The Simple Solution

Spring Cleaning Time for Your Computer

Spring is notorious for its fabulous weather, and also the chores that come with "Spring Cleaning".  I want to challenge everyone to include their computer in their Spring cleaning routine. This is the perfect time to go over some basic computer maintenance to keep your computer running smoothly and avoid costly downtime.

I've compiled a list of some of the tasks to get you jumpstarted into having a clean, smoother running pc.

Before you begin, make a good back up of your system.  If you aren't doing this on a regular basis, begin this new habit.  I hope you will never need it, but believe me, it's better to have a good back up and never need one, than to need one and not have one!

First step is the obvious, wipe down your equipment with a soft cloth and then take a can of compressed air to blow out the dust bunnies that have moved into your keyboard and around the fan.

Next, delete the files from your Cache and Temporary Folders.  These buggers will slow down your system, which of course, makes your day less productive.

Now, let's look at your hard drive.  I know you have found little programs over the course of the year that you thought you would use, only to download and never look at again.  Or perhaps you have old programs that you have replaced with something better.  Let's go over to the control panel and remove unused programs.  No sense having them take up space on your machine.

Next, let’s take a look at your desktop.  How many icons do you have?  Let's file all these into folders on the drive and get a nice clean space on your desktop so we can find what we are looking for.  Think of it as the difference between having a pile of papers on your desk as opposed to having them all filed in the folder they belong in.  When you need them, you know where to look.  Don't be afraid to create new folders, create a system that will work for you. 

You know where we are going next.....yep, your Email.  How many messages are in your Inbox?  How many deleted emails do you have that haven't been totally removed?   Set up folders in your email program and file messages you may need later, but empty your Inbox.  You will feel so good when this is done, and start a new habit of not letting your Inbox get full.  File things as they arrive!

Once you have deleted these files, it is time to defragment your system. It really isn't as scary as it sounds and should be done more often than not.  This process "files" everything back away and removes empty spaces.  Again, making your computer processes run faster, increasing your productivity.

Honestly, I titled this post "Spring Cleaning" but all of these tasks should be done at least monthly.  In doing so, you will be amazed at the amount of time you will save!  It's those little time wasters that add up to big ones without us even realizing it.

Teleconference Tribulations

As part of our business development, most of us are participants or presenters of teleconferences (or both)!  The service I recommend to my clients to use for bridgeline service is Free Conference Call.  For a free service they have the best customer service I have encountered and offer the ability to record the call, and after hosting many conferences with their services I have never had any major technical difficulties.  They also offer several other services including Free Voice Center which allows you to set up a Virtual Call In Message Center with multiple mailboxes for free!

Several weeks ago however, some of the major cellular phone services began blocking calls to many of the free conference line services, despite the fact that this goes against FCC regulations.  Here is an excerpt from the most recent update I have received from Free Conference Call.

"As we know many of you have seen, the news media and bloggers have been covering the fact that Cingular/AT&T, Sprint and Qwest have been blocking some of our FreeConferenceCall numbers. Our goal with this month's newsletter is to separate fact from fiction, and, more importantly, set the record straight with the answers that you so richly deserve. We have spoken extensively with customers, competitors and lawyers to fully assess the situation and the implications for FreeConferenceCall users.

Last week, some of our Cingular and Sprint customers began calling into customer service with issues surrounding their connections to our service. After speaking with Cingular's customer service group, our customers were given numerous, and unfounded, reasons for the call blockage. Reasons cited included fraud, international forwarding, fee disputes and, to our astonishment, that we were blocking our own FreeConferenceCall numbers. We cannot corroborate or justify any of these reasons. FreeConferenceCall would never knowingly impede our customers from using our services. For now, we can tell you that a Cingular spokesperson has gone on record and stated that their terms of service gives them the right to block any number they wish and also said that AT&T's wireless service is "between one person and another person, not between one person and many." Cingular and Sprint have chosen to block service to our shared customers regardless of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules and regulations. Neither carrier has ever directly complained, filed suit or even contacted FreeConferenceCall. The upshot is that carriers are basically telling you that a cell phone is not intended for use on conference calls of any type."

To solve some of the immediate issues surrounding this problem, Free Conference Call is offering new numbers to use for your future teleconference needs.  It is easy to obtain a new number, simply go and "re-register" for a new account.  The new number you will receive should be free from the blockage issues, at least for the time being.

It is important that all of us ban together and send complaints to the FCC and our State Attorney General letting them know about this unfair trade practice and that we as consumers will not stand for it. 

Free Conference Call has created a blog to serve as an information portal where you can find more information and stay up to date on the developments of this sticky situation that is all to reminiscent of net neutrality.

 

101 Freebies

Isn't in wonderful how many free resources are available to help manage and build our businesses?  PC World has come out with their list for the Top 101 Free Resources.  I will be reviewing some of these and giving my reviews over the next several weeks.  In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you!  Have you tried any that you love?  Any that gave you fits?

I have to say that the majority of the time, my experience has been that free software has "bugs" and lousy customer support (if any).  But there have been some resources that have been worthwhile like Google Shared Documents and Vyew (two that come quickly to mind).  Saving money is part of being a savvy business owner, so I will continue to investigate these free resources and let you know when I find things that are worth passing along.

Daylight "Savings" Time

I don't know about you, but this certainly hasn't been "saving" me any time!  I do love the longer daytime hours and the feeling that comes with knowing Spring is arriving, but why they had to go and complicate things is just beyond me!

I hope by now you have already run your updates for whatever software you use, and have had good results.  Since I manage things for clients in multiple time zones I am still not sure what the final results will look like for me tomorrow morning!

A good friend Alicia Forest sent me a great article about this today that I want to share, it does a least give us a glimmer of hope that things may only be in disarray until April 1st (which in an of itself - I find a little humor in, I think someone had their own little April Fool's joke planned!)

You can read the article here Daylight Savings Debacle For Your CRM Software: Worse than Y2K . 

If you are still waiting to run your updates, you can update Windows & Outlook here.