BestTechie

Google Apps Priority Inbox Review

Jeff Weisbein — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:15:17 +0000

As anyone who follows my articles knows, Google Apps is one of my favorite Google products. The other day, I logged into my webmail for my personal domain (hosted on Google Apps), and was pleasantly surprised to see a new feature; the Priority Inbox. While simple enough in concept, the “priority inbox” seems like a pretty promising addition to Gooogle Apps.

As you can probably guess, the priority inbox creates a secondary inbox within the Google Apps webmail interface. And, based on your reading trends, the Priority Inbox will automatically sort through your email and try to determine which messages are of priority, and thus what is pressing for your attention. I’ll be the first to admit that the sorting was far from accurate for the first couple of days, but as time has progressed, Priority Inbox has become strikingly accurate in determining which of my incoming emails are of high importance.

Combining my reading trends and my “rankings” on priority (like marking a message as spam or starring it), Priority Inbox has done a much better job at prioritizing my email than I could alone.

One of the things that I find interesting about the Priority Inbox is the fact that it seems to have been released to Google Apps users (none of my standard Gmail accounts have yet to get this feature) first. This is somewhat unusual for Google to do, and suggests that the product is intended as a business tool to aid people in managing their time more effectively. More importantly, the release to Google Apps suggests that Priority Inbox is intended to be for inner-organization prioritization.

What is inner-organization prioritization? Think about it this way: you are a high-up at a large company. Who’s email are you going to give priority to; a low-level sales person, or the VP of sales? To most, the answer to this question is obvious. But the fact remains that if you get a lot of email, it may be a genuine challenge to prioritize said information.

This concept, referred to as group dynamics is something that can be of great importance in business and organizations. However, group dynamics are more prominently found in social networks. And, as I’ve already discussed, it is becoming quickly evident that Google wants to get their hands dirty in the social networking field.

By now you’re probably putting two and two together. But if you’re not, let me explain this a little further. By creating technology that aids in group and social dynamics, Google is potentially further preparing themselves to enter the social networking field. More importantly, by bringing something new to the table, Google could likely attract a lot of users to their new social networking service.

Apple TV Bridges the Gap Between Computer and TV

Jeff Weisbein — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:30:54 +0000

I just ordered the brand new Apple TV. But I guess the question is why? Why did I order it? It wasn’t the inner-fanboy, like some may argue took over when I ordered the Magic Trackpad. This purchase actually bridges a gap in my media consumption experience. For the longest time, I haven’t been able to find the bridge to connect my computer and TV in a way which made sense (for me). The way I currently watch TV/Movies is sitting at my computer with the content playing on my 30″ Apple Cinema display.

It works, but it’s not ideal. Instead I’d like to sit on my couch and watch on my 42″ LG LCD TV. The previous Apple TV would have allowed me to do that but I wasn’t willing to shell out $229 for it. However, an Apple TV with a $99 price point I am willing to purchase. And so I did. It also makes perfect sense for someone such as myself to buy an Apple TV over lets say a DVR (which I almost did).

I have a couple of season passes on iTunes. The Apple TV can seamlessly allow those TV shows to play on my TV from my computer. A DVR on the other hand can’t, just like it can’t integrate with iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, or my iPhone or iPad. The Roku box can do a few of those things but certainly not all of them, it is a good alternative though.

The Apple TV makes sense for me – it fits perfectly into the way I have been consuming and purchasing media content. I love the fact XBOX Live provides me with the ability to use Netflix on my XBOX 360 and play TV shows and movies directly on my TV. Some people probably use XBOX Live exclusively for that feature. Now I don’t even need an Live subscription for that anymore. My Apple TV can do it for a one-time price of $99 (plus my Netflix subscription of $10/month of course).

I’m set now. I have my computer, my iPhone for mobile, my iPod Touch for the car, my XBOX 360 for gaming, and now my Apple TV to complete the bridge for all media consumption.

Things I wish it had:

Do I wish it supported 1080p? Sure.
Do I wish all the major broadcast networks were on board at launch? Yes, but I find it hard to believe they won’t be soon.

What do you think of the new Apple TV?

How I Would Fix The New Digg

Jeff Weisbein — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:00:51 +0000

Kevin Rose is in a tough position right now. Digg version 4 has been officially released to everyone. One might say that the problem is many people are upset with the changes and while that is true, I think the problem really stems at the fact the Digg’s core user base is comprised of geeks (always has been and probably always will be). And geeks are probably the hardest group of people to please when it comes to anything technology related. Why is this? Personally, I think it has to do with a couple of things.

One being that a lot of geeks actually understand or at the very least are interested in the inner-workings of anything tech and because of that they like to form opinions which they aren’t afraid to voice throughout various means on the web. Another thing about geeks and technology is we are not as afraid to jump ship and move to another product/service if we feel it’s better. In other words, we’ll try things before most other people will and report back if it’s good or not. So when you deal almost exclusively with these types of people, it can be very difficult.

The Digg community has always been very techie-oriented and it seems with Digg v.4 they were (are) trying to attract a new crowd of users to the site. I’m not going to get into whether or not that is a smart move or not in the post (may be a good topic for a later article), but I will say that I don’t think it’s in Digg’s best interest to lose the community they have built from the start in favor of a lesser-techie crowd.

Now, if I were Kevin Rose, aside from all the various bug fixes that need to be done here is how I (as a geek) would fix the new Digg without completely reverting it.

More personalization. Hear me out. Any story imported via RSS that hits the front page of “Top News” I don’t want to see unless I follow that sites profile. Let me explain further. For example, I don’t read Mashable, but lately their stories have been bombarding the front page of Digg – I’m not interested in these stories. I don’t follow them on Digg either, the same way I don’t follow them on Twitter. The only difference here is that even though I don’t follow them on Digg, I’m still seeing their content. So with my proposal, you can keep the RSS feeds, following, and all that jazz, but as long as I’m not following that publisher on Digg I never have to see their stories hit the front page, provided it wasn’t user submitted. This would allow user submitted stories to hit the front page without having to compete with these massive publishers such as Mashable, TechCrunch, etc.

Or you could just drop the RSS feed import. I thought it sounded like a good idea when I first heard about it, but in reality it doesn’t work. It’s one of those good on paper type of things.

The 24-hour time frame “requirement” has been removed. This makes it possible for items to hit Digg’s front page that were submitted at any time. Again, it sounds nice on paper, but in reality, Digg is a news site at its core. The only people who still report news close to 24 hours after it occurred are newspapers. The 24-hour time frame should be reimplemented for the sake of real-time and relevancy.

Bring back the dedicated image and video sections. It separates the various types of content better and makes it easier to focus on one content type such as only text, only images, or only videos. Along with content organization, I would like to see pagination brought back. I hate that Twitter-style “Load more” button, I hate it on Twitter too. If you refresh, you lose your spot and it’s impossible to quickly run through pages of stories.

Those things are my main gripes that I haven’t seen Digg address anywhere. The other stuff such as the bug fixes and the default page (e.g. My News or Top News) will be fixed according to what I’ve read. What do you think? If these changes were to occur would that be acceptable to you? Have any others you would like to add? Leave a comment!

How To: Track Your Brand Name Online

Jeff Weisbein — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:39 +0000

I want to share with you one of the web’s best kept secrets. A service so awesome many companies end up paying for it even though it’s completely free. In other words, if you are paying any of these companies who claim to track your brand name online you are most likely being taken advantage of. The service I’m about to share with you is completely free and comes from the best possible source to keep tabs on what is being published about you (or your brand/company) on the Internet. That being, Google.

Yep. Google. They provide a service called Google Alerts which allows you to setup keywords to track and anytime one of those keywords appears within the Google index, you receive a nice email providing a description and a link to the website which mentioned the keyword you are tracking. Keywords can be literally anything – you can keep an eye on your brand name as well as your competitors. It’s super easy.

Once you are on the Google Alerts page, you will want to enter the keyword(s) you wish to track and then select a method to receive your latest updates. Google Alerts allow you to configure up to 50 alerts per email which you can choose to receive as-it-happens (meaning as the keyword is added to Google’s index), once per day, or once per week. I personally have my main keywords set to as-it-happens because I like to be on top of that stuff, but it depends on your intended use. Additionally, you can choose what type of sites you want to be tracked, such as, blogs, forums, social media (e.g. Twitter), news, or video. Of course, you can select “Everything” (recommended) which is the default option.

Management of tracked keywords is simple and straight forward enough too through the Google Alerts control panel. Easily add or remove keywords or adjust your configuration options straight from the web. You would be surprised how much some of these brand management companies charge to do this type of thing. I have heard stories where all they do is put all of the Google Alerts into a document, pretty it up, slap their logo on it and give it the company who hired them (for some ridiculous sum of money).

I’ve included some screenshots below.

We Need to Kill the Windows Installer

Jeff Weisbein — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:25:15 +0000

We need to kill the Windows Installer. More specifically, Microsoft needs to kill it. Why? Because it’s a poor method of installing software. Alternative operating systems to Windows such as Mac OS X and every Linux distribution do software installations the right way. What makes their method for installing software the “right way” you ask? It’s flat out easier, more intuitive, and less cumbersome.

As it stands now when you want to install a piece of software on Windows you are required to download an executable file and run it. The executable then opens the Installer which prompts you for several things. Some of which require clicking a checkbox, selecting particular options, and clicking buttons. How many times do I have to click “Next” to install something on Windows? It’s a tedious task. One that I think can also be argued to be too complicated for many end users.

How about installing software on Mac OS X or Linux? It’s very different. In most cases on OS X to install a piece of software all you have to do is download the application, double click it (to either mount the DMG or unzip the file), and move the file that appears into the Applications folder. That’s it. No checkboxes, various options, or “Next” buttons – just drag and drop and it’s installed and ready to use.

What about on Linux distributions? The fact that Linux distributions have something called package managers makes installing software a breeze. These package managers often have front ends which provide a nice interface where you can simply select the software you want to install and click a button to install it. The package manager will take care of the rest. Super easy. Even if you were using the terminal to install software from a package manager, it’s still less steps than using the Windows Installer. In that case you would type a command (e.g. apt-get install softwarename) and it would ask you if you are sure you want to install the software to which you would answer Yes and it go on its way and be done.

If there were one thing I would love to see change in Windows it would be the way we install software. Right now it pales in comparison to other operating systems out there. The Windows Installer method of installing software is old, outdated, and needs to change.

Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Booyah Should Be Cautious of Facebook

Jeff Weisbein — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:05:29 +0000

Last week, Facebook announced Facebook Places, I’m going to spare you the details of what Places actually is because I’m sure you have read about it elsewhere. Instead I’m going to discuss how bad of an idea it was for these companies to have partnered with Facebook for their Places product. Who exactly partnered with Facebook for Places? Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and Booyah (so far, I’m sure there will be more). This is a bad idea.

Since when has Facebook ever played nicely with their partners? Since when have any Facebook acquisitions lived past acquisition and if they have (I can only think of one – Friendfeed) when have they succeeded? The answer is they haven’t. Look at their most recent acquisition of Hot Potato – they shut that down, too. Same with Divvy Shot, Parakey, and Nextstop. I’m sure there are others that I missed, but you get the idea. Facebook acquires these companies not for the product, but for the talent. They are called talent buys and there is absolutely a method to the Facebook acquisition madness. Facebook wants to completely dominate everything in the social/mobile market.

When I heard all of these companies were partnering with Facebook for Places, my initial reaction came in the form of a tweet, “So basically Facebook is going to learn all they can from Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Booyah, etc. and then obliterate them. Got it.” I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened. In fact, I would be shocked if that isn’t what happens. Just look at how upset Zynga is with Facebook lately. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Google invested hundreds of millions into Zynga recently? No, it’s not.

If anyone thinks Facebook can play nice, just look at their history of acquisitions and partnerships. It’s the Facebook way or the highway. At least that is how it looks from an outside perspective.

The Sad State of the Blogosphere

Jeff Weisbein — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:22:26 +0000

We have a problem. That problem is the current state of our blogosphere. It’s in complete shambles. Unfortunately, I’m well aware of what causes this problem and it’s not easily fixable. The cause of the problem is the need for visitors and pageviews, which both translate into money. Don’t get me wrong – making money is great, I’m all for it. I’m just not for making money off of a garbage product or service. Let me explain.

There are several blogs (large or small) out there that just will post anything, especially on days some would call a “slow news day.” I have a suggestion to those blogs. Have you ever tried not posting if you have nothing to say? It works for me. The result? More high quality (and better) content. It’s really unfortunate that these blogs have to resort to posting such posts just to meet their visitor and pageview quotas for the day. But it’s not just the posts that should never see the light of day that bothers me.

There is one blog which is supposedly the largest blog on the web, Mashable, which constantly amuses me. Not because of their stellar content or great reporting. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. As the largest blog on the web, you would think they would be somewhat credible. But they’re not. Often times they are completely wrong with their claims. While other times they are careless. The carelessness seems to be a result of wanting to be #1 to a story. Don’t worry, I have some examples coming.

I know I’m not alone with these beliefs either, especially when it comes to Mashable. Don’t believe me? Check out this blog, Shamable. It’s like Mashable (not as big unfortunately), but they try to be respectable. Nonetheless, here are some examples from Mashable.

Example 1 (my personal favorite): About 4 months ago when Blippy had that issue with credit card numbers appearing in search results, guess who was first on the scene? Right. Mashable. The problem? As far as I know they didn’t contact Blippy until after they made the post (even if they did, they still posted it before hearing back). As the largest blog on the web you would think you have some social responsibility. Nope. Not only did Mashable make the post telling the masses about it before it was fixed, they posted a screenshot with the exact search query to perform so anyone could access the information. But wait. It gets worse. They were in such a rush to get this post up, they missed blacking out one of the victims credit card numbers. Careless much? Here’s one of their writers responses when told about it:

I’m sorry, but if that was her credit card number I’m sure she would be a bit freaked out. Additionally, did it ever occur to any of these people that the victims here probably read Mashable? If I was them, I’d be pissed.

Example 2: Mashable is a social media blog, so while I’m not completely shocked that they would post this article, the fact they make such unsubstantiated claims is just laughable. The article I’m referring to is the one where Mashable goes on and on about the Old Spice marketing campaign with the guy who made custom YouTube videos, etc and how it increased the sales of Old Spice. If you want correct analysis on the Old Spice campaign, check out Shamable’s article. The bottom line is Mashable was too quick to jump to conclusions. There is no way to know if the online campaign was the reason for the increase in sales, they won’t know until the campaign is over. It’s also worth mentioning the campaign took place in the dead of summer when people sweat more and probably use more deodorant. And let’s not forget that Old Spice isn’t new to marketing – they took full advantage of IMC (integrated marketing communications). What’s that mean? It means they also had print ads and TV ads going at the same time as the online campaign.

Example 3: Recently Mashable reported that the HTC Droid Incredible would be receiving the latest Android release (Froyo) on August 18th. Did it happen? Nope. I understand sometimes things don’t go as planned and there can be delays, but they updated the post saying they were further investigating the situation and I have yet to see anything about it. While I haven’t seen anything on Mashable, I have seen that Verizon Support on Twitter doesn’t seem to know anything about when Froyo is coming to the Incredible. Which leads me to question Mashable’s unidentified source.

Those are 3 of my favorite examples from Mashable. But it’s not just Mashable lately. Today, I was disappointed by two TechCrunch posts. The first being the non-story on how you can’t block Zuckerberg on Facebook. You all realize that he probably wrote that line of code during the early days of Facebook. I’d bet he forgot it was even there. Will it be removed now? Most likely. Did it warrant a post on TechCrunch (Mashable also covered it too by the way)? I don’t think so.

The second post that disappointed me was the one which simply stated that ChatRoulette V. 2 is coming. That’s literally all it said with a screenshot from the site. I was expecting some insight and information on what to expect. Don’t waste my time. I could have gotten the same information if I went to the site myself. Later on some more information was added, just another line, though. Which simply stated that the site lost one of its advisors (supposedly – they heard it somewhere. Where? Your guess is as good as mine).

All of those posts are meaningless. They are quick traffic generators – nothing more. I hate to pick on only two blogs, because it’s not just them. It’s everyone. I’ve found myself doing it too occasionally, but I’m trying to change that. The mainstream media does it too, I’ve seen plenty of stupid stories on TV, but at least they seem more responsible most of the time. We all need to take some time to sit down and truly re-evaluate our content and focus on making a better product/service, because you can always strive to be better. The meaningless filler needs to stop.

I’m going to quote Jason Calacanis again as I did in my post on how to build and maintain an audience, “second to quality is quality.” These sites may be doing well right now, but their low quality content will eventually be forgotten and lost in their thousands of pages. They will continue to have keep producing these sub par posts just to stay afloat. It’s a vicious cycle and while it needs to stop I don’t think it will. I just hope I’m wrong.

Droid 2 Review

Jeff Weisbein — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:05:40 +0000

The Droid 2 is Motorola’s second release of the popular (original) Droid. The newer Droid 2 sports several improvements both hardware and software wise. As I previously wrote about in my 5 reasons to buy the Droid 2, I covered mostly software aspects. In terms of noticeable hardware improvements, the Droid 2 sports a 1Ghz processor, which is fairly fast – much faster than the original Droid’s 550MHz processor. The 3.7″ display is just slightly larger than the iPhone’s and while not as big as the HTC EVO’s or Droid X’s displays, it still looks pretty good, not to mention it fits nicely in your pocket.

Motorola did a nice job with the new keyboard on the Droid 2. They dumped the trackpad completely and centered the keyboard; something most people will be happy about it. The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it’s not too bad. Of course, you can always use the on screen multi-touch keyboard or take advantage of Swype which also available as an input method. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck with the multi-touch keyboard on the Droid 2. I definitely experience more typo’s with the Droid 2 than I do on the iPhone. Whether that’s a touch screen issue or an Android related issue I’m not 100% sure. Either way, it’s a problem.

The Droid 2 comes with a 5 megapixel camera and a flash that shoots in 480p which is somewhat disappointing considering many high-end smartphones these days shoot 720p HD video. Nonetheless, photos aren’t that bad, however, when compared to photos from an iPhone 4 you can tell there is a lot more noise in the Droid 2′s photos. I also found that the iPhone 4 performs better in low-light situations.

Photos

Droid 2:

iPhone 4:

When it comes to the build quality of the Droid 2, I can honestly say that it feels like plastic. But then again, that’s what it is made out of. Perhaps, I’m just spoiled because the iPhone 4 is made with stainless steel and glass. Nonetheless, it doesn’t feel any more or less “plasticy” than any of the other Android phones out there so I can’t hold this too much against the Droid 2.

The Droid 2′s battery life is that of the majority of smartphones out there – it lasts about a day on a single charge. I have found with light usage you can probably stretch it to a day and a half or so, but on average expect about a day.

Overall, the hardware in the Droid 2 isn’t too bad, it performs well and is able to complete the tasks I told it to. Of course, I would have liked to see a better camera that was able to shoot HD video, but I guess you can’t get it all. If you’re in the market for a new phone right now, I would recommend the Droid 2 as a possible option. However, if you are looking for an Android smartphone with a better camera definitely check out the HTC Incredible.

I should also note that while I do consider the Droid 2 to be a solid smartphone, I think it could be a lot better along with the other Android phones on the market. The problem, however, is not the phone itself, but the operating system. Android has potential, but it far from being a true competitor to iOS. Now after using both platforms, I can honestly say that Android requires a lot of work. It needs to be fine tuned and polished, because while a lot of the features are great, some things just leave me shaking my head. I’ll have more about this in an upcoming article on Android.

5 Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Jeff Weisbein — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:55:45 +0000

As I’ve recently written about here on BestTechie, I recently went through the process of migrating my office’s company website to the WordPress content management platform. While I was a bit naive about the whole process at first, I will say, I am definitely glad that I took the plunge. In my article, I explained that one of the things that I liked most about WordPress was the fact that it acted as a form of a blank canvas in providing a basic infrastructure that could be extend to my needs with third-party contributions.

Having played around with WordPress for the last couple of days, I have tried a number of third-party plugins, five of which I would highly recommend to anyone looking to use WordPress to manage a business website. In no particular order, here they are:

Google Analytics for WordPress

Previously, I’ve expressed my love for Google Analytics. While I have tried other web statistics software in the past, no other platform has given me the level of insight as to the traffic my website was getting. However, adding tracking codes manually to each and every page of a website can be a real pain. With the Google Analytics for WordPress plug-in, one can easily implement Google Analytics tracking across their entire website with only a few clicks of the mouse. Once the add-on is installed, it can be accessed from “Google Analytics” under the “Settings” region of the WordPress administration area. From there, adding your tracking code is as simple as authenticating with Google, and selecting the account and site you wish to track. You don’t even need to get your hands dirty with code.

All in One SEO Pack

Tracking the number of people visiting your site is definitely important and informative. However the ability to track this information is somewhat useless if no one ever visits your site. This is where the process of SEO (search engine optimization) and the All in One SEO Pack add-on for WordPress comes in. SEO Pack allows you to rewrite your post titles in ways that are friendly to search engines, automatically generate meta tags so that search engines can better index your site, and help to clean up the navigation of your site. With this add-on, you will make your site more accessible and appealing to search engines, ultimately aiding you in getting better rankings and ultimately better traffic. Worried about getting confused? Don’t. Once activated, the All in One SEO Pack immediately takes affect, and can be fine tuned from the WordPress administration panel if need be.

Contact Form 7

This WordPress plugin provides a dead-simple method for adding a contact form to your website. Sure, you could just give out an email address on your contact page, but having a contact form ultimately helps to make it easier for potential clients to get in touch with you without jumping through hoops. One of the things that really strikes me about Contact Form 7 is the fact that it allows you to customize a contact form to your liking with the use of text boxes, radio buttons, check-boxes, etc. Being finely tuned to your need and liking, Contact Form 7 is super easy to integrate into a page or post.

NextGEN Gallery

Gone are the days when a website could get away without having a photo gallery. Sure, WordPress makes it dead-simple to upload and insert photos into pages, but NextGEN gallery takes it a step further by allowing you to upload entire zip archives and insert seamless and dynamic photo galleries into individual pages or posts. For my office with several product series, the addition of multiple professional-looking galleries was a very necessary component of creating my office’s website. NextGEN gallery took a process that I had originally anticipated taking hours of time, and turned it into a process that took only a matter of minutes.

WP-DB-Backup

One of the things that initially drew me away from using WordPress as my content management system was the fact that it was heavily reliant on a MySQL databasing back-end.. This being, my experience with MySQL was very minimal, and I was somewhat afraid of not being able to back up the database. However, with the WP-DB-Backup add-on, backing up the WordPress database takes only a matter of seconds through the tools menu of the WordPress administration panel. WP-DB-Backup also gives you the option to have your database backed up routinely and emailed to you, ensuring that you don’t need to worry about constantly backing up. An alternative to WP-DB-Backup you may also want to consider is VaultPress – you can learn more about VaultPress here.

I hope you find these suggestions for WordPress plugins helpful. They sure have helped me in the website creation process and made my job a lot easier.

Do you have a WordPress plugin recommendation? Let us know in the comments!

The Most Common Methods for Protecting Laptop Data

Jeff Weisbein — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:05:21 +0000

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Storagepipe. Storagepipe provides online backup software solutions that help companies manage remote laptop data protection.

Laptops are data-loss time bombs. Because they get banged around a lot, they’re more likely to suffer damage. And because they’re expensive and portable, they make ideal targets for thieves. This is further compounded by the fact that company laptops often store some of the most important strategic, management and sales information.

Any company that plans on allowing their IT hardware to travel off-site must adapt their data protection accordingly. Here are 3 of the most popular solutions that companies use to ensure that their laptop data is securely protected.

Portable Hard Drives and Pen Drives

This is the easiest and cheapest way to protect travelling data, but it’s also the most error-prone. It consists of simply giving your employees USB storage devices, and requesting that they not save anything on their local hard drives. The advantage is that it’s easier to carry a USB drive everywhere you go than it would be with a laptop. Also, USB drives are less tempting to thieves and harder to steal.

But from a management point of view, these items are still easy to lose and prone to damage. And more importantly, you still have fragmented bits of information floating around outside of your control with no way of backing it up or protecting it from the office.

Network Attached Storage

Another approach would be to require all employees to save their data to a centralized storage server or NAS device. By making this storage device securely accessible online, you’ll ensure that employee data remains at head office even if the actual employee is far away. Having all company data consolidated to a single storage device – instead of being saved on dozens of local hard drives – also simplifies the backup process, and ensures that all company information can be easily accessed by management.

The downside of a Network Attached Storage is that data can only be accessed if the employee has Internet access. If they want to work offline, they’ll have to save their data to the local hard drive. When this happens, IT loses control over the information and users could start to pick up bad data management habits. Another disadvantage of the NAS approach is that the network files are open to corruption. If the user gets a virus or saves blank documents over their important files, there would be no way to restore the originals without re-loading the master backups for the entire company.

Online Backup

The third option would be to set up each laptop with an online backup service that uploads their data immediately after saving. Most serious business backup services will also allow you to manage your internal users remotely from some sort of management portal.

This way, data is always protected. Another key advantage of online backup is that users can recover their own files through a simple self-service interface. This is a HUGE convenience to IT staff, since the most common data recovery requests are for:

accidental file deletion
corrupted files
accidentally saving over an important file

But probably the best advantage of protecting laptops using online backup is that it’s completely automated. Employees can’t forget to back up, and they don’t have to change their computing habits in order to use it. It just works. If your company has a lot of traveling laptop users, or if you just want to protect your own personal laptop, you may want to consider one of these 3 techniques.