Microsoft’s newest Office product, Office 365, is set to be more in the cloud than ever before. The next stage in their battle with Google has arrived, as they are set to launch their next generation cloud-based product in a very short space of time. Microsoft clearly dominates the office computing market; they still have a 94% market share, but clearly any encroachment from Google was unwelcome and Microsoft is seizing their opportunity to provide their services on a level with Google’s constant availability to everyone.
Rather than purchasing software and installing it to your computer, Microsoft will host the software and deliver services from its own servers. In short, you don’t have to worry about storage or hosting costs, simply your payment to Microsoft to keep your license running, which you’re probably already paying. It’s called Microsoft 365 to emphasize the fact that customers will be receiving attention from Microsoft every single day year-round with the cloud service.
While most larger businesses will still prefer to control their own day to day operations, 365 is aimed at the small to medium business which can’t necessarily afford the same complement of employees and hardware that the larger businesses can. Microsoft takes away much of the need to host your own servers and deal with your own maintenance, making it a good choice for the small business looking to appear professional but without an immense budget to match their aspirations.
As necessarily the case with cloud services, the software will be sold on a subscription based service. Their costs for business customers range from $2 to $20 US per user per month and may even include phone support depending on the package chosen by the business’s owner. This is quite a change for Microsoft, who normally only get paid during upgrade cycles, with some services requiring longer term costs. Now those who adopt the service will be paying Microsoft each month, potentially providing them a more regular source of income (not that Microsoft is necessarily suffering!).
The most exciting part of Microsoft’s cloud services is undoubtedly the fact that they will now be available on all different devices and accessible globally. Smartphones, tablets, and normal PCs and laptops will be able to access and possibly even edit such documents.
Office 365 is not available for purchase just yet; it’s in the beta stage in 13 different countries. It’s set to go on sale next year. The question is, will you be buying?
The internet, much as we make of it, is not a secure place. There are many spam sites looking to install malware on your computer. If you’ve ever had a look in your spam folder in your email, you’ll quickly realise that the large majority of your email is actually complete garbage on subjects you’d likely never be interested in. Protecting yourself when so much of the internet is set on robbing you of information and money can be a tricky job. Here are five steps to help you guarantee your safety on the internet and protect your computer from viruses and malware, without any help from IT support.
1. Install a antivirus program. This is the most important step you can possibly take. An antivirus program will immediately inform you of any threats to your system and can scan any incoming files for threats. Perfect innocuous sites can sometimes be hacked, so you won’t even know that there’s a virus on your system without this protection. Don’t let it lapse or expire – you’d miss your laptop if it all fell apart, wouldn’t you?
2. Put a firewall on your machine. This is basically protection from anyone who is hacking into your internet connection – if you’ve left your network unsecured, you can be vulnerable to many attacks. It’s important to remember that firewalls may block applications you want to use, so consider carefully what to let through and how vulnerable it might make you.
3. Watch out for fake websites. Emails that look completely innocuous, that may be from your local bank, may not be. Always remember to go to the website’s URL instead of clicking on links from your email. It only takes a minute and will leave you much more secure than you would have been otherwise; counterfeiters are amazingly good at making websites look precisely the same as they would have been.
4. Be careful on social networks. If a friend’s link looks completely out of character, don’t click on it. Their account may have been hacked and that means clicking on their link leaves you completely vulnerable to an unknown website, which may or may not be full of viruses and malware. At the very least, it’s likely that you may get an unwelcome post on your own wall, which will spread to all of your friends. If in doubt, just don’t click, or at least ask your friend about it first.
5. Don’t install any suspicious programs. If you’re browsing random websites and come across free software that seems too good to be true, it probably is. Do not download any of this, no matter how good it sounds; instead do your research and ensure you are downloading from a qualified site. If you do accidentally download a spam software program, then you’ll be pleased you have your firewall and virus protection, as they should shield you from any attacks and let you know that the program is suspicious. The internet is always changing, however, and viruses and malware develop apace; keep in mind that your defences are not foolproof and do your best to stop problems before they happen.
Though few in the tech world, especially if you’re in IT support in London, can understand why, many people out in the wider world still use Internet Explorer for their every day browsing. Whether you’re using it because it’s just what’s been installed on your computer and you never considered anything else or because you genuinely prefer it to the competition, here are a few tips and tricks to make your computing life a little bit easier.
1. Suggested sites. Are you enjoying the site you’re on? You can hit “suggested sites” to find out which sites are similar to the ones you’re already looking at. This does send information back to Microsoft about your browsing habits, though apparently without any information to connect it to you, but the suggestions are pretty accurate and can help expand your horizons. If you don’t have much time to browse the internet for yourself, suggested sites may well make your browsing a little more enjoyable.
2. Try out the accelerator. This is fairly unique to Internet Explorer; basically, if you highlight some text, a blue box will appear to next to it. If you click on the box, you’ll get a range of different options for what you can do with it. For example, if you’ve highlighted an address, you can look for it on maps or search for it for more details or to find out what it is. You can search for that text on Wikipedia, post it to twitter, or send it out through your email. The accelerator’s goal is to speed up your daily life by making tasks you’d normally perform a little bit easier and quicker.
3. Organise your tabs better with tab colouring. Internet Explorer 8 colours tabs to help you remember what purpose they have, even if they’ve become so tiny that you can’t read all the words. If you open a link in a new tab from a page, it will be the same colour as your original tab, so you can keep track of which sites are related. New tabs will be opened in different colours. It’s a small touch, but a good one to learn about and use to your advantage.
4. Take advantage of compatibility mode. If a site doesn’t function well in IE8, as many still don’t, the compatibility button will pop up and switch the browser down to an older mode, so you’ll still be able to use the page. Given how incompatible different versions of Internet Explorer are from one another, this can be a god send, and is well worth using while you’re waiting for the supposedly more compliant IE 9 to appear.
5. Finally, if you’re a developer, you are probably already aware of the fact that IE 8 offers a developer debugger to help you with your code. All developers know that Internet Explorer is notoriously hard to program for and can throw up errors for no particular reason. It can take hours to carefully modify your site to ensure it displays correct on all the different versions of Internet Explorer. This debugger doesn’t fix the problem (and it will never be fixed as long as Microsoft continues fragmenting their browsers) but it may ease the pain a little.
When Internet Explorer 9 is officially released, we’ll update with all new tips and tricks specifically for that version of this popular browser. Stay tuned!
When you’re logging in to most sites, you probably don’t think too much about how secure your passwords are. You might worry about financial sites, but these usually have a few additional safeguards such as asking you to choose a certain picture when you enter your password or entering certain special digits from a memorable number. But with the right technology, anyone can steal this information; it’s happened before and will undoubtedly happen again. Humans are fallible creatures and use the same password for multiple sites – otherwise they struggle to remember it. If they do choose more secure passwords, they often store them on the computers in question or write them down, which again opens them up to theft whether due to spyware, robbery, or sneaky houseguests.
The solution, then, is often tricky and expensive. Some extremely large businesses can afford a two step verification cycle, whereby for example those who can unlock the building have both a password and a physical object that work together to open the door. They may scan a key fob and input the password. For online authentication, however, the case is trickier, yet even more important as more businesses place their secure information and resources in cloud computing. Google, one of the leaders in web-based storage and software, have come up with a scheme to make these systems more secure without the hefty charge another system would use.
Basically, Google’s new two step verification requires a password and a mobile phone. To log in, you enter your username and password. Then a message is sent to your mobile phone with a verification code, which you enter into the next box. This is more secure because you know your password and someone who steals your mobile phone will not have that information. If someone knows your password, they’ll also need your mobile phone to access your account. It’s far more unlikely that a thief would end up with both things, and even if your computer has been infected with spyware, there’s no way of anyone finding out which code you’re sent next. It’s very clever. At present, it’s available only to Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Editions; these administrators can choose whether or not to have users take advantage of the increased security. Google even plans to roll the feature out to the rest of us, so in a few months’ time all of our personal data can be that much more secure on Google.
I’m not sure that this will be a widely adopted feature. It is a little too much hassle just to check your email. For those who use Google for important documents, especially businesses, I can imagine that this will be embraced with arms open wide. More security is never a bad thing; Google can probably still spy on you, but at least you’re protected from everyone else. We can’t wait until it’s rolled out more broadly so we can give it a try ourselves.