Throw away your USB drive

Now that Google Apps allows you to upload files of any type without having to convert them to Google Doc format you can stop carrying around your USB drive.  No more having to remember to copy that complex financial forecast in Microsoft Excel to your notebook hard drive or USB stick.  Just open a web browser at the board meeting, log-in and open the file from Google Docs.

Your Google Apps account starts with a minimum of 10 Gb's of storage.

Gmail and Google Apps Calendar management tips

I think children are sometimes the best test of whether a process is simple or not.  My 6 year old is like most and really doesn't care about daddy being late for something so I built him a schedule on Gmail and made sure it integrates with my schedule on Google apps.  He loves it!

Here's a few tips I think are worth sharing with business users from this exercise:

• Learn how "Quick Add" works.  It's a phenomenal time saver.  Enter "today 800 am Bus to School 20 min" or "wed 2 pm Budget meeting 2 hours".  Google Calendar will automatically create the appropriate appointment for you.  If you get it wrong use the Undo Link that appears as part of the yellow message telling you what you just added.
• Open your calendar, Settings, Labs (Gapps administrator has to allow labs for this to appear)
• Enable the components: "Who's my one-on-one with?", "Free or busy", and my personal and my 6 year old's favourite "Next meeting"

Sure there's a whole bunch of encouragement for my 6 year old that helps too, but now I can leave a screen open that's his schedule (coordinated with dad's and mom's) that he's enjoying keeping up with.

Yikes, I'm 2 minutes late for picking him up for the dentist.  Gotta run.

What if your notebook computer was stolen?

How long would it take for you to be up and running with full access to all Email, Calendaring, and Contacts?

If running Google Apps; as fast as you can get to another computer with a web browser; probably minutes.

If running Microsoft Outlook you have to restore from backups; or if on Exchange configure Outlook on another computer...  I'll spare you the details but probably a few hours at least.

Just had a customer have his notebook stolen while on a trip.  The data in his outlook PST file plus all his Excel spreadsheets is at risk because it wasn't encrypted nor password protected.  Identity and financial information theft is a real possibility.  Sure you can use a Windows password, but a tech guy like me can plug the physical drive into another computer and still access all the data unless it was specifically encrypted.

So buy a better notebook with an encrypted drive like this one from Seagate or upgrade to a more expensive version of windows?  Or simply pay $50/year and store your documents (even in MS Excel format) on highly secure Google Apps servers using Google Documents?

Google Apps allows all browser sessions to use https.  So no data will get transmitted nor stored on the local computer in a usable form for a hacker.

I may sound biased but I'll be recommending the Google Apps solution to my customers. :)

Huge cost savings for Canadians travelling to the U.S. with their cell phone

I've had a few clients run up thousand dollar phone bills while travelling into the U.S. For the past few years I've been swapping my Rogers SIM Card for an AT&T SIM card when I cross the border.

Here are the steps to avoid the outrageous $1.45/minute roaming charges from Rogers:

• Unlock your phone by purchasing an unlock code from http://www.gsmphonesource.com. This is required but only has to be done once. If you break your phone and get a replacement you'll have to unlock it again.
• Buy an AT&T prepaid plan from an AT&T corporate store. You have to go in person. Only the corporate stores will let you pick a number anywhere in the U.S. instead of just their local area. A prepaid plan only requires a credit card. The problem with prepaid is that you can only browse the web with the 100 Mb $19.99 data plan. It will not support BIS which is what allows your Blackberry to use it's built in software for email. Custom email apps like Gmail for the Blackberry will still work though!
• Alternative: Buy a monthly plan asking them to waive the $36 activation fee. Don't tell them you're only using it for a trip. Make sure there are zero penalties if you cancel it if you're "unhappy with the service during the first 30 days". Cancel it when you're done your trip. You must register the account to a U.S. address and it's faster if you have a US dollar credit card to pass the credit check. Pick all the options you want on the plan accordingly for minutes, voice mail, texting, and data. AT&T charges extra for tethering if you want to access the internet from your laptop via a Blackberry (or Android phone) with USB cable but this is cheaper than the $10/day most hotels charge for high speed internet in your room.
• With your Canadian SIM still installed call forward your cell phone to the new AT&T cell number. Note this incurs long distance against your Canadian cell long distance plan every time someone calls it. Alternatively, don't call forward and just check your voicemail frequently. Power down your phone. Remove the battery and slide out your SIM card. Replace it with the AT&T SIM card and test calling it from another phone.
• When you return swap out the SIM card, turn off call forwarding. If your email does not work visit http://rogers.blackberry.com or http://bell.blackberry.com and login. Enter your PIN/IMEI at the prompt. If on Google Apps you'll have to re-start or login to the blue Google Sync icon for your contacts and calendar to continue synchronizing.

End result? You pay as low as $29 for 200 minutes instead of $290 or $1.45/minute with Rogers. AT&T has unlimited plans starting at $69.99/month.

Follow-up on Draytek 2950G

We've been running the Draytek 2950G for a few weeks now and the client is very happy with the results.  It balances the load between the 2 WAN ports much better than the prior NetGear router did.

Here's a screen shot of the Data Flow Monitor during a large file transfer:

And this is the NAT table showing the internet sessions split between the 2 WAN ports.  Since WAN port 1 is 12 Mb/s download compared to 1.5 Mb/s for WAN port 2 it allocates more traffic to WAN port 1.

This router is a great way to combine 2 low cost internet data lines for load balancing and fail over/redundancy.  A Rogers Business Cable line for $99/month plus a Teksavvy high-speed DSL line for $69/month should provide lots of capacity and reliability for most medium sized offices.

Bookmark Sync for Chrome

This is so handy for folks like me that work on multiple computers.  Install or update to the latest Chrome browser and you can synchronize and merge your web page bookmarks across all your computers.

Details are here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/extensions-bookmark-sync-and-more-for.html

Prior to this 4.0 release I found Chrome had some compatibility issues with certain web sites but it's definitely the no contest performance winner over all other web browsers.

Android Phone OS makes impressive gains

I've been using the LG Eve GW620 Android 3G phone from Rogers for a few weeks now.  I'm extremely impressed by the platform but it is ready for prime time use by heavy business users?

It's awesome if your company is already on Google Apps or Gmail as it synchronizes automatically with your email, calendar, and contacts plus uploads pictures directly into Picasa.  There are no extra applications to install or web accounts to set-up like you have to with a Blackberry.  You also don't need Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) to make everything insantaneous and eliminate the typical 10 to 15 minute delay for email.  Keeping everything in the Google family certainly makes everything simpler to set-up and simpler to use.

One limitation I've run into is the inability to create new calendar appointments that include other attendees.  Also, I can't run real time stock streaming software like Quotestream, however, I've opened a ticket with Quotemedia to see if there is a work around. (Update: Open this link directly to install the mobile Java version of Quotestream Wireless.  It works but cuts off the edges of the window if you hold the phone horizontally instead of vertically)

The Android phone platform is definitely growing rapidly.  I was surprised to see that Android has 27% market share compared to iPhone's 54% market share for mobile ads displayed.