The SMB Minute Aaron and Tim discuss technology and computing important to Small and Medium Businesses.

We recently took the kids to Disney for my birthday. Doing so kept the arguments about who’s birthday we should go on to a minimum, but I digress. Upon arriving we discovered Disney gives patrons a button to wear proclaiming to the world it’s your birthday. I put the button on and promptly forgot about it. A short while later, a Disney cast member wished me happy birthday. Then random strangers did the same. It felt nice so I started wishing others with the button a happy birthday.

Now, to pull it all together for you;

• a simple idea (wishing people a happy birthday if they have a special pin on will make them feel welcome and enjoy their stay)
• a little training (if you see someone with the pin, wish them happy birthday)
• some reinforcement (employees see management doing it)

Now you have a park full of employees wishing guests happy birthday. It catches on and the guests start wishing each other happy birthday. People are happy, enjoying their stay. Therefore they are likely to spend more money while at the park. More money, more profit … well, you see where we’re headed.

Sometimes a small idea can have big results.

Posted under Podcasts

In this episode Aaron Myers and Tim Krabec invited Anthony Gartner of Securabit in for a discussion on updating your computer.  The audio is a bit on the bad side, I will apologize in advance.

This episode continues the series on The SMB Minute Episode4 — 5 Simple Things to help secure your computer.

– Tim Krabec

Posted under Podcasts

Part 2 of our interview with Michael Santarcangelo. This was recorded after we finish the “official” podcast, but the information was good enough we released it as part 2. Sorry about the audio in places, Aaron was having connection issues and Tim had a cold. Please send your feedback to smbminute@gmail.com

Episode 5

Posted under Podcasts

Here are the 5 simple things anyone can do to help make their computer more secure and less vulnerable to data loss. These are the 5 basic things that can save you time, money and keep you from getting frustrated. As we delve into these topic with greater detail it will become clear to you why you need to do each and every one of these on both your home and office computers. It will also become clear why some preventative measures and spending some money upfront can save you a great deal in the future.

1.  Update operating System and Applications

2.  Firewall

3. Anti-virus and other protection

4. Regular backups

5. Non-administrative user with good password

Tim Krabec & Aaron Myers

Episode 4

Posted under Podcasts

The difficulty in keeping up with your passwords can seem a daunting task so for this post I wanted to share a great, free, open source program to use to do just that. The program is called KeePass.

So, what is KeePass? From their site…

“KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).”

I’ve been using this program for the last few years and love it. It is a native Microsoft Windows program but others have ported it to a multitude of operating systems including MacOSX, Palm, WindowCE, PocketPC, Linux, Blackberry and more. So what this means is, you set-up one master password linked to this one file. You share this encrypted file among all your systems (including your smart phone) and you have all your usernames, passwords and associated websites all at your fingertips. Neat, huh?

I’m very much looking forward to their 2.0 release which is currently in beta. The added features (like sharing a password database and having it sync and merge changes) look like they could be a big help.

Find KeePass for Windows here and its Mac version here.

Posted under Information/Advisories