Doug Camin Honored in “20 in their 20s” Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

Binghamton, NY February 15, 2008 – CYBERCity, a Systems Integrator and professional services organization, is proud to announce that employee Doug Camin was honored as one of the STOC “20 in their Twenties” Award winners. The award was presented by the Southern Tier Opportunity Coalition (STOC.) This award was developed in order to bring attention and recognition to the leaders of tomorrow. STOC developed “20 in their Twenties” to provide resounding acknowledgement of the confident, intelligent and engaged 20-somethings who live, work and attend school in the Greater Binghamton area. Whether these young people are involved in local business, industry, education or government, they are already making a difference — in their lives and the lives of those around them.

“It is a great honor to have one of our employees acknowledged by this award. Doug Camin has shown a strong commitment to community service over a number of years. As a past president of the Southern Tier Young Professionals, and through his volunteer work in many community service activities, Doug has shown true leadership and a desire to serve. CYBERCity is proud to have an employee receive this great award that shows our community appreciates our young professionals. “

 Xan Penrose, President, CYBERCity

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