May 2010
In this issue . . .

	Referral Nets Client Alpern Rosenthal a $1000 Thank You!
	How Big is Your Mailbox?
	10 Ways to Work More Securely

	5 Productivity Tips for Windows
	7 Things to Know About Virus Writers

	GNWritings
	Quote of the Month

Just for Laughs

GNWritings
Written by Laura Steward Atchison

My biggest personal frustration is lost productivity, time I waste every day that cannot be gotten back that I did not want to waste on purpose. I am not talking about vacation days or reading a book or taking a walk or playing with the dog here. I am talking about work time when I cannot figure out where the day has gone and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing off my To Do list, no planning for the future, no prospecting, no website redesign, nothing that makes me feel like I did something useful at the end of the day.

Most days I can pound out the action items I plan for myself but sometimes I just cannot figure out where the day goes. I have started keeping a paper day planner for what I work on. Yes, I said paper, but I do like it for some things. Whether it is talking to people, responding to email, reading e-newsletters, lunch, cleaning off my desk, upgrading software, running virus scans, figuring out why my computer blue screened (driver issue) or sending out proposals. Whatever it is I write it down in a little book I carry with me. I do this every few months for a couple of weeks at a time.

What I typically find is that emails and phone calls tend to absorb most of my day that is unplanned time. Necessary, in most cases, but unplanned time nonetheless. That does not mean I can skip the stuff I have planned. In some cases it drops tasks to a lower priority but if I have properly filtered the things I have on my lists they are all things that need to get done. The tough part is that often planned tasks get dropped for days as I am responding to perceived higher need.

Notice I used the word perceived here. Just because it is a new task does not mean it is more urgent, but of course when you answer that phone and a client or teammate needs help we often tend to drop all plans to help out in that moment.

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Just for Laughs

We have spent a lot of time recently (which translates to a lot of extra expense for our customers) troubleshooting, managing, and working with VERY large mailboxes.

From a purely technical standpoint, once a mailbox gets over a GB in size, it starts to become a minor challenge in terms of supporting it, speed of access and search, and management in general. Once a mailbox gets to be over 2 GB in size, we start to run into some very serious limitations that will manifest in support, management, and disaster recovery scenarios.

Believe us when we say we are VERY heavy Outlook users, but using a few simple techniques, it is not much of a challenge at all to keep our own mailboxes under the 1 GB limit we need to keep us ‘light on our feet' with our own mailboxes.

First: archive! Outlook has a built in archive feature that will remove things from your mailbox and put them into a long term storage file. Our technique is to add to that archive file daily until it gets to be between 1 and 2 GB in size, then burn that to a DVD (so that it isn't taking up space on the server).

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used with permission from Microsoft At Work
 

The security of your computer and data is crucial for you and the success of your company. Lost or stolen information can reveal company secrets, or expose your confidential or personal information. The more you do to keep your computer secure, the safer your information will be. Use these 10 tips to learn ways you can help protect your computer, your data, and your company's network.

1. Work with your IT department
Make sure that you install all of the patches and updates that your IT department recommends. In addition to installing Windows and Office updates, your IT department might require you to install additional security software, such as a firewall or custom software to help you connect from remote locations. Making these regular installations will keep your computer and your company's network as secure as possible.

2. Use strong passwords
Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your computer, and a good password is often underestimated.

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Print more easily, find files faster, and send e-mail right from your desktop.

Print from Windows Explorer
If you need to print a document, let’s say a Microsoft Word document, there’s no need to launch Microsoft Office Word first. Browse your hard drive for the file that you want to print, right-click its icon, and then click Print. This will automatically send the document to your printer without launching Microsoft Office Word.

Pin programs to the Start menu
Want to add your favorite programs to the Start menu? From the Start menu, click All Programs. Locate a favorite program, right-click the program’s icon, and then click Pin to Start menu. That’s it.

You can also pin an application by dragging and dropping its icon from All Programs to the Start menu. The program is now “pinned” to your Start menu. To remove it, right-click the program icon on the Start menu and then click Unpin from Start menu.

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I spend a growing percentage of my time getting rid of unwanted e-mails that contain viruses. If I open one of them, it potentially could overwrite files and disable my antivirus software.

What exactly is in the heads of these virus writers? Anything?

I took my inquiry to Sarah Gordon, an expert on the psychology of hackers and virus writers. She did her best to answer an overly broad question. Gordon is a senior research fellow at Symantec's security response unit, and previously was a researcher for the antivirus research and development team at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

She meets face-to-face with hackers and virus writers on occasion, to understand why they do what they do, and conducts research at international hacker conferences such as DEF CON. To see Gordon's background and some of her research papers, visit her Web site at www.badguys.org.

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