Welcome back, It’s a New Day!

With Spring in the air and Summer closing in on us, it is time to think about spending time with family and friends away from the office. The freedom to roam about and continue to be connected to the systems that are essential to your business is what remote workplaces are all about.

We say attend your child’s baseball game, take that well deserved vacation and leave the worry of managing your computer network to us. Our worry free IT support has got you covered.

Tony DeMarco
President, CorCystems, Inc.

CorCystems offers 24x7x365 Domestic Help Desk support for company employees needing computer assistance. Receive the support you need immediately including workstation and application troubleshooting, network / internet connectivity issues, desktop peripherals (printers, keyboards, mouse, monitors, etc), and so much more. We can answer basic “how to” questions as well as gain remote access of your computer so the issue gets solved in real time by one of our engineers. Calls are answered within one minute, no wait.

For more information, feel free to contact us to inquire how you can take advantage of this convenient support service. 

If you are familiar with Phishing, which involves using email to direct you to a fake website where you unwittingly type in your personal information, then Vishing is a similar yet just as serious threat. In one version of Phishing, you receive and email that seems to be from your bank or another financial institution. In the email, they inform you that you have to go to a specific website and re-confirm your account information. Of course the link they provide is for a fake website and if you type into it you're just going to give them (the scam artists) the information they need to empty your accounts.

Most banks and financial institutions have gotten wise to this scam and they have policies to never contact you via email to ask you to "re-confirm" your account information. Con artists know this so they started doing what's called "vishing."

Here's how a vishing scam works:

You receive an email that appears to be from your bank and it informs you that you need to call a specific phone number to re-confirm your account information. The number they provide is of course bogus and when you call them and give them your account information they simply use it to access your accounts illegally and take your money.

So instead of using a fake website to fish for information they are using a fake phone number to fish for your voice.

The promise of a free wireless Internet connection enticed Lynn Fox into booking a room at the Holiday Inn Express in Madison, Wis. Who could blame her? Fox, a community relations professional from Iowa City, Iowa, relished the thought of no more wires. No more clunky dial-up connections. No more phone bills. When she checked in, she thought she was home free.

But even though the signal showed up loud and clear on her laptop, Fox couldn't find her way online. "The technician I spoke with diagnosed it as problem with my firewall. He said I should disable it and try connecting again," she remembers. "I said, 'Forget it.'" Not being able to get a Wi-Fi connection when you're counting on it is costly to small-business pros like Fox. A 2004 survey by the Omni Consulting Group found that the use of mobile data services such as Wi-Fi led to an average productivity gain of 13.7% per employee.

Take away wireless access and you could be losing productivity and profitability. In a recent article, I offered four tips for hitting hotspots. But there's much more on this subject to tell you about. (First, let me digress. I should probably offer my apologies to JetBlue Airways, which I singled out in that previous article for offering a nonworking Wi-Fi connection. Much later, I realized that it was my own poorly-configured PC — not the airline — that was at fault.)

Now, back to the task at hand. How do you get a Wi-Fi connection from anywhere?

1. Wherever you are, ask about the availability of a connection. OK, obvious you say? Well, for at least 49% of the population, which also refuses to get directions when they're lost, it isn't. Inquire with the people who are in charge of the hotspot about the correct settings. It's a lot easier — and quicker — than trial-and-error. "Ask what your wireless settings are supposed to be," advises Ryan Crum, a senior associate for PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York. "In your local Windows XP Wireless Connection Manager, ensure you are connecting to the correctly named access point." It's important, he adds, not to assume that your connection is secure. So make sure you use SSL (HTTPS) when connecting to any sensitive Web-based services. "Never use insecure protocols such as Telnet, POP3, or IMAP," Crum adds. Hint: If there's no one around to answer your questions, check the walls.

Often, there's a sign with an 800-number for tech support, particularly when you're paying for a wireless connection.

 Here are some additional tips.

New Technology:
The Amazon Kindle Wireless Portable Reading Device Newest Version Now Available

Amazon has just released its newest version of its wireless technology, The Kindle 2. It is a portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers. The Kindle is completely mobile and simple to use for everyone; No PC and no syncing needed. Using the same 3G network as advanced cell phones, it delivers your content using their own wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet. Unlike WiFi, you’ll never need to locate a hotspot.   

See VIDEO "Introducing Kindle 2"

There are no service plans or contracts involved; you only pay for the literature you download. The Kindle also lets you download and read the beginning of books for free.

If you want to purchase it, you download the piece in its entirety with the click of one button and continue to read where you left off. You also have the ability to download newspapers and magazines. Your paper will be delivered to your Kindle wirelessly each morning.

Utilizing a new high-resolution display technology called electronic paper; Kindle provides a crisp black-and-white screen that resembles the appearance and readability of printed paper. The screen works using ink, just like books and newspapers, but displays the ink particles electronically. It reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting, eliminating the glare associated with other electronic displays. You also have a built-in dictionary as well as the ability to add notes, adjust text size, as well as access to Wikipedia.

Also check out the Kindle DX with larger screen and storage capacity. 
See Product Overview.

May 2009
In this issue:

Did You Know

Keeping Your Cache Clean

Did you know that every time you visit a website a complete copy of that website as well as all the pictures on it is downloaded and stored on your computer? This is called the "cached copy" of the website and it's stored on your computer for 1-999 days depending on the setting on your computer. The more Internet browsing you do, the more cached copies of website you probably have saved to your computer.

Today's technology tip will show you how to quickly delete cached copies of websites and how to set the number of days you'll keep a cached copy on your computer.

In Microsoft Internet Explorer:
Look for "Tools" and then "Internet Options"

Now you want to look for "Temporary Internet Files" in the window that appears. By simply pressing the buttons you can delete Cookies (which are small files that some websites place on your computer to track your visits to their sites) or Files (which are actual web pages and images). You can also clear the history of where you have been on the internet and set the number of days worth of history you'd like your computer to record.

Even you computer can benefit from a little Spring cleaning. Now you know how to clean out all those old websites you've been visiting.

The Advantages of a DATO as Part of Managed Services

Managed Services through CorCystems provides monitoring and maintenance of all of your hardware and networking systems through our DATO (Day At The Office) visits. Depending on the size of your organization, routine DATOs are scheduled to maintain your systems and perform maintenance and testing to keep your systems running as optimally as possible. Duties include:

• Network and System Administration
• Labor to keep network components optimized and running
• Labor to repair network components and other system issues
• Assistance with managing warranty repairs
• Review network health reports
• Review work performed altogether

Today's Quote

“The Internet is becoming
the town square for the
global village of tomorrow.”

~Bill Gates

 

Just for Laughs