Flight 1549, two disasters averted!

Paul Jorgensen had just come from a meeting at Goldman Sachs when he boarded US Airways Flight 1549. He sat down in seat 1A next to the window, pulled out his notebook to capture of few thoughts, then put it away and prepared for takeoff.

Seated one row behind him was Bill Wiley, also traveling for business and bringing with him as most business travelers do, a laptop computer. But he, like Jorgensen and all passengers on flight 1549 abandoned his personal belongings and focused on saving his life when the plane crash-landed into the Hudson River on January 15, 2009

Both of these men had been backing up regularly. The difference is Jorgenson backed up online with automatically using Online Backup Software and Wiley backed up his computer to a USB Memory stick.
Within 24 Hours of the crash Jorgensen had retrieved his data from online storage and was able to start working again, he took a few days off with family, but Bill Wiley lost hundreds of hours of work on both his Laptop and USB Sticks. The stories were detailed in USA Today and ComputerWorld.

In moments of disaster, those who have solid, reliable technology solutions are able to focus on other things without the fear of losing their data. At The Technology Coach, we're grateful that all passengers on Flight 1549 were in the hands of such a skillful crew and were able to return to their loved ones without any loss of life or significant injury.

If something happened to your Laptop or Desktop computer would you rather be in Paul’s shoes or Bill’s?

If your backup is just as likely to be destroyed as your computer is because the exist in the same physical space, perhaps it's time to consider other options, online backups are available for as little as $5 a month and advanced technology makes them almost fool proof to maintain once setup properly.

For a Proactive approach… Call The Technology Coach!

Restore lost productivity when you're spending time in front of your PC.

You might be surprised what programs you use most often.

Tools from www.rescuetime.com watch your activity on your computer and give you a useful report about your daily activities.

Their privacy statement and FAQ clearly state that they won't gather any private information, and if you are willing to trust them, you may learn ways to make huge changes in your productivity. In addition to web site categories, you'll get reports about using word processing, spreadsheets, utilities, and every one of your programs. Just opening an application on your computer doesn't generate "time spent." Rescue Time actually tracks the time you are using the applications.

You may determine you are spending enough time at the news web sites finding out just how bad everything is. Or you may find, like me, that you are devoting many hours per day to responding to e-mail messages.

One click settings backup

A Windows Restore Point is a tool within windows XP that takes a snapshot of your current settings, a great tool for saving your system setup before doing any major changes.

It doesn't save your data, it's not a backup, it's JUST your system settings, registry, program settings, etc.

The process for creating one was complicated and therefore often overlooked, until now!

Single Click Restore Point (SCRP) is a tool for creating a restore point in single click.

It will help you create a restore point without going through the System restore Utility in Windows XP.

It's Best to run this tool before making major changes to your computer like installing a new version of your accounting software, upgrading to a new version of internet explorer or adding new tools or programs.

You can download Single Click Restore Point (SCRP) Free of charge here: http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/article/2008/02/07/scrp.html

How TO Unlock PDF Files?

I recently received a PDF file from my friend, I wanted to copy certain part of the PDF and paste it as a note, however I could not copy the text from the PDF file, making me wonder what was wrong with it.

Turned out that the PDF file in question had fonts which were not installed on my system. I searched for a solution, I came across a freeware tool called PDF Crack which allowed users to unlock PDF Files.

Some PDF documents prevent the user from copying and pasting or printing it's contents. This sometimes presents a problem since the author of the PDF might have used a font that is not available in the system trying to read it.

Unlocking a PDF file is easy, just upload the file that is having a problem to the PDF Crack website and click on the submit button. PDF Crack will unlock the document and provide you with a new PDF file that is readable and can be copied from.

Visit PDF Crack to unlock PDF files for free.

How to Set Up a Profile on LinkedIn

Knowing how to set up a LinkedIn profile can help expand your professional network. Setting up a profile on LinkedIn enables you to customize contact settings and career opportunities. This video outlines the profile summary, employment and education sections, and more.

Missing Attachments PowerToy For Outlook

There may several oops moments in your email sending history, where you send out a email stating that you have attached some files, however in a hurry you completely forget to attach files to the email. Such moments lead to embarrassments when you receive a reply saying that the attachments were not included in the message. A free Microsoft Outlook add-in called Missing Attachment PowerToy can save you some embarrassment by alerting you that no files have been attached to the email, before you send out the email. When the Missing Attachment PowerToy detects outbound email messages containing words which you typically use when including attachments, it will offer you an opportunity to revise the email before Outlook sends it on its way! Works only with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. If you are looking for more free Outlook add-ins take a look at our earlier post: 12 Must Have Useful and Free Microsoft Outlook Add-ins. You will have to enter your email address where for receiving the link to the download. Download Missing Attachments PowerToy for Outlook

The Internet is Infected! - 60 Minutes.

If you are still wondering about Conficker and IT security in general, the TV program "60 Minutes" ran an excellent story. You can see the video by clicking here - it is just over 12 minutes: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4901282n "The Internet is Infected"

Although this blog is targeted at small business owners, the many IT professionals who already subscribe will also find aspects of the video interesting.

Conficker Worm Strike Reports Start Rolling In

The Washington Post is reporting the following this morning: Here

Reports are trickling in about the impact from the Conficker worm, as infected systems
passed zero hour at midnight and began downloading additional malicious components.

Here's a quick roundup of some of the more notable incidents caused by Conficker so far, according to published reports:

- A nuclear missile installation near Elmendorf Air force Base outside of Anchorage, Alaska briefly went on a full-scale military alert after technicians manning the bunker suspected that several of their control systems were infected with Conficker.

According to wire reports, the remote facility temporarily moved to Defense Condition (Defcon) 3 in the pre-dawn hours, but quickly backed down from that posture. An airman at the installation who asked not to be identified blamed the mishap on "way too much caffeine" consumed by occupants inside the secluded underground control room. The airman said the facility's lead engineer became agitated and inconsolable after watching an Internet broadcast of Sunday night's hard-hitting 60 Minutes expose' on the Conficker worm entitled, "The Internet is Infected."

- In Iceland, Conficker brought a brief thaw to the long economic winter that began last year with the government's inexorable slide into bankruptcy. According to local news reports, shortly after midnight local time, an ATM in the capital city of Reykjavik began spewing 100-Krona notes. Banking officials there reportedly said the Microsoft Windows-based based bank system began disbursing the bills after a local prankster crammed an infected USB stick into the maw of the teller machine.

- Londoners woke up to find the iconic clock tower Big Ben stopped at precisely one minute till midnight. The British tabloids blared that the giant timepiece had been felled by the Conficker worm. But security officials reasoned that the beloved landmark -- legendary for its reliability -- would have stopped exactly one minute later had the expected 12:00 a.m. updates to Conficker actually been the culprit. Several members of Parliament are now calling for a full investigation into the incident.

- In Waukesha, Wis., Leroy "Mac" MacElrie, 64, turned himself in to local police, claiming he was the author of the original Conficker worm, and that all of the subsequent versions were mere copycats. According to charging documents, MacElrie said he wrote the worm to get back at Microsoft founder Bill Gates for "not stopping spam by 2008 like he said he would." The man was released on his own recognizance, but several hours later a local television station captured footage of the man standing on a nearby street corner repeatedly shouting "I'm the confickter!"

In case you haven't guessed it yet, APRIL FOOLS!!! Seriously, if we get any real news about outages, deaths, or disruptions actually caused by Conficker today, you will read it here first.

Microsoft Windows Goes Open Source

In a startling revelation that took the Microsoft employees by surprise, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft would be making the source code of all Operating systems they manufacture open source.

This announcement was certainly not expected from a company whose engineers working on the code themselves didn’t have full access to it.

The internal memo send by Steve Ballmer to the Microsoft engineers said that:

Considering the openness of Unix based system, Windows was losing the trust from end users, to plug the gap between us and other open source operating systems, we will soon be making the code that drives Windows Operating Systems Open Source.

This decision was very tough, but going forward we know that it would be the right approach to getting more community support for Windows based operating systems.

Our goal at Microsoft is not only to make money, but to also make sure that people get their monies worth, with the decision to make the code open source, we are pretty sure that, there will be lesser vulnerabilities for Windows, which in turn would make Windows more secure.

The security in Unix based systems, is partly because the code is open source and there are a huge number of developers, who devote time to keep the system bug free and threat free.

We see a brighter future for Windows by going open source and would be more than thrilled to have your support for this initiative.

The Microsoft employee who forwarded us this email was pretty aghast at this decision, as he himself had access to only part of the code, his main problem was that before going open source, Microsoft could have made the entire code available to engineers, who could then limit the vulnerabilities happening in the first place.

Microsoft has not yet made a official announcement in this regard, but this news is definitely pretty good for everyone who uses the Windows operating system.