Restaurants Sue Vendors After Point-of-Sale Hack

The best line in this story about a group of Louisiana restaurants getting hacked is: 


"His story reads like a warning for small businesses, who in connecting their businesses to the Internet, have also become prey for sophisticated cyber-criminals."


This is a case where a good local IT consultant would have come in handy to keep customer credit card information out of the hands of Romanian hackers. New applications and technical tools permit tremendous productivity gains for much smaller businesses than ever before, but not without risk. 


Restaurants Sue Vendors After Point-of-Sale Hack from CIO.com.


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Big Windows 7 Student Only Discount

Microsoft is discounting Windows 7 to students in the US to $29.99.

That's a pretty good discount! Here at On-Site Technical Solutions we'd love to give that price to our customers.

So students are happy, but should everyone else be upset?

Why Microsoft Should Give $30 Student Deal to Everyone

Windows 7 Student Deal a Reminder the Rest of Us Are Getting Screwed

Probably.

Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

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Mind Games: How Social Engineers Win Your Confidence

Even the best hackers rely on human error to be successful. If we review breaches in security and data loss from theft we usually find human error somewhere in the breakdown of security. That human error may include a lack of security procedures for the human to follow, but it's the thief getting to someone's password, computer or physical space that causes the largest breaches of security. I'll include unprotected networks (especially residential and small business) as human error. Anyone not using secure passwords, running a hardware firewall and Internet Security software this century isn't paying attention.

We can have the best security systems available in place, but if network denizens do not follow procedures it's relatively simple to circumvent security. That's especially true as organizations' technology becomes more decentralized and mobile.

This item from CIO talks about how social engineers (including hackers) influence us.

Mind Games: How Social Engineers Win Your Confidence

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12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office

I admit I'm old enough to remember the Carlin reference and was expecting expletives (can we still use that term?) - and at least a couple of others here at On-Site Technical Solutions can remember even if they won't admit it!

I'm not sure how important this is - if anyone is still using these terms they're probably not having many conversations with people who care. But it was kind of fun reminiscing on the earlier days of the Internet and how my vocabulary has changed without realizing it.

A trip down memory lane from CIO

12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office

A sub heading in this article was also fun (from Network World):

Obsolete technology: 40 big losers

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Extend Your iPhone Battery Charge

We can get right to the point here on the iPhone battery. The three best ways to extend a charge on the iPhone battery life are:

1) A car charger
2) An external battery pack
3) Spare chargers wherever you happen to spend your days.

We're using more iPhones at On-Site Technical Solutions and we're finding that complaints about battery life are justified. When we bought the first one at the Apple store the genius (that is what they're called, no?) suggested we connect to WiFi networks as much as possible. That uses less battery than the 3G network. But it still won't get your heavily used iPhone through the day without a recharge.

Here is the official Apple link on iPhone batteries, where they tell us, "The most important thing is to keep your iPhone out of the sun or a hot car (including the glove box). Heat will degrade your battery’s performance the most."

iSmashPhone has a nice summary of what's practical and what's not in trying to keep that iPhone running at this link.

How To Actually Extend Your iPhone's Battery Life

This LA Times article explains some of the technology behind the lagging battery power in the new iPhones (as well as some whining from users).

IPhone 3GS owners bemoan its battery life

And from CIO
iPhone Battery Life: Three Tips for Getting More Juice

We're still waiting to hear, "Battery life on your iPhone stinks? There's an app for that!"

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CIOs Dismiss Cloud Security Concerns

We're all going to be using technology differently in the next few years (or months). Some early objections to cloud computing include questions about security in the cloud, especially for enterprises. Some early views of CIOs in the UK from CIO

CIOs Dismiss Cloud Security Concerns

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CIOs: Your Networks have Already Been Compromised

From CIO via Networkworld, a different take on infected networks and how to fix them.

CIOs: Your Networks have Already Been Compromised

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10 Things You Should Never Write in an E-Mail or Instant Message

Reams (terabytes?) have been written about Email etiquette. Heres more input from CIO These may seem pretty obvious, but I'll bet you've seen at least a couple of them your inbox.

10 Things You Should Never Write in an E-Mail or Instant Message

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When is Windows XP Going Away?

The last formal date from Microsoft for shipping Windows XP was in May, 2009. Now we're down to following rumors on the XP death watch. It looks like it might be around (shipping with new PCs) into 2010.

Here's a post from CIO back in December

Windows XP: The Microsoft OS That Just Won't Die

and a more recent post from Network World

Windows XP Death Date Pushed Beyond Windows 7 Release

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How to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile: Stand Out to Employers, Recruiters

LinkedIn is a professional social networking site that many of our associates use to network across professions.

Here are some tips on using LinkedIn from CIO

How to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile: Stand Out to Employers, Recruiters

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Browser Wars: Firefox May Already Be Dead

The NY Times may like Firefox best, but CIO thinks it may already be dead. As noted in the previous post, take these reviews with a grain of salt and use the one that works best with what you do!

From CIO

Browser Wars: Firefox May Already Be Dead

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10 Reasons to Use Microsoft Outlook for Your Company's E-mail

From CIO

So many people, especially geeks, bash Microsoft and tout alternatives to Microsoft products. We've found that Microsoft is so endemic in both business and peronal environments that most basic competitive products to Microsoft are not cost effective. They typically require training, techical expertise or at least comfort and work arounds that are simply not available in most small and mid-sized business environments.

Here's a take on Microsoft Exchange as an enterprise mail solution.

10 Reasons to Use Microsoft Outlook for Your Company's E-mail

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10 - make that 15 - Must-have Apps for Your BlackBerry

From CIO

Here are the first 10 apps for your Blackberry

And the five they added in Free BlackBerry Downloads: Five (More) Essential Apps

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Six Timesaving Tips for Word 2007

From CIO

CIO online has an artice originally from Computerworld with these 6 tips (some of which work in earlier versions of Word):

1. Highlight all appearances of a word or phrase in a document.
2. Search for a word and all its variations.
3. Work in two parts of a document at the same time.
4. Make changes in the Print Preview screen.
5. Give yourself some extra room between paragraphs.
6. Add random placeholder text.


Six Timesaving Tips for Word 2007

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