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“The temp accidentally deleted a file – can I get it back?”

A networking associate called the Now IT Works help desk one morning with that very question. He had a temporary employee in the office who was doing some clerical work when she accidentally deleted a file from the public folders.

How Now IT Works Was Able to Help

As it turns out, the temp didn’t delete the folder but simply dragged-and-dropped it into another folder on the public drive. Now IT Works can help you set high-level safeguards so that only certain employees are able to make changes, add or delete files to existing folders.

Also, your Windows-based server has the ability to monitor critical folders and log entries with the date, time and name of the employee who made the changes.

Clients who subscribe to our Blue Steel service can have this feature activated easily.

Over the weekend, many Fantasy Football drafts took place around the country. In honor of that, we’ve dusted off an old, but still interesting blog post about fantasy football and how it affects your business/office -

• The average fantasy football player spends an average of 1.19 hours per week working on their team, while at work. Companies lose about $45.22 in wages each week, per employee.

Example: If there are 5 employees within your company and they spend an hour each week on their fantasy football teams, after 17 weeks of play (not including playoffs), it would cost your company approximately $3,843.70 each season.

And let’s not forget that Fidelity had no problem firing four employees last year, all of whom were caught participating in their fantasy football league while at work.

There are services available to restrict internet usage during high-peak times; March Madness, playoffs. If you are interested in learning more, please contact a Now IT Works representative.

This is the perfect story to stumble on for a Monday…

A young man of 19 years old, broke into a house in West Virginia recently and stole two diamond rings worth about $3500. This wouldn’t seem like a big news story except before this young criminal left the home, he checked into his Facebook account… and then left the computer screen on and signed into his account, before fleeing.

Needless to say, he was not hard to find and now faces 1 to 10 years in prison.

An important note to our readers, while this story is comical – there are some safety precautions you should take with your Facebook page. The young criminal in this story knew the victim (and their information) through another Facebook friend.

Be careful with what you post on your social networking sites, especially if you will be out of town.

In a telling sign of the swine-flu times, iPhone has released an application that will let a user know if there are disease-outbreaks lurking in their neighborhood.

Named “Outbreaks Near Me” – the app is designed to alert users of disease information. The mobile version even allows participation; for example, if a clinic is noticing a high number of similar cases or something unusual, they can submit that information to the system via this app.

The creators, Clark Freifeld and his HealthMap partner, John Brownstein aren’t sure exactly what will happen with this app but figure it’s best to “just put it out there” and let the users decide.

For more information – read the complete article at Wired.com

April 22nd is the celebration of Earth Day and in honor of our planet, her are a few technology tips you can use to reduce your impact on Earth.

• Get rid of the “vampires” -vampire power is the energy your appliances and technology use, even when they are not on. Just turning it off is not enough, try unplugging it altogether. Vampire power can create an extra 5%-10% increase in utility bills. The worst offenders are anything with a remote and plasma screen televisions. Interesting..

• Another great idea is to “e-cycle” your old technology. E-cycling is the act of disposing of your old gadgets in an approved and environmentally sound way.  See “Where Old Technology Goes” for more information about the process.

• And finally, don’t forget about good old recycling in the original form of recycling papers, printing on both sides of the paper and sending your used toner bottles back to the manufacturer for proper disposal and reuse.

A good point was made by one of our Now IT Works friends – why isn’t every day Earth Day? Let’s keep that in mind and save our planet!

Twitter has become one of the fastest growing trends in technology – we’ve mentioned it before in this blog but maybe you’re still unsure as to what it is, how to use it and how to make it work for you.

I’m thrilled to send you to an article written by one of our technicians, Jason, who wrote a great post about Twitter and some of the tools that hare available, such as TwitterFeed and TWhirl.

Click here to be redirected to his website – www.lostoutlaw.net

And once you get your own Twitter account up and running, don’t forget to follow Now IT Works at: http://twitter.com/NowITWorks

In an effort to pass along useful information to our readers, I stumbled upon this article, which may be helpful to those who have lost their jobs in this economic downturn. “Job Hunters: Mind Your Manners”, is written by Mark Jewell and covers the topic of tech etiquette while on the search for new employment.

Including tips on subjects such as; avoiding email blasting, observing boundaries and networking the smart way – this article has some great tips for setting yourself apart in these tough times.

(Source: Tech News World)

I ran across a pretty funny article this week that shows the dangers of not logging out of your computer (email account, facebook account, etc). While this has been written in a comical manner, it is a very serious topic.

Many of our own users do not log off properly, some keep the same password for years while others have left their computers logged in so long, they have “forgotten” the password. These are dangerous behaviors as they can expose the actual computer, the employee or the entire business open to the evils that lurk when it comes to technology.

Read the article to see more… “Why You Should Always Log Out” by Jeff Rosenberg

(this link is Safe for Work but other links on the website might not be. Please use your own discretion)

Is your processor 64-bit capable? With SecurAble, you can find out in about 2 seconds.

According to its website, “SecurAble probes the system’s processor to determine the presence, absence and operational status of three modern processor features:

• 64-bit instruction extensions,
• Hardware support for detecting and preventing
  the execution of code in program data areas, … and
• Hardware support for system resource “virtualization.”

Here is the site to download -  http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

It also goes in-depth about Hardware DEP – fun stuff!

To those of us that live in the future and use Vista, (yes, I’m an optimist!) I wanted to share some of the Sidebar Gadgets that I have found the most useful since the time of release. I recently went through an update check on them all so they should be current.  I get most of my gadgets from http://thehobbylounge.com. Please note that you have to register to download.

 
So- what’s in the rar?*

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