Damage-Proofing: How to Keep Digitized Information Secure

July 10, 2008 at 9:42 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers

It’s 11:30pm, do you know where your files are?

There are many reasons why our data might disappear on us, including natural disasters, unexpected malfunctions, and Murphy’s Law. Would you be able to access backups of your files if they were irretrievable this weekend? Whether these files are for personal or professional use, most of them carry more value to you than could be measured in megabytes. To avoid the loss of important data, you’ll need to take some important measures.

Don’t store important data in the hard drive where your OS and program installations reside. The drive where your OS and programs run is probably the drive that will encounter problems and need to be reformatted or replaced. Most viruses, worms, and malware target this drive. To lessen the inconvenience of reformatting, use a secondary hard drive as your data storage drive.

Backup online files. If you’re a web app power user, odds are you have important data resting online. If the web apps you use allow you to download copies of your files, take advantage of this feature. When you copy these files to an offline location, you will be able to access them should you have an unstable or nonexistent internet connection. Also, reliability won’t be an issue. During the 9/11 attacks in New York, I lost a lot of data stored primarily online because the servers of the company I was working with were located in that area. I should’ve known better and kept copies of my online files. Back them up on a weekly basis as a safeguard should something happen to the equipment of the company carrying your data.

Routinely back up to an external location. This might include a USB thumbdrive, a CD, an external hard drive, or an online storage service such as Xdrive or Carbonite. Online storage services are unlike your average web app servers. They are more durable and have a tight security guarantee.

If you’re downloading to an external hard drive or USB device, security might be an issue. To keep your data secure, you can store the device in a safe or keep it protected through encryption or passwords.

Have a list of folders that need to be backed up. This list will come in handy in case of emergency reformatting and you need to backup ASAP. Apart from listing important folders, also indicate where the backup files are located. Doing this allows you to keep an inventory of where your data is stored, should you need to locate these files in the future.

Choose your backup medium well. Select a device that has a long lifespan and is readable on most computers. For offline media, select something with lasting power. These could be good quality CDs/DVDs for non-sensitive data, or durable external hard drives/flashdisks. The National Institute for Standards and Technology conducted a study on the lifespans of optical media, and they found that dye type is an important factor in optical media longevity. For example, CDs with a pthalo-cyanine dye combined with a gold-silver alloy tend to be more stable, but it’s hard for consumers to find out the composition of an optical disc’s dye layer – a bit of extra research is needed in this area.

For online backups, select a storage company with a good reputation. Find one that works with businesses, and has been providing their services for a long time. Research consumer reviews of the service as well (testimonials on their product site should be taken with a grain of salt). Also, be sure that there is a guarantee and that their company has redundant servers.

Start now. Don’t wait for a computer malfunction to start backing up your files. It should be a routine for individuals and businesses that rely heavily on computers. By starting a backup routine now, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of effort – and headaches – in the long run.

Dealing with being the lone tech wolf in the office

July 1, 2008 at 8:15 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers

Although the use of computers is prevalent, the ideas of how to use them more efficiently and optimally still escapes most people. This can become a major obstacle within a business environment. After all, if you’ll be using computers and their software as your most important tools in the workplace, you ought to do it properly. This could be something you understand, especially if you read this blog. But what if you’re the only one who understands this in the office?

It’s a familiar situation to most tech-inclined people. You find a new and more effective way to do things, try to share them with others, but they say “No thanks! I don’t want to be bothered with all that!” If you know from experience or merely have a hunch that your coworkers are like this, is it even worth it to try?

Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. But, like most things, you’ll never know until you try.

Start with a small suggestion. Don’t start planning an online collaboration system just yet. Maybe a simple suggestion of installing instant messaging software so you and your coworkers can easily ask each other questions and get instant answers without running from one office to another. Changing the underlying system has to happen in little steps, if you want it to happen at all.

Be the example. Since you’re trying to share the idea that some tools increase efficiency, start with yourself. Show how efficient you’ve become as a result of competently using these tools.

Don’t be surprised if they don’t love how efficient you are. I’ve found that some supervisors give more importance to tradition and “time-tested process” than actual results.

Get someone on your side. Even if it’s just one person. Convert them one-by-one if you have to. Since you’re the only one who knows about web apps, productivity software, and GTD, others might consider you an alien who makes things more complicated. If another person gets great results from what you preach, then others are more likely to follow.

Learn to accept that there are some things you can’t change. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try your best, but don’t get your hopes up that working for your company will soon be like working for Google – where everyone is updated on the latest trends and ideas on technology. There will be some things that will be very difficult to change and there will be obstacles to your path. Of course, this doesn’t equal defeat. As long as you can still use your tools and processes yourself, and as long as your input is appreciated in some way, you’ve made a difference.

Are you the only tech-inclined person in the workplace? How do you deal with people who aren’t maximizing the web and the software tools at their disposal?

Design Dogma

June 30, 2008 at 2:42 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers, Work Design

I was recently reading through an article by Eric Reiss‘ on dogma for making websites usable. With a number of AppGap authors writing about work design and information design recently, I thought I would share Eric’s take on Orwell’s Rules for Authors applied to online information system design:

1. Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated.
2. Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be eliminated.
3. Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be eliminated.
4. Any feature or technique that reduces the visitor’s ability to navigate freely must be reworked or eliminated.
5. Any interactive object that forces the visitor to guess its meaning must be reworked or eliminated.
6. No software, apart from the browser itself, must be required to get the site to work correctly.
7. Content must be readable first, printable second, downloadable third.
8. Usability must never be sacrificed for the sake of a style guide.
9. No visitor must be forced to register or surrender personal data unless the site owner is unable to provide a service or complete a transaction without it.
10. Break any of these rules sooner than do anything outright barbarous.

Eric’s words are a reminder that often we forget that our designs often don’t fit the worker, but are implemented to suit something else, whether a management practice or someone’s ego. What we end up with is something that is less than fit-for-purpose.

When we bring new tools and practices into the modern workplace we shouldn’t forget the philosophy of user-centred design and take time to consider:

1. Who are the users?
2. What are the users’ tasks and goals?
3. What are the users’ experience levels?
4. What functions do the users need?
5. What information might the users need, and in what form do they need it?
6. How do users think things should work?

Maybe if more of us drew on these questions in our craft, as do so many of those evangelists who’ve brought us web 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs, then practices like knowledge management would have been more successful.

M

How to Find Productivity Tools to Help You Get Your Job Done

June 24, 2008 at 12:15 pm · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers

In a recent post we discussed how to evaluate your existing productivity tools and applications to see if they are a match for your needs.  And should you discover that they aren’t, you’ll need to find replacement or supplemental tools to increase productivity.  How to go about doing this?

Research.  Once you’ve evaluated the tools and methods you’ve employed, you’ll likely have surfaced some problems or challenges you need to address.  When you notice these problems, you’ll have to do a bit of research to solve them.  Are there better tools out there with the features you need?  Is there a productivity or efficiency system you haven’t tried yet?

Your research can start simple.  If you have a cluttered inbox, you can simply input “how to unclutter email inbox” in your favorite search engine and start from there.  You can also look at the reviews of existing productivity tools to see if they are for you (my colleague Bill’s many reviews here at The AppGap may be a good place to start).  Note down everything relevant that you discover during the research process so you can easily go back to these ideas later.

Testing and Tweaking.  Once you’ve found a list of new tools and methods, it’s time to test them.  Of course, it’s best to test them one at a time rather than as a group so that you can accurately evaluate each change you’re making.  Set a testing period of 7 to 10 days, or earlier if it’s obvious that your new tools aren’t working out.  Here are some things you should look out for:

* Ease of use.  Are the commands and interface intuitive?  Can you easily access the features you need whenever you need them?
* Features.  Does the tool have the features you need? If not,c an it easily integrate with another tool to compensate?
* Lifespan and reliability.  Do your new tools have many bugs?  Is technical support available?  Is the company reliable enough that you’re likely to get updated versions for the next few years?
* Collaboration-friendly.  If you’ll be using your tools with a team, it’s important that they have options for collaboration, or that everyone in the team can easily adapt to using them.

Don’t be frustrated if your new tools have imperfections – it’s almost impossible to find a tool that will perfectly pair up with all your needs and expectations.  That’s why it’s important that you learn how to integrate different tools and make them work together to form a unified system.  After all, there’s no way to get everything you need out of a single application unless you have the resources to hire a reliable programmer to make you the ultimate productivity tool from scratch.

During your testing phase, you might find that you’ll also be using non-computer tools such as index cards or a whiteboard.  This is perfectly acceptable, and, in fact, encouraged.  The point of the testing phase is to find out what works for you and your team.  Whatever tools you need, no matter how bare and simple they are, you need to incorporate them into your workflow.

Also, don’t be surprised if the testing process takes a few weeks – it’s a necessary step to finding the best tools and system for you.  However, it’s very important that you record and measure the results of your testing phase.

Re-evaluation.  Now that you’re done with testing your new tools, it’s time to evaluate the results.  Did they make a significant impact on your productivity?  How much time did it cut back on your previous number of working hours?

This is like a debriefing process that allows you to review the lessons learned from your testing period.  If you’re doing this with a team, it helps to have each individual’s input.  Not all members of your team are guaranteed to have success with your newfound productivity system.

What’s guaranteed is that there are many valuable lessons you’ll learn when it comes to finding new tools and getting them to increase your overall productivity.

Notable + Quotable: Glassdoor, Comotivate, DocStoc, and the launch of Work Literacy

June 19, 2008 at 7:24 am · Filed under Notable + Quotable, Tips + Pointers

At Glassdoor, Find Out How Much People Really Make At Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, And Everywhere Else
TechCrunch profiles Glassdoor, a new site that allows people to anonymously review places where they work or have worked in the past as well as declare their salary and compensation packages: “The idea is to collect as much detailed salary information and feedback for every job title at a company so that job seekers can know how to evaluate an offer, and current employees can see how they are doing relative to their peers.”

Unisfair Now Offering Job Fair Opportunities
Unisfair now has a virtual version of the traditional job fair. The article: “If the company’s survey is anything accurate, 64% of 100 human resources managers feel such online services could improve hiring efforts.”

Work Literacy Launches
As the way we work continues to change, sites such as your very own AppGap and the just-launched Work Literacy are emerging to help people better understand and navigate new tools and work methodologies. As it describes itself, Work Literacy “is a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work.”

Comotivate: Reach For Goals Together
If you have problems keeping yourself motivated to achieve your goals, then Comotivate might be the app for you. “It’s not built so much as a collective cheerleading squad for its membership. Instead, its more about completing the mission.”

Searching for definition
Reviews last week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. The author’s general impression was that there’s no strict definition for what enterprise 2.0 means and that’s a problem: “…there is ambiguity around what E2.0 is, which is unhelpful for vendors and their potential clients alike.”

DocStoc Tackles Email Attachments
A new feature from DocStoc makes creating multiple email attachments easier. The instructions are simple: “After downloading their OneClick application (Windows only) you can send attachments directly from Explorer. Right-click the documents and a single click will upload them to DocStoc (public or private as you choose) and generate an email so that you can tell people where to find them.”

Working fast on Office 2.0
Robert Scoble shares his notes on a conversation with Chris Capossela of Microsoft Office, including reasons why businesses aren’t keen to adapt the newest web 2.0 tools, including the contention that “they need to know these services will stay up.”

Over 90 Minutes Per Week Spent on Personal Web Surfing at Work
A press release about new research out of the UK that found that the average office worker there spends more than 90 minutes of every workday on personal internet usage. The reaction to this study is mixed, with the author noting that “while many organisations are supportive of staff visiting non-work related websites, and view it as a motivational perk or a modern-day tea break, others are troubled by the amount of use, or have had to sack staff for serious abuse.”

The Growth of Web 2.0 Services
While Web 2.0 services proliferate and continue to offer ever more features and functionality, there’s still lots of room for improvement. This article includes a few recommendations such as “The ability to mix and match content from a variety of sources can be used to provide pre- and post-roll ad-insertion that is targeted to individual customer profiles.”

Make Money By Networking with Passitto
Ever wondered what LinkedIn would be if you were given money for each referral? If so, say hello to Passitto. According to this news item, “Passitto is all about referrals. Who you want to meet, who you want your friends to meet, and who wants to meet you. You can get credits or money for referring others and you can use those credits you build up as currency for obtaining more referrals for your own business.”

Evaluating your Digital Tools

June 17, 2008 at 7:15 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers, Web Apps

The definition of a good workspace is changing: from a simple cubicle with a desk, we’re now considering hardware and software to be part of our workspaces – to be given equal care, maintenance, and attention.

And to assess what works best for you, you first need to evaluate your existing tools and processes. Do they work hand in hand, or do you have some superfluous tools and methods? Also, do your tools work together in the way you need them to? If your tools don’t tie in together, you might be wasting hours each week just keeping them updated.

Here’s an example: for scheduling I mostly use Google Calendar, but my favorite to-do list application is AbstractSpoon’s ToDoList. The problem with the latter is that it doesn’t have a ‘calendar’ view, which I really need to see what my daily commitments are. However, it has many great features such as automatically computing the percentage of completion for each task, a timer, the ability to create subtasks, as well as task hierarchies. After a few months of working with both apps and keeping them updated with exactly the same information, I realized that Google Calendar was ideal for a basic “What will I do today?” list, while ToDoList was great as a checklist for steps for bigger projects.

This is why evaluation is such an important step – it’s the stage where you figure out what tools are ideal for which purpose.

The same goes for your communication tools. Each medium of computer-based communication has its advantages and disadvantages. Instant messaging is useful if you want an urgent reply, but it can be a nuisance and distraction if the conversation falls into idle chitchat. Email is great for longer messages that don’t need an instant reply, but you’re supposed to keep them as short as possible since many people get email overload each day – especially if it is the main medium of communication used by your business. Blogging and micro-blogging tools are a good way to share information publicly, while social networks are a useful channel for keeping in touch with new and existing business contacts.

Do you use your digital tools for the right reasons? Do your tools have any missing features that would make your work process easier?

Creating a social media release for your business

May 14, 2008 at 8:05 am · Filed under AppGap Tips, Tips + Pointers

With the power that social media currently have in the business world, self-promotion in those channels should become a vital part of your marketing strategy. Although traditional press releases still have their place in print media, they are often ineffective online. To help bridge the gap between press releases and social media, Shift Communications developed a basic template for a social media press release. How do you apply this template to your business’ press release?

Be brief. Trim the unnecessary parts of your press release and get right to the point. Use bullet points or numbered lists, if you can. After all, people tend to scan rather than read online. How many press releases do you actually read word for word online? I doubt your total reaches 5, unless the task is part of your job description. If you won’t read a lengthy press release online, what are the odds that your target audience will?

Include multimedia. Through the internet, you can easily display and share audio, video, graphic, and text content. If your company has an AVP or television and radio commercials, you can include them in your social media release if they’re relevant to its message. You can also include still graphics such as your company logo or other relevant photographs. Having a variety of media to relay your message gives your audience several options. Also, if you’re simply going to make a text-based press release on the internet, you’re not taking advantage of what the internet has to offer.

Encourage bookmarking and sharing. ‘Social’ is the operative word in the phrase ’social media press release’. At the bottom of your release, make sure you include social bookmarking buttons for Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.ico.us, Technorati, and other major social bookmarking sites – especially if they’re relevant to your niche. A release that is relevant to SEO practitioners should include a Sphinn button, while a tech-related release will benefit from a Slashdot button.

As for sharing, don’t forget to include a form that allows your audience to forward your release to others. Make this process as easy as possible, such as a simple text box where your readers can input an email address. The easier it is to forward your release, the more likely it is for people to do so.

Link to your social networking pages and accounts. If your business has a Facebook page or a LinkedIn network, don’t forget to link to those in your release. Doing so will allow readers to stay connected with your business within the social networking sites that they are familiar with.

The social media press release may not be as common as the traditional press release, but it is a distinctive type of release that is meant for today’s internet landscape. In a few years, with minor adaptations made along the way, I won’t be surprised if the social media press release will be the release of choice.