How does your website look in another browser?

Here’s a site to test how your website looks in different browsers.

Select the browsers to try out and the site builds views for each. The process can take some time so don’t pick them all at once.

Here’s the site: http://browsershots.org

Online Backup Too Cheap to Ignore!

OK, Internet backup is just too cheap to Ignore. The prices start at Free and are very reasonable for what you get. I’ve tried Mozy, IDrive, and several others. Most of the free services offer you 2GB for personal use. If you want to use it for business purposes they want you to pay something and I think that’s fair, particularly as the prices are now very cheap. I encourage small businesses to start using one of these services for your important files. Identify the most important files in your organization and ask yourself; what would you do if you lost them? These are the files you should backup on one of these services. I think IDrive is the one with the best features.

You want some other solution to backup your workstations and servers, but in some cases where your total backup is small IDrive could even do that job.

The best way to learn how easy it is to protect your most important data is to sign up for a Free account.

Give it a try! (Click that box you know you should try it!)






Connect Old Parallel Printers to a Network

Adding an old parallel printer to a  network so it can be shared by everyone can be a problem. The Netgear PS101 device makes it easy.

 Share Your Printer with Everyone in your Home or Office

With the NETGEAR PS101 Mini Print Server, easy and convenient printer access is yours! This versatile mini print server gives home and office networks built-in efficiency because it allows multiple users to share a printer from anywhere on the network without sharing your PC. With this kind of flexibility, you can place your printer anywhere that’s handy. The speedy Mini Print Server boasts a 10 Mbps Ethernet connection and supports multiple print jobs simultaneously. It features an easy, Web-based remote management tool and works with most laser and inkjet printers equipped with a parallel port. Since no parallel printer cable is needed, it saves you money, too.

NetGear PS101

Google Docs – Email to Spreadsheet Feature

Are you familiar with Google Docs? This is Google’s answer to Microsoft Office Suite – web app wordprocessor, Spreadsheet, and more. It’s worth checking out and setting up an account.  A free set of apps to create and store documents online. These are not as powerful as Microsoft Office apps but the are pretty sweet for free.

They just released a feature that I have been talking about for years: Spreadsheet Input via Email. (Think InfoPath .)

Email a form to an email list and the responses are returned to your Google Docs Spreadsheet.

All free. Google will inherit the earth (and then start charging us.)

Check it out here

Collect Input via Email

Blogging From Word 2007

One interesting feature of Word 2007 is the ability to create and post your blog in Word rather than opening the web based edit site.

Choose “Blog Post” instead of “New Page” option from the New Document Menu.

If you haven’t established a link to your Blog Word will Wizard you through the process.

Something I like about this method is that it is very easy to cut & paste images and text using this method.

Let’s publish this post and see if it works!

Microsoft Windows Home Server Review

This weekend I installed my new Windows Home Server (WHS) and I found it to be a very interesting product. I purchased one of the HP Media Server units with 1TB of storage. I purchased it at Amazon for $720. I don’t think you could possibly build one of these for that. The WHS software is $179 by itself.

If all you want is extra file storage or backup space at home you can probably get along with a USB hard drive or an Ethernet NAS unit. They would be cheaper. But if you want some extra interesting features you might look into a WHS. I think they might even fit for some small business applications. The WHS comes with 10 user CALs. This unit would be a good replacement for a small peer-to-peer workgroup.

Here’s Some of the Features:

Automated backup of connected computers –

 WHS uses something called Drive Extender to map most of your storage space to one virtual C: Drive. You can add drives (via the unit drive slots or via external USB/SATA) and these will extend the size of the “C:” drive. WHS backs up PC and also sets up virtual shared folders to backup your media files, photos, and other shared documents. Additionally you can choose to have files duplicated to provide more protection.

WHS is a an interesting solution because the backups are stored in a virtual store and reduces the required hard drive space by not creating duplicate copies of files that haven’t changed or that have been backed up by other PCs.

Windows Home Server Backup provides two basic services: It backs up the entire PC and then performs incremental backups on a daily basis going forward, allowing you to restore your computer to a previous state in time using an included Computer Restore CD. It also provides a way to go in and restore individual files and folders back in time. These are all services a small business could use.

Document and media sharing

On a very basic level, WHS can and does act like any Windows-based machine with respect to file shares. It includes a number of pre-built shares, like Music, Photos, Public, Software, and Videos, and it creates a default share for each user you create. These shares, by default, have standard rights associated with them. So while even a guest has read access to the Public folder, only a user who was explicitly given the correct credentials can access the specific user shares with Full rights. The UI for configuring this is far simpler than what’s available in Windows Server software. WHS is built on a Server 2003 base.

Remote access- Websites – SharePoint 3.0

WHS manages Remote Access. It makes it easy to log in remotely. This is also a fearure small business users would find useful. I set a No-Ip.biz web address link to my RR IP and can login remotely. I also set up a hosted website (not something a small business would want to do.) I then installed a SharePoint 3.0 site! Now that IS something a small business could use!

For More Information