You can customize the way that Microsoft Office Excel 2007 starts by adding switches and parameters to the startup command. For example, you can prevent the startup screen from appearing when you start Office Excel 2007, or you can have Excel open a specific file when it starts. Learn how…

When you use Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to deliver your presentation, you can circle, underline, draw arrows, or make other marks on the slides to emphasize a point or show connections. Learn how…

We are moving to our new offices today, out on Cass Road, just south of the Pepsi plant. Lots more room in a better layout. Stop by!

Our “Contact Us” page has details, here.

Windows 7 hit the streets last week Thursday, and now is out there full force.

We have been working with the test versions, the beta versions, the Release Candidates (RC), the Release to Manufacturing (RTM), 32-bit, 64-bit, all the bits that are fit to bit.  And our take: a big “thumbs up”. Great improvement in interface, lighter weight, boots and shuts down quicker, works better with your hardware. It’s “all good” at this point.

TechSpot, a very good tech blog (and one of my favorites), has a great “Guide” posted on Windows 7 on “What you need to know”. It is very comprehensive, and I recommend it for getting a thorough oversight on all things Windows 7.

Find it here

Hotmail, Microsoft’s free online email service, finds itself in hot water when 10,000 email accounts usernames and passwords were recently discovered posted in a code-sharing website.

BBC News has reported that these Hotmail account owners, mostly from Europe, were victimized by a phishing attack. Microsoft is currently investigating the incident, and hinted that there may be more users who have inadvertently compromised the privacy of their email accounts.

The total scale of the phishing attack has yet to be determined, since the 10,028 Hotmail usernames and passwords are only of users whose names begin with A or B. Microsoft has confirmed the accounts to be genuine.

Microsoft has also taken action to remove the passwords and usernames from the website. As of now, there is no news regarding what action the software giant will take against the instigators of the attack, nor what the impact will be to the owners of the compromised accounts. Microsoft has advised users to immediately change their passwords, and warned email account holders to be more careful in responding to emails.

Phishing is an online scam in which email accounts are sent fake emails disguised as legitimate correspondence from trusted websites. Once the recipient clicks on a link included in the email, his or her account is then compromised, allowing phishers to gain access to account information as well as other sensitive information, including bank passwords and credit card accounts.

The original BBC story can be found here.

Twitter, the microblogging service used by CNN, Oprah and none other than President Obama seems to have taken the world by storm, and is fast becoming an indispensable tool for many small and midsized businesses as well

Twitter allows company owners to share short “tweets” or posts a maximum of 140 characters each to give quick, live updates to “followers” on the Twitter service. A few days ago, the Wallstreet Journal published an interesting article on how Twitter has become a life saver for many business owners in a crisis. One company used the service to update customers when their website went down because of a hacker. Another study from Warrillow, a consulting firm, says that small businesses are also using the service to search for deals and promotions online. In fact, according to the company, they use the service a whopping 7 times more than other social networks.

It’s interesting to learn the many ways that businesses are using services such as Twitter to their advantage. How about your business? Are you using it as well? Let us know!

Related articles:

• One in Five Tweets Are Free Brand Advertising (mashable.com)
• Facebook Adds Twitterlike Tagging Feature (myventurepad.com)
• 7 Times As Many SMBs Use Twitter To Find Deals (smallbizresource.com)

With many people using the same computers, printers, copiers, and telephones every day, there are a myriad of diseases that can be caught at work if you’re not careful. And with the H1N1 virus in full swing right now, it’s especially important to keep the workplace clean. Here are a few tips to stop the spread of germs in the workplace:

• Wash your hands frequently, especially before handling food and after using the bathroom. It is recommended that you scrub your hands with soap and warm water for 10-15 seconds, then rinse well before drying with a disposable paper towel.
• Keep keyboards, phones, and copiers germ free by using disinfectant wipes to regularly clean items you share with others.
• Have your office dusted regularly. Dust and dirt can accumulate indoors, which pose risks especially to people with allergies and asthma.
• Make sure that your ventilation system is working properly.
• To prevent dust and dirt from settling on your keyboard you can buy a plastic cover fitted to your keyboard’s keys – they’re easier to clean, too.
• Make it a habit to keep a small bottle of disinfectant alcohol or hand sanitizer handy.
• If your office is carpeted, have it regularly vacuumed.
• Have the trash cans – preferably with lids – taken out and emptied every day.
• Simple illnesses such as common colds and the flu can spread very quickly in a workplace, so if you happen to get sick, do every one a favor by staying home – and come back only when you’re well. If you really must go to the office, avoid shaking hands with people and wear a mask or have a handkerchief or face towel handy for sneezing and coughing to help stop the virus from spreading.

No one likes to be sick, and following these simple measures will help make your workplace a much healthier and cleaner place to work.

Windows 7 will be released tomorrow, Thursday, October 22. Can your workstation run Windows 7?

When Windows Vista came out, roughly half of all corporate workstations in use could even run the operating system, due to insufficient hardware capabilities. Our experience was that it was even less than that.

According to this study posted on the tech site Ars Technica, with respect to Windows 7, that number is now 88%. Our experience – at least with our customers – would support a number like that.

As I have posted previously on this blog, I am a fan of Windows 7 – I like everything I see from it so far. I expect a much smoother transition to Windows 7 in the corporate workspace than what we saw with Windows Vista, in which case it was almost non-existent.

See the post here.

The Gartner Group did some research on upcoming WIndows 7 and whether businesses should have the new operating system inm their plans. Their conclusion: yes, it will happen, and sooner than later.

From Mary-Jo Foley’s “All About Microsoft” blog at zdnet.com:

Gartner Group analysts are telling business users that they should look at Windows 7 as an  “all but inevitable” Windows release.

Assertions from their presentation:

• Windows 7 is not a major architectural release; it’s a polishing of Windows Vista. Still, for businesses, there are “good things to be had” in Windows 7, including AppLocker, BitLocker to Go, BrancheCache, better User Account Control settings, an updated user interface and support for HomeGroups.

See the blog posty here.

USA Today had an interesting article in Friday’s edition Tech section on corporate networks and security vulnerabilities.

Well worth the read with real interest for anyone in charge of – or who owns – any type of corporate network.

To me, the most interesting part of the article is the following passage:

In the vast majority of those cases, investigators discovered thieves routinely took days after initially penetrating a network to locate and break into valuable databases. And most often, the intruders spent weeks to years extracting data before being discovered.

“It’s one of the more shocking statistics we’ve run across,” says Verizon principal researcher Wade Baker. “The length of time it takes an organization to discover that data is leaving is often five to six months” after the initial breach.

That pattern suggests “many organizations right now have breaches they don’t know about and won’t discover for some time to come,” says Baker.

Find the article at the USA Today web site here.