JND Consulting Group Technology Information

Eliminate private documents permanently from your hard drive.

2010-09-03T12:42:32Z

Working in the finiancial and home health care industry, we are obligated to keep best practices when it comes to protecting data.

So as you would expect we get a number of requests to migrate data or upgrade machines. This leaves the task that most individuals neglect to take care of, which is making sure the data on the old hard drive is unrecoverable to prying eyes.

Many people think that clearing their history, deleting files and cookies, and emptying their computer’s recycle bin is enough. This is not so, the files still remain on the hard drive recovarable by individuals with tools to get access to them.

The hard drive is like a book and when you use the delete key, it just clears the table of contents of the book. In order to makes sute that the hard drive is cleared thourougly, special wiping tools are used to write information over top of the old data thus clearing it out.

Now this is 99% thourough as if the CIA is after your data, then you still may have a problem.

If you are needing this type of support, contact us to help protect your data.

561-705-2905

Service@JNDSupport.com

Privacy Controversies – Be Aware of these new trends!

2010-09-03T12:43:06Z

With all the great new technology out there and the new world of Social Networking with the likes of Facebook, MySpace, Google etc… , we should all really be a little concerned and vocal about a basic right of privacy.

Here are some of the latest articles that catch our attention. Please, Please, Please be aware of these new privacy trends.

Consumer Watchdog takes its crusade against Google to new heights. (Blasts Eric Schmidt on privacy issues and calls for a Do Not track List)

Cleveland rolls out carts with chip technology that identifies those who do not recycle enough and will give a fine.

Facebook’s new Places location services has privacy features that help you control whether–and which–people can see where you are. Here’s a hands-on guide to ensuring your privacy.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly has predicted that teenagers one day will be able to automatically change their names to distance themselves from their Google past. But what strategy should you take to create a new name?

Google will have to head to court to explain the company’s collection of data on people’s Wi-Fi networks and transmissions during its Street View surveys.

With the controversy over Internet privacy growing, more businesses are seeking to ease user concerns by offering new tools that enable anonymous searches and Web surfing.

Google Street View Privacy Touches Congress…

Is the flying drone, Googles next privacy Controversy?

Google has refused to rule out extending controversial facial recognition technology, despite being hit by a storm of complaints over privacy.

EPIC to Urge Congress to Strengthen Privacy Laws for Facebook Users

Following EPIC FOIA Lawsuit, US Senators Raise Questions About Retention of Body Scanner Images

FBI’s push to clarify electronic authority raises privacy concerns

Use your IPad as a remote control / TV Guide for your TV

2010-08-17T02:13:26Z

Wow, now this is a great example of multi-use for tablet pcs and the I-Pad

Here at JND, we have started developing many soultions for business for the I-Pad, but here is one great solution for the home!

Call us to see how we can turn your I-Pad or mobile device into something that can be used for business.

Deciding between a PC and a Mac?

2010-08-13T03:40:28Z

We often get asked the question, especially lately with the i-Phone and i-Pad hype, about what is better to purchase, a Mac or a PC.

Here is an interesting website from Microsoft that goes over just that question.

Please leave your feed back and comments below.

Deciding between a PC and a Mac?

Online Banking (Experts Finally Admit it is Not Safe)

2010-08-01T19:56:56Z

A few years ago, we used to be asked if online banking was safe and we were always placed in somewhat of a bad light when we would say, “not really”. We would give some of our standard security advice: make sure your anti-virus is up to date, malware protection etc… and even highly reccomended doing your accounting and online business from a separate machine. (One you don’t regularly install applications on or use for email.)

We were always in a fight with the major advertisements by banks claiming online banking is safe (Remember the little security blue chip in unnamed banking company) . They never mentioned that small business with a wire transfer account that happened to get a virus and their money wired to the islands never to be returned as the bank claimed it was their computer that caused the security breach. For a while, we were never asked about online banking, as it was always assumed there was encryption, and that the bank was responsible and would return your money if taken. Well ……

Well finally, the American Bankers Association is now asking consumers to “partner” with banks to keep cyber-thieves in check.

They want consumers to monitor their online accounts for unauthorized transactions on a “continuous, almost daily basis” This is a laughable request, and scares the heck out of us since we already knew that the banks could not keep our accounts safe.

At least now they finally admit it.

I highly urge you to read the official article “Banks require your help to keep online banking safe” By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY (7/30/2010)

Photo By Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY

Quickly Copy A Contact’s Info To Word, Excel, Outlook, Anywhere!

2010-07-21T22:16:01Z

Original post on thegoldmineblog.com

If you need to quickly copy a contact’s basic information such as name, address, phone number, email address, etc. here’s how to do it.

From the Edit menu select Copy Contact Details.

From there you will be prompted to specify what contact information to copy.

Note that the first three options are exclusive… You can’t copy “Name, Address” and “Name, Title, Address”… Which makes sense, why would you want the contact’s name copied twice?

Once you’ve determined what information to copy simply click the Copy button. From there you can Paste the information into just about any other application, such as, Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.

Rackspace Hosting Services

2010-07-15T20:04:35Z

The line references a specific configuration

Goldmine Groups – Corporate Edition 7

2010-07-11T20:00:22Z

Goldmine 7 Corporate Edition Archive — Joe Ramos – 561-705-2905

GoldMine’s groups allow users to gain greater access to their databases. Groups provide users with a way to work with more manageably sized or project-specific, subsets of contact data.

For Example a user can create a “Producers Group” and place contacts who meet a certain production requirement within this group to identify, manage, communicate etc…

Groups are a great way to work with mail merges, send emails to, and communicate more effectively with contacts that meet specific criteria.

Groups are static, so once set, you must manage the contacts within that group.

Below are screenshots on how to create a group and add contacts to them.

There are multiple ways to add contacts to a group.

1) Using a SQL Query to get all contacts with a certain criteria to add to a group in one action.

2) Adding a contact manually.

3) Using a combination of both to manually manage your groups.

To Create a Group, navigate to Lookup then SQL Queries

Select the Groups Tab

Right Click in the white space in the above section and select “New”

Type a name to identify the Group in the New Group Window

The Group Building Wizard will come up next, this allows you to populate the group by using a predefined filter or SQL query. If you do not already have a filter or query setup, then leave as is and click next to the next few screens and click finish.

Once your Group is created you can add a contact on an individual basis by viewing the contact and selecting the “Members” tab.

Right click in the “Members” area and select New

Select the group you want to add this contact to from the drop down menu and click ok.

You will then notice that this contact is now a part of this Group by viewing the “Members” tab.

You can also view how many contacts you have in specific groups or to see who belongs to what groups by visiting the Groups section again.

There are many different ways to use and manage groups effectively in your organization, so contact us to get you on the right track.

JND Consulting Group LLC. 561-705-2905

Cleaning your Outlook Mailbox

2010-07-09T03:30:33Z

Do you know how big your mailbox is? What is the default size limit of an Outlook/Exchange mailbox? How much e-mail are you storing? What happens when you’re near the limit? It is important to understand the answers to these questions so you aren’t prevented from sending and/or receiving e-mail.

The default mailbox size limit is 300MB. The limit is set up by SLAC’s E-mail Administrators and can be increased upon request.

As you reach your limit, you’ll get a message about the possibility of being unable to send or receive messages (when approaching ~250MB). Don’t panic, with these first warnings you are still fully able to send and receive email messages. However, if you don’t do some cleanup you’ll eventually receive some more warnings about not being able to send messages (when approaching ~300MB). Finally, If you still don’t clean up your mailbox, you’ll eventually be unable to receive messages at all (once limit is reached @350MB).

What can you do?: In Outlook there is a tool called Mailbox Cleanup used to manage the size of your mailbox. You can use this tool to view the size of your mailbox and individual folders. It can also locate any items that are older than a certain date or items larger than a certain size. You can also View or Empty items in your Deleted Items folder. From the top menu in Outlook select Tools, then Mailbox Cleanup and you’ll see a window like this one:
Finding Total Size of Mailbox and Individual Folders: Click on the “View Mailbox Size…” button. You’ll see the total size of the mailbox and individual mail folders.
Finding Large Messages: Select “Find items larger than” and then fill in a size. Press Find… and you’ll see an Advanced Find window open and it will locate the messages. You can delete the messages you no longer need.
Finding Old Messages: Select “Find items older than” and then fill in the number of days. Press the “Find…” button. The Advanced Find window opens and it will locate the messages. You can delete the messages you no longer need.
Cleaning Out Your Trash: Click on the “View Deleted Items Size…” button to view items in your Deleted Items folder and/or press Empty to delete items from your Deleted Items folder. You can still retrieve them via Recover Deleted Items feature for 30 days.; Deleted Items folder should probably be emptied upon each exit from Outlook. This is set via: Tools; Options; Other… place a checkmark in the top box.
Finding Messages with Attachments: For this you’ll use the Advanced Find feature directly. From the Tools menu select Find and then Advanced Find. Press the Browse button and click on the top-most folder (e.g. Mailbox – …) and press OK. Select the More Choices tab and place a checkmark in the box labeled “only items with – one or more attachments“. You can fill in a minimum size in the lower part of this window too if you want (e.g. “greater than” and “1000″ to find those > 1MB). Press the Find Now button and it will begin the search. When it is completed you can delete the messages you no longer need from the displayed window.
Removing Attachments from messages: Based on the previous procedure (Finding Messages with Attachments); once you find the messages with attachments, your may choose to remove the attachment only and leave the original message in your mailbox:
Open the message in Outlook, right click the attachment, and select Remove. Then save the message when prompted. Note that there will be no indication that there ever was an attachment after this action is taken.
Reduce Items Count In Core Folders: For performance reasons, it’s strongly suggested that both the “Inbox” and “Sent Items” folders (known as Outlook Core folders) are kept with the minimum amount of items at any given time. The recommended amount is between 2500 to 5000 items. A range is given since email messages come in various sizes. The larger the messages in your Inbox, the lesser the number of messages you ought to keep in it. To obtain optimal performance for your online Outlook client, the contents of each of these two core folders should not exceed 5000 items. This can be achieved by creating more mailbox folders and moving/filing messages accordingly.

Extra Cleaning Tips:

1. With Outlook, use the “Large Mail” under the “Search Folders” (bottom of Outlook left pane) to identify really big saved messages. You’ll see messages grouped by Size categories (Enormous, Huge, Very Large and Large). Review and delete those you don’t need any longer.

2. Sort your “Sent Items” folder by size and remove large unneeded messages.

3. Look for mail items you may have in your “Junk E-mail” folder, review and delete unwanted messages.

4. If after all the above, you still need to archive some personal folders, Choose File; New; Outlook Data File; Click on Outlook Personal Folders File (this will allow you to save >2GB in the file); Click the Ok Button – Locate the Folder you want to save them in and you are set.

Goldmine – How to Tag Records for Holiday Cards

2010-07-07T03:13:04Z

There are several different ways of tagging a contact to receive some sort of special treatment or out of the ordinary attention to query upon. One very easy and effective way is to use the “Merge” field. (This is usable for both primary and secondary contacts.)

You can add new fields by clicking within the “Merge” field and selecting the arrow to the right that pops up.

A Sound recommendation is to keep the codes short to 2 letters. Example: HC //Holiday Cards or HG //Holiday Gift

Also notice how I typed in the two // and then a description. This will allow for you to understand what the code is yet the system will only enter the two letters.