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 Hi
Welcome to the June edition of the Florence I.T. newsletter. Based on the calendar I might be able to squeeze one more neweletter in later this monht, for now here's what I have for you:
- A nice combination between having only 1 monitor vs. having two:
- the new Roku video player streams netflix movies to your TV
- "Close to home" company is out of business due to failed backups.
- A few "green" computing tips/links.
- A small offer for nonprofits
- Your Team collaboration solution is here.
The ultimate monitor for $550:
The samsung syncmaster 2263dx appears similar to most 22" monitors at first glance . It ends after that first glance though  Integrated into this high quality sleek monitor is a dual array microphone, speakers and a high quality webcam. The second monitor could be used for IM, music/movie players, photo shop pallets, web browsers, photos and more. The 7” tandem screen is attached via a pivoting, swiveling arm which allows it to be positioned on either side or above the main display for a customized bit of functionality. It has excellent 1000:1 contrast ratio and 5ms access time. Stock comes and goes as these are so popular but give us a try if you want one, and we'll pass on this competitive pricing.
The cool gadgety thing this time…
around is the new Roku player, a $100 box that allows you to watch Netflix stream-able movies on your TV. Unlimited streaming movies are available with any Netflix plan starting at $8.95. No I don't work for them, I just enjoy the service and have saved a lot since switching my plan from blockbuster. Previously you needed windows internet explorer in order to view movies (I have dedicated a PC to the TV for this purpose). This new device, and others forthcoming, will eliminate the need to have a pc hooked up to your television, you'll only need the device and a wired or wireless internet connection. I plan to get one soon as I could make much better use of the PC I currently have dedicated to the TV.
Backup!
My favorite music site is out of business: backup failed! You may not know it, but I am actually a musician and artist in my "spare" time. One of the website I used to post my music on recently closed down completely unexpectedly, and it turns out it was a hardware failure that their web host experienced. It turns out further that their backup (which hadn't been tested) was not valid, and they couldn't restore the data. It further turns out that the business owner was not backing up his online data himself, he trusted completely in the ISP. This poor guy went out of business! Checkout their page here. It was a great online community where I met and collaborated with other musicians all over the world, so I'm on the lookout for someplace cozy if you can recommend anything.
As many of you know, Florence I.T. offers server backup maintenance plans designed to guarantee monitoring and testing your of your backups as part of a thorough disaster recovery plan.
Green stuff
- Here's a cool way to save paper when printing photos from the web. I've also noticed when printing from the beta version of the forthcoming Firefox upgrade, you can scale the printout of any webpage smaller which is helpful to shrink down lots of info onto fewer pages. I'm not sure if you can do this with other browsers, anyone?
- National Geographic released their greendex. How does your country rate? How do you rate? Find out.
- Some of our LED lighting article in Green living that I mentioned last newsletter can be found online here.
Nonprofits: We have 2 one year licenses for antivirus/antispyware with 1 year subscriptions, available free to the first NFP organization requesting it. Preference will be given to active current nonprofit clients who request this.
Online Team collaboration
The open source application of the month is DekiWiki. This enterprise class wiki is an excellent web based foundation for corporate intranets (we're working on one now for a client) with a host of usability features: easily edit, upload and contribute to the site. It's great for team collaboration with clearly defined permission levels. Florence I.T. associate Ed Gray informed me of this excellent open source application that is highly supported, stable and easy to use. With customers like Mozilla, the US Army , Avaya, Intel and Fujitsu, you know your company is choosing a secure and reliable platform that's definitely good enough even for the big guys. One of my favorite features is emailing an update to the webpage via the MS Outlook plugin. See this very cool feature in this video. Currently this feature is fairly limited in it's usefulness but plans are underway foor broader support with this plugin. Dekiwiki is VMWare certified , which means we can deploy it on a virtual machine running on top of your existing server very quickly. If this doesn't mean anything to you, for now just know that it's a HUGE time saver, and allows us to roll out an implementation on your existing server with very minimal setup, and integration into your backup scheme is also easily accomplished. Like a lot of my favorite open source applications: support contracts are available from the vendor in the unlikely event your local provider (that would be us) ever had problems we needed extra help with.
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Until next time,
Matt
Florence I.T. – A Community IT shop.
413-303-9167 or @ florenceit.net
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