Network Velocity

Will’s Wisdom

Saw this video over on www.smbitpros.com It's worth reposting. Will Smith has a great attitude on life.

Rain in San Diego

It's raining here in San Diego. A rare and welcome site.

Virtual Assistants: Adventures in Delegation

We all have limited time in each day. Looking to increase my productivity and free myself from mundane tasks I decided to try a Virtual Assistant service called AskSunday. With AskSunday you can delegate tasks like ordering food, flower delivery, purchasing event tickets, booking travel plans and many others. My experience with AskSunday was not good. Here's a breakdown. Inputting Service Requests. To start a new request you can send an email, login via the AskSunday website or call. Since...

3 words for 2010

Chris Brogan wrote a great piece on choosing three words to act as guideposts for what you want to accomplish in 2010. I encourage you to read his entire post but to summarize Chris writes: Setting goals is what January 1st is all about. Over the last few years, I’ve practiced something I call “my 3 words,” where I come up with three words that I use as guidance for how I should conduct my efforts in the year to come. I set goals around these three words. I build deadlines and projects around t...

Setting up Email Filters will reign in an unruly Inbox

One of the most powerful ways to get control of your incoming email is to use filters. I'm not talking about filtering SPAM because Postini already does that for us. We're talking about automatically filtering email that you want to receive to a folder other than your Inbox. Automatically filtering your incoming mail ensures that less important email does not get in the way of messages that matter or are time sensitive. My current filters automatically divert ~20 messages per day to a folder ...

Twitter: the new customer service tool

In the past week we've experienced Twitter in a new and unexpected way: as a tool for resolving customer service issues. We speak with customer service representatives on a daily basis. It can be a very frustrating experience. That frustration can lead to a need to vent. Recently, we've vented on Twitter. Twitter has become so popular that many companies are monitoring Twitter for real time feedback about their products. Call it "brand protection". If a company sees a negative comment abou...

We’re a Favorite Place on Google

We're on Google's Favorite Places list.

City of Los Angeles Chooses Google Apps

The Official Google Enterprise Blog has a post about the City of Los Angeles choosing Google Apps for their new Email system that will serve 30,000 city employees. The entire post and video are available via this link. Some highlights from their post: Important decision. 15 proposals were submitted. The top four candidates gave oral presentations to city officials. The City Council unanimously chose Google Apps. Improved collaboration. Much of the city's work requires multiple people ...

Securing your company data on an iPhone

2010-02-03 UPDATE: Google Apps can now remote wipe an iPhone and enforce security policies. Read more here. Apple has two three* ways to secure company data on an iPhone in the event an iPhone is lost or stolen. If you have a subscription to Apple's MobileMe you can now find a lost iPhone and/or wipe all of it's data from the MobileMe website. More info on the MobileMe capabilities are available on the Apple website. Many corporate users do not use the MobileMe service (which costs $99/...

The power of Google Apps: Forms

In this post we'll take a look at the power and ease of use of Google Apps Forms. We'll cover creating a form, viewing the data in a spreadsheet and using that data to create graphs. But first, a quick intro video:  Forms allow any Apps user to create a custom form for gathering information. Forms can be used for anything, from vacation requests or ordering lunch to complex business processes or client surveys . The sky is the limit. Below is a screenshot of creating a sample form: Notic...