Workplace Communication

Like any other social networking site like facebook and twitter, Google+ is the new player that allows you and I to stay connected with the world at all times – with just a click away. Google+, is one of GoogleInc innovative projects, which integrate people’s ability to connect online more like connecting in the real world. Sharing your thoughts, links and photos with the right people; using easy, spontaneous video chat with as many as nine people.

Circles - a privacy feature that filters people upon sharing of post

Above all, what is keeping the people excited is Google+ privacy feature: Circles.

Like grouping your friends in your contact list, with Circles, you can just so by organizing your friends into different groups that they belong to. Given the option of using the default grouping provided or you can create your own customized group. This provides the convenience of wanting to share different postings, with different group of people that may only concerns to them. Having such convenient system, replacing the typical friends list function used by sites such as facebook.

With much of the functionality that Circles has brings, on July 14, 2011, Google+ had reached 10 million users, two weeks after the launch of an exclusive trial phase. In the month of January 2012, the site had surpassed a user base of 90 million, with estimated about 625,000 new users joined daily, having the possibility of hitting 400 million members by the end of 2012. Apart from personal usage for socializing, business companies such as from Samsung to Starbucks have now too tab onto this new “in-thing” because of the fast growing popularity and greater ways to connect with its customers.

What about you, time to explore how Google+ can make your life better…

Microsoft office 365 is Microsoft Corp. company’s next generation in cloud productivity that integrates Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online in an always Up-to-date cloud service.

The familiar Office desktop apps your employees already know and the new Office Web Apps seamlessly connected to the cloud and with a flexible pay-as-you-go, per-user licensing model.

The power of Exchange email, calendar, and contacts with built-in functionality to help protect against viruses and spam. Your employees can enjoy virtually-anywhere access to their mailboxes across PCs, the web and mobile devices

Let your employees create sites to manage and share important documents and insights with colleagues, customers and partners, keep teams in sync, and manage important projects – all without the need to set up SharePoint in your own datacenter.

Provide your organization with next-generation communications capabilities including instant messaging (IM), presence, and PC-audio, video conferencing and screen sharing.

With Microsoft Office 365, people can work together more easily from anywhere on virtually any device, while collaborating with others inside and outside their organization in a simple and highly secure way.

Microsoft worked closely with existing customers to develop Office 365, resulting in a cloud service that is designed to meet a wide range of customer needs for all sizes. There are 3 version of Microsoft office 365 which are:

• Office 365 for small businesses
• Office 365 for enterprises
• Office 365 for education

Office 365 is more than a new brand, Any business will be able to transform the way it works with Office 365, and make it easier for people to connect to co-workers, partners, customers and the information that keeps business moving forward – instead of spending valuable time on technology management and maintenance.

Somebody is sending emails to my contacts using my email address to which I haven’t sent. How can this be? Have I been hacked into? Let’s check it out!!!

There are some possibilities your account being spoofed because:

1. Firstly, your computer could have acquired a virus, and that virus was in turn accessing your PC’s email program and sending email to everyone in your contact list or address book.
2. Secondly, likely occurred is that your email account has been compromised – meaning that you probably have an on-line email account, free or otherwise, that someone has gained access too. By virtue they now have access not only to your email, but to your address book as well.
3. Thirdly, it could due to a weak password that’s easy to guess. Some examples of a weak password are your name, birth date, spouse name, etc..
4. Lastly, it could also be your friend or roommate using your computer when you’re not using it and sending messages.

What should I do?

If you suspect your computer is infected with virus, try to scan using anti-virus and make sure your anti-virus is updated with latest virus definition.

On the other hand to prevent password being stolen, use good password rules which comprises a combination of numerics, alphabets as well as symbols.

Email account has been compromised, it’s the worst situation there is nothing much you can do unless, they haven’t change all your particular information. If you still can log in you should immediately change your password or change and remove all personal information. It’s not enough to change just your password – you need to change all information that a scammer could use to reset your password and regain access to your account.

If we can’t get back our email account in this case :

• create a new email account
• send a message to all your contacts(*) that your old email account has been compromised and that they should ignore and delete all further emails from that account.
• use the new email address from now on
• take all the appropriate precautions that it not be stolen

Hope it will be useful to you.

iPad, yet another innovative and revolutionary product by Apple. With its bigger screen, you can enjoy an even more breathtaking gaming experience than your iPhone. In additional, iPad apps store provides an array of application that you would never thought you needed it. Moreover, with the introduction of iPad 2 by Steve Jobs, it is becoming better faster and lighter. This means tablet computer is becoming a more and more portable and productive tool. Therefore, have you considered using iPad for presentation?

How is it possible?

1.       iPad features a large and bright 9.7”interactive screen. However, if you need an even bigger presentation screen, u can purchase a VGA adapter. With it, you can connect your iPad to a projector or LCD TV for a more satisfactory view.

2.       Instead of carrying your heavy and bulky laptop, why not get an iPad which weights around 600g for the new iPad2. This is especially true if you have to give presentation to different customers at different places, you will really appreciate the feather light weight of iPad.

Ease of creating presentation:

Applications such as Corkulous, OmniGraffle and Keynote from the app store allow you to create and present your work on iPad. Your presentation and graphs will not only look professional but also eye catching. If you prefer to type using keyboard, you can either create a simple powerpoint on your Mac or PC and tweak it in iPad or get iPad’s external keyboard.

Presentation experience

If you are using Keynote application on your iPad for presentation, there is a very handy feature called “Presenter Display”. When connected to external display, you can use iPad as a second monitor for you to view either the next slides and current slide side by side, view notes for current slides or the default current slide view. Other minor features include a timer which allows you to time your presentation and laser pointer.

All in all, using iPad for presentation will improve your overall presentation experience for you and your audience. However, to make your presentation complete you may need to buy extra accessories and tweak your powerpoint slides to make it fully compatible with iPad. iPad is just a vehicle for you to drive your message, the success of the presentation will still depend on the speaker.

Nowadays, web based software or software as a service gains in importance in businesses. Mail messaging, collaboration and web conferencing are essential in businesses. In 2011, this convergence, with increasing consumers looking at quick access and sync ability to retrieve business data with mobile devices. The biggest names in software, including Google Apps and Microsoft BPOS / Office 365, are now in the arena.

Google Apps

Google Apps brings “web based” approach to businesses. Google Apps is specifically targeting on premise Microsoft messaging and collaboration products — Exchange and SharePoint. Considering tight budget on low operation cost, Google Apps tackles this needs. Its future success remains to be seen.

Microsoft BPOS/Office 365

Microsoft launched the 2010 series of its on-premise enterprise solutions; it cannot afford to ignore the fast growing “web based” market. Microsoft BPOS is a refurbished and integrated online version of its on-premise solutions — Exchange and SharePoint.

As the competition is getting fierce, what are the pros and cons of Google Apps and Microsoft BPOS, let’s check it out!!

1. Shared Document
   • Google Apps allows concurrent document editing but No Offline Access.
   • Microsoft BPOS allows offline Access and no concurrent document editing.
2. Contact Management
   • Google Apps generous mailbox storage is up to 25GB and has search engine & built-in chat video.
   • Microsoft BPOS features is similiar to Microsoft Outlook.
3. Calendar
   • Google Calendar has automatic reminders, mobile phone notification, syncs with Outlook, iCal and sunbird, offline access.
   • Microsoft BPOS can drag and drop events.
4. Database
   • Google Apps – none
   • Microsoft BPOS can sync with Microsoft Access but it is complicated to set up.
5. Online Word processing
   • Google Apps allows concurrent document editing.
   • Microsoft BPOS – none (expected to come later in 2011)
6. Mobile messaging
   • Google Apps allows push email, contacts, calendars for almost all major mobile devices.
   • BPOS allows push email, contacts, calendars, tasks for almost all major mobile devices.

Both Microsoft BPOS and Google have their advantages and limitations. I will choose Google Apps over Microsoft BPOS because modules are well integrated while Microsoft product (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, LiveMeeting) are complex software in their own right. The integration makes data sharing easy. However, talking about ease of navigation Microsoft BPOS’s navigation is rather complex and confusing compared to Google Apps.

On the other hand, when budget is the main factor, I will choose Google Apps as its features are similiar to BPOS. This is also favorable when employees are constantly on the move (For example, property agents, financial advisor, etc). Hope this helps.