SMART Blog

Since the release of Windows 10 almost a year ago, people have found many ways to leverage this great new operating system to their business’s advantage. But have you failed to take advantage of some of the basic new features that got everyone so excited in the first place?

If you’ve had your Facebook profile since the dawn of social media, chances are it’s accumulated an immense amount of personal information. While you might have felt uneasy handing over all of this data to Facebook, the company has made it surprisingly easy to take it back.

One of Microsoft’s latest moves to appeal to business owners is its Technology as a Service program, allowing small businesses to purchase Surface products, accessories, and support via a monthly payment plan. The plan allows for upgrades, although some fees may apply as dictated by the lease.

When you think of a computer, you think of a machine that makes your life easier. You can look up events, check facts, record data, and so much more. However, the first computer might be something extraordinarily unexpected; a submerged treasure off the coast of Greece called the Antikythera mechanism, which was used to predict and track astronomical events, like the movement of the planets or the occurrence of eclipses.

Vacations are an important part of maintaining one’s sanity, especially if you’re an agency owner. However, unless you have a reliable staff that can handle the management of your business, chances are you might feel you can’t get away from the office long enough to relax. While it might seem tempting to disconnect yourself from the office entirely while on vacation, it’s actually better for your business if you don’t.

Your wireless router is critical to your business’s online infrastructure, providing your team precious wireless Internet connections throughout the office. You need to ensure that the signal can reach your entire office. Here are some tips to help you figure out where to put your router to ensure its signal is as strong as possible throughout your office.

It’s every agency owner’s worst nightmare: one mistake, and all of their data is wiped out. This very situation happened recently to a hosting provider, and his story serves as a cautionary tale regarding data storage best practices.

The development of mobile platforms has led to the development of hundreds of apps that give users the ability to capture websites, take notes, and help with a person’s daily business tasks. Some users of modern smartphones (and other mobile devices) routinely complain about the reliability of the on-screen keyboard interface, as communication is as important to the development and outcome of projects as ever. For this reason, some developers have begun creating applications that allow users to dictate to their devices; turning spoken words into text. Here are three of the most reliable options to turn your voice into text.

Twitter recently experienced a major hack where it saw 33 million user login credentials stolen. What may be more alarming than the hack itself is what the stash of stolen credentials reveal about users’ password security habits. Or, to put it more accurately, the lack thereof.

Businesses have always relied on telephone communication systems to stay in touch with external and internal contacts. However, the traditional method of telecommunication has fallen behind the times, giving way to more flexible solutions that are designed to save businesses money and improve efficiency. In particular, Voice over Internet Protocol can be a valuable asset for small businesses that are experiencing growth.

Your business relies on several software solutions that are designed to help your team be as productive as possible throughout the workday. In order to use these pieces of software, users often need to have a software license or an agreement with the developers. Without these software licenses, the legitimacy of the software is questioned and your team loses valuable time to be productive.

There was once a time when businesses would only seek out technological expertise when it was necessary. This would be when a major component was on its last leg, or if they required new technology following a major hardware failure. Today, a better type of IT service model allows businesses to avoid the downtime and unexpected support costs associated with broken technology, by practicing proactive maintenance.

Any business venture nowadays is apt to utilize a lot of data, and therefore will require plenty of digital storage space to accommodate its needs. As a result, selecting a storage device is an important decision to make - especially when one is trying to decide between a Solid State Drive (or SSD) or a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) storage solution. A quick comparison between the two will help you choose one over the other.

No security solution is perfect. Each one has its own set of pros and cons. For example, relying completely on an automated solution is thorough, but it will flag plenty of threats that aren’t really threats (aka, false positives). Meanwhile, a human overseeing security is great for spotting worrisome trends, but a human can’t possibly catch every single attack. With this dynamic in mind, a team of researchers from MIT has successfully blended the two.

There’s no denying that your business’s productivity suite is one of its most valuable software solutions. Cloud services like Google Apps for Work and Microsoft Office 365 continue to be huge game-changers in the business environment, and it’s been found that their increasing popularity is thanks to the convenience of providing mobile access to important data and applications.

Smartphone technology is currently experiencing cool innovations. Plus, there are some crazy reasons behind what these devices can and can’t do that you may not have known about. Check out these four cool smartphone factoids from List25.

If your business is using Windows 10 on your workstations, you might have noticed that there are plenty of advertisements geared toward marketing some product or service to users. These advertisements can get annoying. We’ll show you how to turn off the lock screen ads that appear before you log in.

It’s important that your business uses the most recent version of any operating systems and software solutions used by your workforce, but Internet Explorer “fans” have had a rough start to 2016. Nearly a quarter of all Windows PCs are still using unsupported versions of Internet Explorer, half of which are still running Windows XP.

Social media may be a great way to connect with other professionals and communicate with your friends, but it can be dangerous if you have poor posting habits. Before you share something, think twice about whether it contains any sensitive information that could be risky to yourself and your business.

The business owner has always had the unique challenge of managing and maintaining all of their organization’s operations and administrative difficulties. These days, technology is also a major pain point for organizations that rely heavily on it. Your business can free up valuable time and resources by choosing to outsource your organization’s technical obligations to a managed service provider.