August 2009
In this issue:

● From Mike’s Desk
● How to Boost
Creativity at work
● Life Without Internet
● PC Problems You
Can Fix

As we all know, computers are not perfect devices, and they sometimes malfunction. And when they do, this can create frustration, wasted time, and unneeded expense – especially for those of us whose computers are as vital to our daily existence as oxygen.

Luckily, many common computer issues can be resolved without professional help – and with excellent results and little or no hair-pulling involved. Here are a few of the problems you might encounter, and how to fix them.

Just for Laughs

Quote of the Month

“Social Notworking” – The Art of using Facebook, Twitter,
and MySpace during work hours

From Mike’s Desk

As August comes to a close I feel a twinge of sadness that summer is ending, yet I can’t help but feel a sense of excitement that Fall is around the corner and what the cooler weather will bring!

Clearly we live an astonishingly awesome world, just when you start getting bored, something pops up to keep it interesting and exciting. Social media (think Twitter) is along these lines. I’m not sure why it’s a good thing, not sure why I care what Lance Armstrong is eating for breakfast today, but find it very interesting to watch it evolve at an incredible speed. Where’s it going? Stay tuned.

Mike
mikego@sf-it.com

How to Boost your Creativity at Work

When you think of “creativity”, you might immediately think of artists, musicians or designers. But the fact is that creativity is a useful tool in all sorts of occupations, from accounting to engineering to teaching. Creativity is the fuel for new products, systems, and better ways of getting work done.

According to Dr. Warren Bennis, a respected American scholar, organizational consultant and an expert in the field of leadership studies, “The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. And the leaders of those organizations will be those who find ways both to retain their talented and independent-minded staffs and to set them free to do their best, most imaginative work . . . In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause.”

The value of developing and encouraging creativity in the workplace is clear. But how can you boost your creative contributions?

Here are a few techniques you may want to try.

Life Without Internet

When the Internet first came about, it was simply a source of knowledge and entertainment. Now, however, many people rely on it for everyday activities such as banking, doing business, storing information, mapping locations, communicating and more.

This puts a huge strain on businesses, data center operators and web-hosting service providers as they seek to make web services available around the clock.

But being available 24/7 is not even something the Internet’s biggest businesses—Amazon, Google and Yahoo, for example—can promise: even their sites have suffered from “unplanned downtime” in recent months. The causes of these and other web outages can vary widely: glitches during system upgrades and migrations, human error, electrical failures or even hacking or hijacking.

How does this impact me?
For the average user, finding that a site you frequent is down can result in minor annoyance. However, with the popularity of such services as online banking, delays can cause late fees or overdrawn accounts, turning merely annoyed customers into angry ones.

At the same time, Internet companies like Google are making it free and easy for users to store and access their e-mails, documents, spreadsheets, photos and other personal and professional information online with web-based applications. In other words, Internet companies are making us increasingly dependent on their services. But when they go down, what can we do? Frankly, not much. Some users rant and rave about the company on blogs and forums. Others may decide that business applications do not belong online and should be backed up locally.

But an outage doesn’t necessarily mean you have to put your life on hold or suffer negative consequences. For example, if your bank website is down, you can pick up the phone to check your account balance. If you’re late paying a bill, many financial institutions will happily reverse your late fees if their website’s unavailability was to blame.

What it all comes down to is the question: is the convenience of online services worth the occasional inconveniences?

Read on