bruceb news

MyPermissions.org does something very simple and very helpful – and it might be an eye-opener for some of you.

The site has gathered shortcuts to the pages that list the permissions you’ve granted to access your information on eight social networking services: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr. The app permission management pages make it possible for you to guard your privacy and control how your information is used.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. If you have a Facebook account, you are asked constantly if you want to link this or that to your Facebook account. Maybe it’s comments on an online forum, or an add-in for a program (like Outlook’s social connector), or apps on your phone. […] continued

Noted science fiction author and Boing Boing curator Cory Doctorow delivered an important speech last month in London, explaining why attempts by copyright owners to lock down computers and web sites inevitably lead to surveillance and censorship, and how the copyright battles presage bigger fights to come over the very future of general-purpose computers. It’s fascinating and convincing – a must-read for anyone interested in the policy arguments about copyrights, Internet freedom, and how poor decisions now might affect us later. It’s been posted as an article here and deserves to be read and discussed and shared.

We don’t know how to build a general-purpose computer that is capable of running any program except for some programs that we don’t like, are prohibited by law, or which loses us money.

[…] continued

A few days before Christmas, Microsoft delivered the “Office 365 Integration Module for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials,” a long awaited add-in that integrates Microsoft’s new server software for very small offices with its hosted Office 365 service.

In some respects this is what SBS 2011 Essentials should have included all along, and the combination is a compelling choice for many very small offices considering their first onsite server or a replacement for an aging Small Business Server 2003 tower. You’ll find a full description of Small Business Server 2011 Essentials here:

• Overview
• Remote Access
• Backups

Separately, the two products are already compelling choices for small businesses. […] continued

In addition to its flagship products, LogMeIn also runs Join.Me, a free service that you can use to share your screen with someone at another location so easily that it will amaze and delight you. I’ve written about Join.Me before but it deserves to be called out again; it should be one of your basic and frequently used tools.

When you go to https://join.me and click the Share button, it will take only seconds to install a small control that will run the session. It’s temporary – no program is installed in the traditional sense and no permanent change is made to your computer. […] continued

LogMeIn has moved far ahead of its competitors for working with computers remotely. It introduced major changes to its product lineup a couple of days before Christmas – not a good time to get much attention but an appropriate time to deliver lovely presents, since the changes include new features that will be useful for many of you.

Let’s start with the basics.

COMPUTERS

LogMeIn provides a small bit of software that installs on your computer at home or the office. It’s tied to a LogMeIn account – an email address and a password. The basic program is free for connecting from one computer to another computer. […] continued

Best wishes for a happy and healthy and prosperous 2012!

This has been a fast-moving year in technology, continuing the movement away from dependence on individual PCs and towards multiple devices and towards the cloud. There are new challenges, new buzzwords, new tools, and a flood of new companies / names / programs / services / devices that feels overwhelming. I’ll keep trying to be a trusted guide through the technology jungle.

Next year’s themes will be the same as 2011.

• Windows XP computers are falling down fast and being replaced by Windows 7 computers and laptops, to everyone’s relief.
• Microsoft’s hosted mail service, Office 365, is quickly becoming the standard choice for small offices, bringing all the advantages of Exchange into offices that couldn’t previously afford it.

[…] continued

Many Dropbox users quickly start to store all interesting files in their Dropbox folders, especially current files that are being used on more than one computer. The faster you can get to your Dropbox folders, the easier it is to use.

Here’s a tip about using Windows 7’s libraries for quicker access to your Dropbox folders – and perhaps it will give you some other ideas about how to use libraries.

Windows 7 libraries are virtual collections of folders – a consolidated view that lets you browse folders in one place even when they are stored in different directories or on different computers. […] continued

External USB hard drives are everywhere. All of you have one or two set up for backups of each computer, right? Many of you also use them for saving video and photo collections that are too big for the hard drive in your computer.

(If you’re shopping, you’ll find that hard drive prices are skyrocketing, almost double what they were a few months ago. Flooding took out factories in Thailand, causing product shortages and price increases. It will be like that for a few more months.)

Most external hard drives are built the same way: a completely normal, plain vanilla hard drive inside a plastic case. […] continued

Previously:
Live Tech Support From Microsoft Answer Desk
The Changing Landscape For SMB IT Consultants

Lots of forces are combining to change the services that you need for your small business or law firm, and at first glance most of them appear to limit my usefulness. You can get cloud services that don’t require ongoing maintenance, your devices are getting simpler and cheaper, and outsourced support is becoming available at a price that might undercut my hourly fee.

And yet I think I’m going to be busier than ever for the foreseeable future. (The foreseeable future extends about five years. Ain’t nobody’s crystal ball that can predict further out than that in technology.) What’s the plan? […] continued

Microsoft released a particularly large crop of patches and updates on Tuesday. Your computer probably restarted on Tuesday or Wednesday night.

If you’re a subscriber to the Bruceb Remote Management service, your computer is also installing additional Microsoft updates that were released at the same time as the critical updates sent through Microsoft’s Automatic Updates system.

Java version 6 update 30 will be arriving on all your computers soon, too. If you install it manually, please make sure to avoid the noxious Ask Toolbar being pushed along with it!

If your computer is even a little wobbly on Thursday or Friday, restart it. […] continued