehicle that you can swap out if something happens rather than face a big repair bill on your own vehicle while in a remote location.

    How to Write, Publish, and Sell a Book Online

    You may have heard that books are the new business cards or that it’s a great way to make passive income on the side and it’s both of those, but just knowing that doesn’t make it happen. You still have to do the work. If you’re not used to writing, you might consider starting a blog and writing a few blog posts first. Once you have several blog posts written you could consider rolling these up into a chapter or even a short ebook or white paper. This is called repurposing content and is just one of the ways to get started writing a book.

    The easiest way to write a book is to start writing it in secret – don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. You may not know what to write at first, so just start writing about anything and the clarity will come later. Sometimes I find it helps if I start out pretending I’m writing a letter to someone I know. However, you eventually want to let people know about the book if you intend to sell it. While it’s best to finish the book first, there can be some advantages to letting people know you’re about to publish a book.

    Imagine if when you were half-way through writing the book that you put up a landing page that let people sign up to get notified about the book when it comes out. In the meantime you start blogging about the book and asking for more email sign-ups. By the time you’re ready to publish the book you’ve got a list of people ready to buy and you’ve established authority and trust from a series of blog posts that are similar to the future book’s material. This is exactly what Nathan Barry did with his iPhone book.

    Alternatively you could do the more traditional approach and publish your paper book on Amazon using Createspace or on Kindle using Kindle Direct Publishing, but each of these models has two stark differences to Nathan Barry’s model. First, when a customer purchases a book from Amazon that customer belongs to Amazon, not you. You have no idea who that customer is and you can never contact them unless they contact you first. Second, Amazon takes at least a 15% commission, compared to 5% from your own credit card processing company.

    How to Find Good Movies on Netflix

    I subscribe to Netflix and have used it to watch everything from Glee to 10 Items or Less, but every since Starz left the movie selection has been left wanting. However, last weekend I watched Primer and this weekend I plan on watching Expendables 2. I knew Primer was good because I’d watched it before once, but since I didn’t understand it the first time I watched it again. I still didn’t fully understand it until I read this blog post explaining Primer. That movie is so hard to explain that when you start typing “what happened in…”, Google autocomplete displays “what happened in Primer” first above the next highest, “what happened in Benghazi”.

    Why Expendables 2? While I had reluctantly seen Expendables 1, my wife’s cousin’s husband reminded me that this movie is really a parody of itself and just a over-the-top 80’s action movie complete with all of the 80’s action movie stars. When I say complete I mean Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously? Anyone from the 8-bit generation who grew up watching Saturday-morning cartoons will appreciate this movie even if you don’t like action movies. With a giant wink and a nod, Expendables 2 guarantees a Primer-like trip back to a time when guns were bigger and times were simpler.

    To help you find better movies, Netflix has invested heavily in algorithms that help you find movies you might like but this doesn’t always work when one account is used for a whole family. In fact I know it doesn’t work because I don’t actually want to watch My Little Pony despite Netflix’s constant insistence that I do. Thankfully they’ve recently came out with profiles that allow each family member to have their own likes and dislikes. It was with this method that I was able to see Primer after answering a series of questions like, “Do you like mind-bending movies?” I can say with confidence that I was happy to deselect all horror films and children’s films so that I could focus on what I like.

    How to Build Anything

    We live in an amazing time where we are only limited by our own imaginations and willingness to make things happen. Strictly speaking, we have the Internet which gives us access to more information than we could ever consume, hardware that is both cheap, powerful, and extensible, programming platforms that let us use hardware however we like, credit card processing and ecommerce tools that let us sell anything we could possible choose to make, and a world-wide audience plugged in and ready to be marketed to on Google and Facebook. There is literally nothing stopping you from taking an idea to market with the right amount of dedication and effort.

    My greatest fear is that 10 years from now my son or daughter is going to ask me why I didn’t do more with this time I had back then. They will have seen evidence of those who did take advantage of these tools and built something great, something sustainable, or something life changing. In 10 years we will have our next Facebook, our next Google, and our next Microsoft. They will be born out of Arduino boards, iPhone apps, and 3D printing technologies. But by then someone will already have done it and by then it will be too late. The time to act is now – be that person in your child’s past that built that thing that you can look back on with fondness and see how you helped people.

    How Elon Musk Builds Things

    Elon Musk, co-founder of Paypal, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors builds things using Physics’ first principles, which as Musk explains it, “boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.” One of his latest projects is the Grasshopper

    which is a test rocket that can take off and land vertically, allowing the rocket to be re-used on this planet or others. The other project is called Hyperloop, which is a new form of city-to-city mass transit that involves using tubes and cartridges instead of rails and trains to carry people and property quickly between cities. Elon Musk children will look back 10 years from now and know their dad helped make our world a better place. If you like Elon Musk, you might also like Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and founder of Square.