Uncategorized

Capture

CRM Options for Small Business Owners

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is used by businesses to gain a top-down view of their customer and their associated sales efforts.  The SaaS products can track revenue data, customer interactions, and provide insights into which sales people are performing (or under-performing.)  Five years ago CRMs were reserved for your larger organizations due to the license costs; and even the companies who were targeting SMBs didn’t have robust functionality.  But times-are-a-changing…

For the past few years a number of CRM tools have emerged for small businesses.  With price points ranging from free to ~$25 a month, these products would be a great asset to those companies that have a lot of contacts to keep track of, send out email campaigns or a consistent basis, or have trouble identifying areas for improvement with regards to sales.

Have a look at the attached article from CIO.com to read about CRMs which cater to SMBs.  There’s a lot of functionality that comes standard out of the box; but if you don’t see a field or report that you’d like to use the beauty of the platform is it’s customizable (albeit some more than others.)

http://www.cio.com/article/732899/4_Affordable_Small_Business_CRM_Options

No matter which CRM software you choose – Seraph can assist you with the implementation and maintenance.  Feel free to contact us with questions!

How to Buy a Wireless Router

We get asked this question a lot:  I’m going to buy a router for home, but I’m not sure which one to get.  Can you give me some guidance?  While there’s a lot of information out there and many devices to choose from, many of the bells and whistles might not be advantageous to you.  I actually read an article in PC Magazine that summarizes a lot of the key features and things to know when making a selection.  The article can be found here.  You can also copy and paste the link below:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347539,00.asp

I’ve also placed the article below for your reading pleasure.  Enjoy!

ARTICLE DATE  : November 8, 2012
pcmag.com

You only really notice them when they aren’t working right: wireless routers. These sometimes complicated, often frustrating devices allow sharing a broadband Internet connection among computers and gadgets, provide a way to create a network for sharing data between users and machines, and of course, give wireless connectivity for iPads, smartphones, media players and other types of technology hardware.

With so many wireless routers available on the market offering so many different features and advertised speeds, selecting the right router for a home or business can be challenging.

On top of the problem of just selecting a router is the complexity of Wi-Fi technology itself. Wi-Fi is a tricky beast and subject to so many varying factors and environmental fluctuations. If there are many other wireless routers in your proximity, you face potential signal interference, especially on the more crowded 2.4 GHz band, a frequency that wireless routers use to transmit and receive data. Certain building materials, multilevel homes, glass partitions and household devices that operate on the 2.4 GHz frequency like microwaves, baby monitors, and cordless phones can all degrade wireless performance.

Businesses often spend thousands of dollars to hire wireless networking professionals to perform site surveys to determine the best equipment and means to deploy a wireless network. It is small wonder that home and small business users who may not have these professionals at their disposal can feel frustrated about purchasing, setting up and maintaining a wireless router and their own wireless networks!

To add to the confusion, routers manufacturers now offer a new generation of wireless routers. These routers feature the latest 802.11x technology; 802.11ac—a step up from, 802.11n as it offers higher throughout speeds and better range. Sounds great, but does 802.11ac currently deliver any gains over 802.11n? Do you need a lesser expensive single-band router or a more expensive dual-band? Do you need to upgrade or purchase an 802.11n router? What benefits does 802.11n give? Does a higher-end router mean better Internet connectivity? What about IPv6—is it best to get a router that supports IPv6? These questions as well as factors like security, parental controls and extra features such as the ability to connect USB printers and external storage drives to a router for sharing in your personal network, are all considerations to weigh when deciding to purchase or upgrade a router.

It’s best to get familiar with what you in particular need from a wireless router before you shop rather than relying on anecdotal customer reviews on websites such as Amazon. While you can get a general feel for other customers’ experiences with a particular router, Wi-Fi is so fickle and performance can vary from one home to another. Just because someone had a terrific (or miserable) experience with a particular router does not necessarily mean you will have the same experience. Professional reviews in controlled environments, like those I perform in PCMag’s labs, are a better source for help in deliberating over which router to choose.

Here is a checklist and some information to help you in your search of the perfect router for your networking needs:

Do You Need A Wi-Fi Router?

A router directs network traffic—broken down into small pieces of data called packets. With home routers, this is traffic that flows between the Internet connection your ISP provides and your internal, home or small business network. A wireless router allows wireless devices (and wired devices) to connect to that Internet connection and to communicate with other devices on your home network.

Some people only work from one laptop or PC that may be directly connected to their cable or DSL modems. They may not have other users or devices in their home or office that also need Internet connectivity or sharing printers and files. If this applies to you and you have no need to deviate from a fixed location from which you do your Internet surfing or computing, then you can don’t need a wireless router.

However, with enticing gadgets like iPads, with gaming consoles, and with multiuser households and offices, most people these days want and can benefit from a wireless router. With a Wi-Fi router browsing the Internet from an upstairs bedroom, giving Internet access to a game console or set-top box like a Roku, or sharing pictures and streaming music and video to all of the devices in a home or office is possible. If you want the capability to do these tasks, then yes, you need a router.

What Type of Network User Are You?

A single home user who just wants to Web surf doesn’t need the same kind of router as a heavy-duty gamer, a multimedia enthusiast or a small business. A single-band router like the Almond is a basic, decent performer that would suit the needs of anyone looking for simple Wi-Fi connectivity and easy setup. Plus, it has the bonus of being the only touchscreen router currently on the market!

In contrast, Netgear’s N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR4000)  or Cisco Linksys’ E4200 v2 are excellent choices for those who want to perform bandwidth demanding tasks like high-definition video streaming or moving large files to and from NAS devices. Gamers, check out our Best Gaming Routers roundup for the best routers to enhance the gaming experience. However, routers such as the N750, are more expensive; the N750 has an average street price of $150. A good rule of thumb: the more expensive the router, the more features it will contain. Higher price, however, doesn’t necessarily mean better performance; in our testing, the E1200 performed just as well as pricier, more feature-rich routers.

Single Band or Dual Band?

While researching routers, you will inevitably stumble across the term “bands.” The 2.4 and 5 GHz bands are the frequencies in which wireless communications operate. 802.11 B and G devices use the 2.4 GHz band, while 802.11N can use either the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band. A single-band, 2.4-GHz router—such as the $65 Asus RT-N11 EZ Wireless-N Router—is geared toward simple wireless networks. On the other hand, a dual-band router like the Western Digital My Net N900operates on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies. The 5 GHz band is less crowded then the 2.4 GHz band; less equipment runs on 5 GHz. That’s why it’s better equipped for throughput-intensive work within your home network such as gaming and file streaming. You will also get better internal network performance.

The one downside of 5 GHz is that it does not sustain signal at greater distances as well as the 2.4 GHz band. So, if you are looking for a dual-band router to take advantage of the 5 GHz bandwidth—you’ll want to factor in distance when placing the router in your home or office.

One other thing to consider when it comes to Wi-Fi bands? Some of your devices may only work with a given band. For a guide to which gadgets require what Wi-Fi, see, The Wi-Fi You Need for the Gadgets You Want.

300 Mbps, 450 Mbps, 900 Mbps…All Those Numbers!

When router shopping you will notice three digit numbers emblazoned on most routers’ packaging, indicating the speed of the router. A few years ago, 300 Mbps was the standard speed of most Wi-Fi routers. That meant that testing under the best circumstances, which means in what we call a “clean room” with no interference, the router can achieve up to 300 Mbps speeds. Currently, 450 Mbps or even 900 Mbps routers are being marketed. 900 Mbps is a touted speed of the latest dual band routers on the market like Netgear’s N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router which can transmit a potential 450 Mbps on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. 450 + 450 = 900. Get it?

You however, will never see those speeds. Issues such as channel overlap and interference means a router in a typical home or office environment will never reach these theoretical speeds touted by vendors. When testing at PCMag, which has a real-world testing environment, if we see speeds close to half of what a vendor says a router is capable of, that’s excellent bandwidth!

Of course, fast router speeds don’t have anything to do with how fast your Internet connection is. A 300 Mbps router won’t make your Internet connection any faster than a 900 Mbps router. That speed is set by your ISP. What a faster speed router helps with is the performance of your internal network: streaming music and video, sharing files and so on.

Do I Need 802.11N?

802.11n is becoming the standard in wireless networking. If you are purchasing a new router, be it single or dual band—go with an 802.11n router. And not 802.11n draft, which is an older standard. 802.11n routers can run in “Mixed mode” so that non-802.11n wireless devices can connect as well.

What About 802.11ac?

There are a host of new routers on the market that are being advertised as 802.11ac routers. 802.11ac is the latest 802.11x wireless networking standard. 11ac can provide up to almost 1Gbps throughput under ideal conditions in supported dual-band routers or up to 500 Mbps on a single-band, increasing the limitation of up to 450 Mbps on a single-band of 802.11n. Furthermore, 11ac is designed to provide better range than 802.11n currently does on the 5Ghz band.

The tricky part of 11ac is that the standard is still in development. The Wi-Fi Alliance is an organization that tests to make sure that networking products sold to customers do what manufacturers say they are supposed to do. Once tested, the Wi-Fi Alliance allows vendors to sell products as Wi-Fi Alliance certified. Since 802.11ac is yet to be finalized (also called ratified or drafted) there are no products on the market that are certified.

That isn’t stopping vendors from releasing pre-draft 802.11ac routers. You may remember years ago, seeing 11n pre-draft routers on the market before 802.11 became standardized. The pre-draft 11n routers were far below performance levels of later 802.11n routers that came out once 802.11n was ratified.

The same thing is happening with 802.11ac. The 11ac routers we have tested, simply do not give much performance benefit over today’s 802.11n routers. This is not only because the standard is not finalized, but there aren’t compatible wireless adapters out yet that can handle 802.11ac.

Unless you are a hobbyist and want to tinker with 11ac, your best bet is to still go with an 802.11n router. The 802.11ac standard should be ratified later this year, and even then, it could be up to a year before we see products that can really leverage the power of 802.11ac.

If you just have to have a pre-draft 11ac router, the best we’ve tested so far in terms of performance and feature-set is the Buffalo AirStation AC1300/N900 Gigabit Dual Band WZR-D1800H.

What Type of Security?

Most of the newer routers support the highest level of security, WPA2. If in the market for a new routers, make sure it supports WPA2. If you have children you may want to consider a router with parental controls such as the D-Link Amplifi HD Media Router 2000 (DIR-827).

What’s My Comfort Level with Router Setup and Management?

Ironically, we find that the latest more expensive routers like the Netgear N900 or Linksys E4200, have the easiest setup. The best setup process we’ve tested so far is the one from the Cisco Linksys E4200 v2. It’s a fool-proof setup that requires nothing more than clicking a few instructions on screen.

If you are more of a guru, and on a tighter-budget, you can get away with cheaper routers that do not offer automated setup such as Asante’s SmartHub Smart Dual Band Wireless-N Router (AWRT-600N). Because these routers do not have as sophisticated software for deploying as more expensive routers, a little more networking know-how is required to setup and manage them.

Other Considerations

If you are looking for a router that you don’t want to upgrade anytime soon, consider going with one that supports IPv6. While conversion from IPv4 to IPv6 networking appears to still be some time coming, a router that supports IPv6 will help you keep your network intact when your ISP transitions over to IPv6 as well.

Some routers also offer extras such as SD card slots, (D-Link DIR-827, is an example) and USB ports for printer sharing and external drive sharing, including routers from Cisco, Belkin and Western Digital). If those are features you want in your network, look for routers that support those features.

 

We also help residential customers with IT related issues, no matter how big or small.  If you’d like us to help, contact us today!  We’d love to assist you in any way we can.

End of the road for Windows XP…

 

 

Every Windows product has a lifecycle. The lifecycle begins when a product is released and ends when it’s no longer supported or sold. Knowing key dates in this lifecycle helps you make informed decisions about when to upgrade or make other changes to your software.  To find out more about the end of support for Windows XP, click here.    The link below is listed just in case the hyperlink doesn’t work:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/products/lifecycle

Seraph Technology Solutions can assist with your Windows XP migration strategy and execution. Contact us today to find out how we can help.

How Does Google.com (the search engine) Work?

How Google Works

Lately I’ve been asked to provide a basic understanding of how Google works (Seraph’s SEO Sessions can help give you a base line understanding and proposed strategy.  Contact us today!).  Most of the information reported in this blog post can be found at:

http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html

Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:

Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.
Let’s take a closer look at each part.

1. Googlebot, Google’s Web Crawler
Googlebot is Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer.

Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it’s capable of doing.

Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.

Unfortunately, spammers figured out how to create automated bots that bombarded the add URL form with millions of URLs pointing to commercial propaganda. Google rejects those URLs submitted through its Add URL form that it suspects are trying to deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking (aka bait and switch), using sneaky redirects, creating doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content, sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So now the Add URL form also has a test: it displays some squiggly letters designed to fool automated “letter-guessers”; it asks you to enter the letters you see — something like an eye-chart test to stop spambots.

When Googlebot fetches a page, it culls all the links appearing on the page and adds them to a queue for subsequent crawling. Googlebot tends to encounter little spam because most web authors link only to what they believe are high-quality pages. By harvesting links from every page it encounters, Googlebot can quickly build a list of links that can cover broad reaches of the web. This technique, known as deep crawling, also allows Googlebot to probe deep within individual sites. Because of their massive scale, deep crawls can reach almost every page in the web. Because the web is vast, this can take some time, so some pages may be crawled only once a month.

Although its function is simple, Googlebot must be programmed to handle several challenges. First, since Googlebot sends out simultaneous requests for thousands of pages, the queue of “visit soon” URLs must be constantly examined and compared with URLs already in Google’s index. Duplicates in the queue must be eliminated to prevent Googlebot from fetching the same page again. Googlebot must determine how often to revisit a page. On the one hand, it’s a waste of resources to re-index an unchanged page. On the other hand, Google wants to re-index changed pages to deliver up-to-date results.

To keep the index current, Google continuously recrawls popular frequently changing web pages at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change. Such crawls keep an index current and are known as fresh crawls. Newspaper pages are downloaded daily, pages with stock quotes are downloaded much more frequently. Of course, fresh crawls return fewer pages than the deep crawl. The combination of the two types of crawls allows Google to both make efficient use of its resources and keep its index reasonably current.

2. Google’s Indexer
Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.

To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn’t index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google’s performance.

3. Google’s Query Processor
The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.

PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.

Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. A patent application discusses other factors that Google considers when ranking a page. Visit SEOmoz.org’s report for an interpretation of the concepts and the practical applications contained in Google’s patent application.

Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings. Google closely guards the formulas it uses to calculate relevance; they’re tweaked to improve quality and performance, and to outwit the latest devious techniques used by spammers.

Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by Google’s Advanced Search Form and Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators).

Let’s see how Google processes a query.


Copyright © 2003 Google Inc. Used with permission.

For more information on how Google works, take a look at the following articles.

Google’s page on Google’s Technology, www.google.com/technology/.
How does Google collect and rank results?, www.google.com/newsletter/librarian/librarian_2005_12/article1.html.
Google’s PageRank Algorithm and How it Works, www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
Google’s PageRank Explained and How to Make the Most of It, www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
If you would like Seraph to assist with your SEO strategy, contact us today.  We’re ready to help!

 

7 Backup Strategies for Your Data, Multimedia, and System Files – We can help

*Some of the strategies listed below are outlined on our site as well as PC Magazine.  You can find the article here.

A redundant backup solution is key to ensuring your data is protected. Let us help you protect that which matter most to you and your business today!

Nobody likes backing up, but one day, it’ll save your bacon. Here are the most efficient methods of protecting your stuff, no matter what your situation.

Your hard drive might crash. Thieves might steal your laptop at a café. You might realize on Friday that you desperately need the now-departed Wednesday version of an important document that you significantly altered on Thursday.

At times like these, having a secure, up-to-date backup of your hard drive can be a lifesaver. Here are seven practical strategies, including using USB storage, backing up via the Internet or through your local network, backing up Windows itself, and preserving huge media files like songs and videos.

What to Back Up
Your hard drive may contain hundreds of thousands of files. Many of them should be backed up every day, others only oc­­casionally, and still others–including temp files, the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys), and your browser cache–not at all. Let’s look at the different kinds of files individually.

Your documents: You should back up your word processing files, spreadsheets, and similar documents every day. Any basic backup program can perform incremental backups, in which the program copies only the files that have changed since the most recent previous backup. (Good backup programs also perform versioning; that is, they keep several iterations of the same file on hand and enable you to choose which version to restore.)

Your recent documents: If your backup program can handle incremental backups, you don’t have to worry about recent documents as separate entities. But if you often work on these files on other people’s computers, you may want to carry a copy of them on a flash drive or store a copy of them online.

Application data: Apps create and maintain data files such as e-mail messages, browser favorites, calendar entries, and contacts that require daily backing up. Most programs store them in a hidden folder inside your user folder (in XP, C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Application Data; in Vista, C:\Users\your name\AppData). Also, in XP, Microsoft stores Outlook and Outlook Express data in C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Local Settings\Application Data). Fortunately, any well-designed backup program intended for everyday, nonexpert users (as opposed to IT departments) knows where to look for Outlook data.

Media: If your backup medium is sufficiently roomy and fast, you can back up your photo, music, and video files every day. But these large files may require a separate backup strategy.

Heirlooms: Files that you want to keep forever–family photos, the special anniversary card you made for your parents, and so on–need backing up and extra protection.

Your system: You can always reinstall Windows and your apps, if you have the original discs or can download the programs. But if Windows becomes unusable or your hard drive crashes, switching to a system backup (also called a disaster recovery backup) that you create a couple of times a year can get your machine up and running smoothly without much effort.

You can separate and store various types of data on different hard drives (or partitions). But Windows doesn’t make the procedure easy, and the strategies I discuss don’t require this separation.

An outline of all the strategies for backup for both home and business are:

Strategy 1: Employ the Easiest Backup of All
Strategy 2: Automate Your Backup, and Store It at a Safe Distance
Strategy 3: Back Up the Whole Family on Your Home Network
Strategy 4: Save Your Entertainment
Strategy 5: Prepare for the Big Disaster
Strategy 6: Store Items for the Long Haul
Strategy 7: Back Up the Backup

Please contact us today to discuss these strategies in more detail.  We can help you create a backup strategy specific to your needs and for your business and help you implement it afterwards.