SkyNox Online Backup, powered by SherWeb

Make no mistake: your data is at the heart of your business. You need to safeguard it.

But you may not know what features you need to look for when searching for an online backup solution. What are your “must-haves”? That’s where we come in!

In today’s blog post, we’re going to take a close look at the backup features that you can’t do without in your backup solution so that you can make the right decision when you weigh up which service for backing up your critical data best suits your business.

It’s all about data security!

Having your data backed up is one thing, but what about security? You don’t want just anybody to access your backed up files and do whatever they want with them.

To ensure your data’s security, you’ll need to evaluate your backup provider against two criteria:

1. Encryption level – You’ll hear different terms: “Bank-level”, “bank-grade“, or even “military-grade“. You might be surprised to learn that military-grade is not the strongest encryption level. Bank-level is the lowest standard, offering you 128-bit encryption. Military-grade is the step just above, with 256-bit encryption. But when you really want security, you look for bank-grade encryption (448-bit).

2. Datacenter classification – A four-tier classification is used to evaluate datacenters’ quality and reliability. When it comes to your data security, you should be looking at datacenters rated Tier 3 and over to make sure your files aren’t compromised.

If those 2 criteria are met, you’ve got yourself a secure provider. One you can trust with your data. But now that we’ve nailed down the security part, on to the next set of features you need to find in an online backup solution.

Hassle-free – keep on working while your data is safeguarded

Backing up your data is a good thing. Not a fun thing. So, rather than taking time to run backups here and there (a task you might endlessly postpone!), you need a service that runs in the background. That feature is called Open File Drive. This means that the backup will work even though one of the documents you need to save is open on a user’s computer.

Two other types of backup you’ll want to have are incremental backup and hybrid backup. What are they? Well, incremental backup means that, after the initial backup is made, only the new or changed portion of a file will be copied to the provider’s servers.

A hybrid backup provides the possibility to back up data both locally and in the cloud. This streamlines the recovery process in case your business needs to get back part or all of its data.

A service provider with an SMB focus

When it comes to online backup, there are a lot of possibilities. But in fact, very few of them are business-ready for SMBs. You need to make sure the solution works for servers, not only workstations, because there is a good chance your organization’s most critical data isn’t housed on your users’ PCs, but on your in-house servers.

Also, look for an agentless server client. What’s that? It means you don’t have to install your backup application client on every individual server. One application to rule them all!

The Cloud!

SherWeb’s solution: SkyNox!

With its 448-bit encryption and Tier 3+ datacenter, SherWeb guarantees your data is safe—at all times! SkyNox offers you all the features listed above, at a competitive price.

Not that long ago, the forces of nature showed us what they can do to businesses with Hurricane Sandy; don’t wait until it’s too late! Back up your business data—the heart of your operations—to ensure a quick recovery when needed.

Are there any other features you think are critical when choosing an online backup solution? Let us know!

The post What SMBs Should Look for in an Online Backup Provider appeared first on .

This is Part II of Hollywood’s rights and wrongs

May is here, ladies and gentlemen, and for cine-geeks, that means the Cannes Film Festival is upon us.

Discoveries are about to be made and cinematic gems are on the verge of becoming trend setters. With such an event about to unfold, we, here at SherWeb, feel this is the perfect time to release the second part of our list of Hollywood fortune-tellers’ work (read the first part here).

Bon cinéma!

War Games

Cyber threats have come a long way since the late 1970’s, when “super computers” and hacker groups weighed very little on the world menace scale.

Once upon a time, evil “super computers” set the tone for 1980’s thrillers like War Games (Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy). In this teen classic, Ferris Bueller and the Goth kid from The Breakfast Club save the world from annihilation by playing war games against a government supercomputer. Ah, the eighties!

Hackers

In 1995, Iain Softley released his thriller Hackers. For the first time in American Cinema, hackers were taken seriously. Up until then, cyber criminals were associated with groups like The MidWest Pirates Guild and The Syndicates, which probably inspired the infamous “Sinister Syndicate” name from Spider-Man comics!

Feel the wrath of the Sinister Syndicate!

Hackers didn’t break new ground in terms of intrigue. However, it featured people using regular computers to cause chaos; anyone who owned a PC could therefore become a terrorist. That was new.

Terminator

With tensions between China and the U.S. heating up, groups like Anonymous waging strange wars against perceived injustice, and cyber-attacks hitting various massive organizations, the theory of being destroyed by computers seems slightly more realistic today.

In James Cameron’s Terminator, a cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzenegger is sent from the future to murder Sarah Connors, whose unborn son John would eventually lead the resistance against a mysterious computer system called SkyNet, the destroyer of mankind. Scary stuff.

Alien

Alien is not Ridley Scott’s only contribution to Science Fiction. In 1982, he released the Harrison Ford starrer Blade Runner and directed one of the greatest commercials of all time, 1984’s Apple computer Superbowl commercial (coincidentally mentioned in a previous blog).

Mr. Scott is a visionary. Although the Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and American Gangster director didn’t predict a special glass or future phone, he did give computers a prominent place in his work. In Alien, computers run the space ship. Tom Skerritt’s and Ian Holm’s characters also use them to interact with Earth, like we do amongst ourselves with Lync, Skype or iMessage every day. An edgy concept, considering Alien was shot in 1978.

Logan’s Run

Regardless of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s cinematic adaptation’s box office failure ($8.4 million), George Orwell’s classic was pretty accurate (see the first part of this list), unlike Michael Anderson’s Logan’s Run.

Although being much more entertaining, Logan’s Run failed miserably at painting an accurate portrait of present day 2013, with its giant robot and outdated futuristic hippie fashion.

But Mr. Anderson’s failure resides mostly in the fact that he completely overlooked computers, not knowing they’d become such a major part of our lives.

Still, did Mr. Anderson really fail at predicting the future? No, Logan’s Run doesn’t take place in 2013. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t predict the real future. After all, we do live in our grandparents’ future and in our grandchildren’s past.

So who knows what 50 years from now will look like; maybe computers will take a back seat in 20 years and become a thing of the next generation’s past? Robots might become the ultimate reference in futuristic technology, and Logan’s Run the greatest fortune telling piece of fiction!

That’s the beauty of this blog: no one really knows, hence the appropriateness of saying “Time will tell”.

But what do you believe? Let’s wait and see what happens!

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Outlook 2013 has some pretty impressive time management tools. Here is our Top 10!

Still think Microsoft Outlook is just for email? You’re missing the much bigger time-saving picture.

Over the years, Outlook has steadily evolved from a basic email application into a powerful productivity platform. Office 2013 Outlook has some pretty impressive time management tools that go well beyond better functionality on touchscreen and mobile devices. Outlook 2013 has also become a fantastic software for managing multiple tasks and improving your overall time management.

And if you’re already comfortable using Outlook’s basic features, incorporating Outlook’s productivity tools and time-saving shortcuts into your daily use should be relatively easy.

Here are 10 easy ways to save time with Outlook 2013:

1. Quick peeks: To see information in your calendar, contacts, or other Outlook items, just hover your mouse over the icons.

2. Quick deletes: You can now take a quick peek at an email, and delete, tag, or move it without having to open it up.

3. Quick replies: Instead of clicking on reply, just start typing and the Inline Reply feature automatically creates a new message.

4. Quick availability: Need a response ASAP? The contacts list shows you who is available right now… and who isn’t.

5. Quick access toolbar: You can customize Outlook’s access toolbar by adding other frequently-used commands like print. It’ll shave off a couple of clicks each time you print.

6. Reorder your folders: Not the alphabetical type? Drag and drop your folders to arrange them in order of importance, or frequency of messages… however you wish. Revert whenever you want.

7. Translate emails: Is your Spanish a little rusty? Highlight the confusing text, right-click, and choose Translate. Or click the Translate button in the Ribbon. The quality of the translation is another matter, however.

8. Make full use of calendars: With Outlook 2013, you can…
- Create multiple calendars (business and personal, teams, etc.). To avoid scheduling conflicts, you can view them side by side by clicking the check box next to each calendar name in the Navigation pane.

- Or even better, superimpose them. You’ll see right away what time is free on both calendars. When you have two calendars open, a small arrow appears next to the name of one. When you click that arrow, both calendars appear, one atop the other, with both sets of appointments showing, like this:

- You can also view just a selected number of days (between 1 and 10 days). Hold down the Alt key and type the number of days you want to see. Press Alt+2 for two days, Alt+3 for three days, etc. Alt+0 (zero) gives you 10 days.
- Or select dates as a group, such as May 10 to June 20. On the To-Do bar, click May 10 and while pressing the Shift key, click June 20. All the dates in between are selected and appear in the Information Viewer.

9. Pin contact cards: To keep a person’s contact information on-screen while doing something else, hover your mouse over the person’s e-mail address until a little rectangle appears (that’s the contact card). If you click on the tiny pushpin icon near the upper-right corner of the card, the contact card will float on the screen (until you click the pushpin again to make it go away).

10. Use the Task List: Still creating your to-do list in a text document or paper notepad? Outlook 2013’s task management area has most—if not all—of the options you’ll need:

• Start date and due date
• Priority
• Status (in progress, completed, etc.)
• Set a reminder
• Recurring
• Assign task to other users

Using the task list is easy; the tricky part is remembering to use it. It can take time to train yourself to enter and update items as they occur. But once it becomes an ingrained habit, you’ll have a much better picture of where your time is going each day.

There’s even more ways to save time with Outlook, such as follow-up flags to help you remember to follow up on certain emails or actions; color-based categories to organize tasks, emails, calendar items, etc. in order of priority; and reminders to help you be more disciplined about respecting the scheduled time you devote to various tasks. And the list goes on.

Forming any new habit always takes time, so be patient. Give yourself a few months to firmly integrate these features into your daily routine. In all likelihood, you’ll probably end up using some features more than others. Regardless, you should soon see real gains in your time and task management.

These tips don’t even touch upon all of Outlook’s integration possibilities with Exchange and SharePoint, such as share contacts, document libraries, calendars, etc. Or the native support of Office application formats within Outlook. We’ll save that for an upcoming blog.

Speaking of Outlook 2013… why not take Outlook to the cloud? You can install Outlook 2013 and all these great productivity boosting features on our Hosted Exchange 2010 plans and Hosted Exchange 2013 plans.

The post 10 Time-Saving Features In Outlook 2013 That You Should Be Using appeared first on .

What’s so new between SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013?

Wondering if you should upgrade to SharePoint 2013? Join the crowd. A fair bit has already been written about the many improved features and capabilities of this much-anticipated release.

If you’ve missed them, our new SharePoint hosting 2013 site offers a great overview.

But with these improvements also comes the single most common question that accompanies any new release: Is it worth upgrading, and if so, when?

If you’ve just recently upgraded to SharePoint 2010, are the improvements in 2013 good enough to warrant back-to-back upgrades? And if you’re still running SharePoint 2007, is 2013 worth making the intermediate upgrade to SharePoint 2010 now?

We’ve been getting these questions a lot lately. Not only from our existing Hosted SharePoint 2007 and 2010 customers, but from many IT pros contemplating shifting more of their organization’s IT needs to the cloud as part of their overall strategy.

We recently sat down with Philippe Pepin, one of our in-house SharePoint admins to get his take. Here’s what he had to say.

Philippe, what are the strongest drawing points of SharePoint 2013?

PP: There were three main pillars that drove Microsoft’s development of SharePoint 2013: social, mobile and cloud. My favorite is definitely the cloud functionalities.

What does this mean for customers deploying a hosted SharePoint solution?

PP: With earlier versions of SharePoint, organizations that wanted to benefit from the advantages of a cloud deployment—whether reduced costs, improved performance, better scalability, etc.—had to make certain compromises on their “in-house” flexibility. Because key SharePoint configurations were located at the farm level (admin level), hosted customers had to go along with the hosting provider’s general configuration and had few features available at the site collection administration (client admin level). The 2013 edition of SharePoint is more cloud friendly in the sense that many of these features are now transferred to the site collection admin (client). That’s something most hosted customers will appreciate.

SharePoint 2010 was SherWeb’s third generation of hosted SharePoint solutions.

Can you give us an example of a specific feature with enhanced customization?

PP: The search function is one. Not only is it more powerful in SharePoint Foundation 2013, but most of its configurations can now be done by the client. For example, clients can create custom columns in a list they create in SharePoint and index it to be visible in a search. They can even configure their search results page to prioritize these columns so that they appear in custom presentation and priority ranking.

What about the other two pillars you mentioned, mobile and social? Do they warrant upgrading to SharePoint 2013?

PP: Definitely for mobile. The mobile experience ranks as the second biggest reason to switch, in my opinion. Our businesses habits are changing as fast as our personal habits, and I think Microsoft has really captured this trend and made some great strides in this area.

What about Social?

PP: Yes… but with a caveat. Again, SharePoint 2013 offers a greatly improved social experience. But it’s important to keep in mind that the Foundation 2013 release is very limited in social features. If it’s a cultural change you’re looking to implement in your organization, I strongly suggest you look at the Standard version of SharePoint.

Any areas where SharePoint 2013 disappoints?

PP: For some customers, the platform’s fast evolution might be a problem. Although all the features in 2013 are great, it can be hard for some clients to keep up with such a fast release time. Every three years might be too often. Lots of customers are still with SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007. If you want the full featured capabilities of SharePoint 2013, I strongly suggest you have Office 2010 or 2013. For example, the 2007 version of Office will not be able to support co-authoring and content management features for example.

Any advice for readers gearing up for a migration to 2013?

PP: Migration is a good opportunity to do some spring cleaning on your site and reorganize information, such as moving older documents to a new sub-site dedicated to archiving. When creating new sites, it’s best to avoid using special templates unless absolutely necessary to avoid compatibility issues when performing upgrades.

If the thought of migrating is causing you migraines, take a look at our SharePoint migration service. Our experienced team really does make migrating easier.

Have you upgraded to SharePoint 2013? What advice do you have for others still weighing the pros and cons?

The post SharePoint 2013’s Most Upgrade-Worthy Feature appeared first on .

The difference between on-premise and cloud email archiving (Source: istockphoto.com

Managing an email system can be difficult and frustrating at the best of times. Having to worry about email archiving on top of server maintenance and storage allocation can take any sane person over the edge. With growing government regulations and standards, more and more companies are being required to retain and protect the data contained in email messages for a certain period of time.

A growing number of companies are also implementing their own email archiving policies for productivity and legal issues, or as a cost-effective solution to data storage issues.

There’s no getting around archiving these days. And to make matters worse, the wrong approach can get you into real trouble.

To Archive Or Not To Archive?
The Question Is How To Archive.

There’s no denying that email archiving is a growth area. With the total North American market for email/content archiving forecast to reach $1.3 billion by 2014, archiving is indeed on the minds of many IT professionals—especially Exchange archive.

The dilemma? Finding an accessible, easy-to-use solution to archive Outlook that will meet the needs of users, who are easily frustrated by slow or incomplete archive searches. (And we won’t even mention the frustration that’s created when users are forced to learn a new search interface—and which inevitably translates into even more help desk queries for IT.)

IT teams often struggle under the weight of increased email, and the demand for archiving is quickly outpacing the ability of many organizations to provide effective solutions. Those who have implemented an on-premise archiving solution know all too well that email archiving comes with certain challenges—mainly how to optimize storage and server usage while at the same time simultaneously allowing a straightforward and accessible end-user experience with easy, intuitive searches… and which doesn’t entail having to buy more hardware.

Archiving goes beyond simply determining auto-archiving settings. Metadata has also become a critical aspect of email archiving, since it allows organizations to prove that the messages held in the archive have indeed been delivered. This added data further increases the need for strong search capabilities and cost-effective storage options. It can be a vicious cycle.

Solutions For On-Premise Archiving
(And Why They Often Don’t Work)

Email administrators who manage email retention policies that must comply with litigation and regulatory requirements have found a couple of solutions for in-house archiving. One option is to save PST files to each user’s computer. Another solution is to limit the size of email files.

Unfortunately, neither method is an effective solution that allows for long-term scalability. PST files increase risk and put a limit on global search capabilities. Limiting file size only leads to frustrated users and hinders productivity.

On-premise archiving can also lack the scalability required for managing growing volumes of email. And in many cases, it’s simply not cost-effective. Since email volume is often directly linked to the size of an organization, the infrastructure needed to support effective on-premise archive storage can be overwhelming for businesses of any size. On-premise archiving also means yet another system for IT to manage, back up and troubleshoot. Backing up an on-premise tool—whether it’s archiving Outlook or Exchange—not only monopolizes a lot of IT time; it can also degrade system performance.

Another important consideration is the fact that email archives that lack capacity or that are poorly protected can lead to security breaches and policy lapses.

Why A Hosted Solution Could Make Archiving Easier
And More Cost-Efficient

For many organizations, archiving in the cloud can make more sense from both a cost and productivity perspective: mainly, reduced capital and labor costs, and less infrastructure and performance requirements.

With hosted archiving solutions, the biggest challenge for IT managers is finding a centralized email archive storage solution that can handle multiple functionalities , and that integrates closely with other solutions like Outlook. The solution should also be covered with continuity plans that go beyond simple backups.

In an upcoming blog, we’ll look at common mistakes companies make with their email archiving—and the number one best practice for avoiding them.

Need help managing your email archives? SherWeb’s hosted archiving solution helps organizations—and their IT staff—save time, money and hassle. Our Hosted Archiving and Compliance solution integrates seamlessly with our hosted Exchange plans, and is managed on a highly secure and scalable network.

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Your career is safe in the cloud

And that means there’s a good chance you’ll soon be faced with the next step in your IT strategy: Taking your service-as-a-software solution to the cloud.

Does that mean it’s time to rethink your career?

There are many misconceptions surrounding the cloud. But often they have more to do with concerns over job security than anything else. We often hear the same questions from IT managers: What will my department do once my company decides to take its email architecture and services to the cloud? If my organization hosts its SharePoint site with a provider like SherWeb, will my team become obsolete?

Not one iota. IT departments will now be able to benefit employers more than ever with all the new projects they’ll be able to spearhead. A cloud provider will simplify your email and backup solution, and make the updates you already didn’t have time to make on Exchange servers. A cloud provider will not only free up some of your time, but enhance user experience, too.

Cloud computing is not your enemy. It doesn’t aim to replace IT staff. It is simply yet another innovation in the constantly evolving IT world. And as this world changes, so are the tasks IT teams are expected to do.

The good news is that cloud computing simply replaces many of the tasks you’d rather not do, anyway, like manual work on hardware and installations—freeing you to focus more on integration, capacity planning, technical architecture and services management. As a result, you’ll have an opportunity to learn new skills and help your organization in new ways. The challenges will still be there; they’ll just be different, that’s all.

3 Areas Where Hosted Services Cannot Replace You

1. Training users – Now you can properly train users (something you probably didn’t have time to do when you had Exchange servers to manage on a daily basis).

2. Managing cloud services – You probably already deal with your ISP. You will have the same type of interactions with your cloud services provider. You will also have to manage these different services for your users, while the provider takes care of the hardware.

3. Managing your network – You’ll have to ensure that your network integrates seamlessly with your cloud services, and that it is up-and-running optimally at all times—no small task.

Cloud-based software merely represents a shift in the tasks companies require their IT staff to do. You’ll be moving away from hands-on work and hardware setup and maintenance, and towards better managing the services your company needs to operate more effectively.

Still not convinced? Just ask the oldest member on your team what changes he (or she) has seen in the last 20 years or so as an IT admin.

Rather than seeing the cloud as the enemy, embrace it as an opportunity to learn new skills, all while benefiting your organization with a cost-saving technology. Your manager will be happy to learn about cloud computing and its associated savings by the guy he trusts with his IT. Will you be that guy?

The post 3 Reasons Why Your IT Job Is Safe From the Cloud appeared first on .

Still not archiving? Better read this

More and more businesses are required to archive email in order to comply with legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was enacted to enforce corporate governance standards and ethical conduct. Other businesses have turned to archiving as a cost-effective long-term solution to the security and storage issues caused by growing volumes of email.

What’s that you say? You don’t archive Exchange? Still not archiving Outlook? These four arguments might change your mind.

4 Good Reasons In Favor of Email Archive

1. Regulatory and compliance requirements: Regulatory organizations and governmental agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission have established strict requirements for email retention, as well as its accessibility and security. To comply, organizations must establish archiving systems that adequately preserve and protect emails, and that ensure their contents can be retrieved—unaltered in any way—and within a reasonable amount of time.

2. E-discovery and legal investigations: In the event of an audit, e-discovery or investigation related to your business or personnel, there’s a good chance you’ll be required to produce certain—if not copious—amounts of email material. Will you be able to do so in a timely manner, and without draining your resources? An archiving solution securely and systematically stores records of your emails in a central, easy-to-search repository, where they cannot be tampered with in any way.

3. Data storage: With the growing volumes of email circulating these days, it doesn’t take long for a server to reach capacity. An auto-archiving solution lets you offload messages and maintain optimal server performance. It will also minimize storage costs and make restores much easier in the event of server failure.

4. Business continuity and disaster recovery: Consider all the valuable information that’s sitting in all the inboxes and outboxes of every employee at your organization. Should your local data systems or mail servers become available, will you be able to access a complete record of all emails? If you archive, you will.

Email archiving: for business continuity and disaster recovery

Email Archive Is Not Email Backup

It’s important to keep in mind that archiving is more than simple storage, and it’s not same thing as online backup. Archiving is a systematic approach to preserving the content contained in email messages—intact and unaltered—in an non-productive and secure environment where it can be quickly searched and accessed at a later date. Archiving is a best practice that responds to functional and regulatory considerations, as well as legal considerations such as e-discovery, legal holds and early case assessments.

But managing an email archiving solution can be a tricky and time-consuming process. What messages do you need to archive—and for how long? Keeping messages one minute longer than you need to could also leave you in hot water. In an upcoming blog, we discuss on-premise versus hosted email archiving.

Why hosted archiving? Organizations sometimes lack the resources needed to ensure consistent and well-planned email archiving policies—or simply don’t want the hassle of managing them. A hosted solution can be quickly set up to automatically save the right data in the right place for the right amount of time. It might even help you save a significant amount of money.

The post 4 Reasons Why Enterprise Email Archiving Is Important (And The Number 1 Tip For Making it Easier) appeared first on .

3, 2, 1… Action!

The same goes for some of the assumptions made once upon a time by strange artists. Indeed, technology’s staggering evolution has turned Science Fiction into the science that’s paving the way for 2013. What we once called the future is now our every-day life.

We know it: blogging about futuristic movies has been done. But what very few people have undertaken is identifying which films predicted the world we live in right now. So that’s what we decided to do.

We drafted a list of motion pictures that forecasted elements of our daily lives in 2013 and then gave the list a nice trimming in order to isolate the most popular topics today.

Here’s the first part of our list.

Big Brother

In the last thirty years, computers have become our window on the world. They’ve infiltrated and revolutionized almost every part of our lives. George Orwell saw it coming…in a way. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Animal Farm author wrote about a government that spies on its population through giant screens in their home; well done Orwell, considering computers now come with a built-in camera!

Computers

Orwell wasn’t the only thinker who forecasted the growing importance of computers. In Wall Street, Oliver Stone made one of the most interesting, yet low profile, calls; he understood computers’ upcoming dominance in the workplace.

Even though Wall Street is not part of the Science Fiction genre, the prolific director still found a way to get his movie on our list as he made sure his film was as realistic as possible, seeking the help of computer experts to make them as operational and functional as possible during the shooting of this cult classic.

Touchscreens

While intriguing, Oliver Stone’s story doesn’t compare to the original Tron (1982), which blew geeks away (back then) as it introduced the concept of connecting to a virtual world. But what impressed us even more was the touchscreen technology displayed in some of the scenes.

At the beginning of the movie, one of the characters causes a touchscreen keyboard, similar to the new BlackBerry 10’s, to manifest itself out of light by simply setting his hands on his desk. Considering SherWeb recently announced the release and support of the BB10, which offers a similar keyboard, we felt Tron was worth a mention.

Augmented Reality

Many of our experts know Jarvis as Iron Man’s personal computer, networked into his armor, home and mobile devices. Back in 2008, the superhero’s technology looked awesome and was ground-breaking. Today, it’s right around the corner. Google’s Augmented Reality and our ability to talk to our Navigation Systems are perfect examples of how close we are to owning our own piece of Stark Tech.

Siri

The real genius who predicted interactivity is Stanley Kubrick. In his 1968 classic, 2001: a Space Odyssey, Stan the Man catapults us into a space station run by H.A.L. 9000, a computer that eventually turns against its master when it realizes that it would be deactivated. Fast forward 45 years later; H.A.L. 9000 gets a new name: Siri, which fortunately comes without the self-destructing personality.

So as we marvel at our own inventive ingenuity, here’s a question: what came first, the technology or the movie suggesting it?

As the Oracle from The Matrix would say, would they have knocked down the vase if no one had suggested its existence in the first place? That’s for you and Neo to answer; either way, a little inspiration never killed the white rabbit.

The post Shining the light on the work of Hollywood’s fortune-tellers appeared first on .

Top 5 and 1 bonus: Best productivity apps

Everybody owns a smartphone or a tablet these days. But what do we do with our mobile devices? Talk and text, of course… and play Angry Birds, watch adorable kitten videos on YouTube and update our Facebook status so that all our friends know we’re drinking a hazelnut macchiato at Starbucks.

How did we survive the 90’s without all this?

But there’s more you can do with your Blackberry or iPad. Countless new apps are developed every month, and some of them can be of great help.

In earlier blogs, we discussed how Exchange, Lync and SharePoint can help you be more productive in your work.

For this article, we asked members of the SherWeb team about their favorite apps for making day-to-day activities easier, saving time and improving overall productivity.

SwiftKey (Android)

Swiftkey ease the process of typing!

Where to begin? How about with the most common thing you might do on your tablet during a meeting: typing. For David on SherWeb’s project management team, SwiftKey ease the process. We agree with him on that one.

SwiftKey is a smart keyboard available on Android phones and tablets that predicts the words you want to write, memorizes the words you used in their context and allows you to type without even lifting a single finger from your device.

ConvertPad (Android)

How many kilometers is 4 miles? How much is $40 worth in Great Britain today? David’s second-favorite app can answer these questions—and more—in a jiffy. With ConvertPad, you can convert any measure you can think of: currency, weight, height, distance… even radiation absorbed dose.

This app can be very handy in many situations (granted, we’re having a hard time thinking of a situation in which you’d need to convert radiation absorbed dose…).

Evernote (Android, iOS, Windows, BlackBerry)

Evernote, just before the new Google Keep!

Remember when we cluttered the edges of our computer monitors with sticky notes? With Evernote, you can keep all those important reminders organized—and at your fingertips. Record audio clips, take notes or snapshots and always remember everything. There’s even a to-do list feature to ensure you don’t overlook anything in your busy schedule.

Even more impressive: you can access your Evernote notifications from any device.

Mint (Android, iOS)

If you’re a big spender and have trouble keeping track of your finances (like one of our colleagues, who shall remain anonymous), you’ll love Mint. It makes staying on top of finances easy.

This app sends you a reminder when bills are due, tells you the balance of your bank accounts and credit cards in real time, and even tells you how much you’ve spent in defined categories such as groceries, restaurants, entertainment, etc.

CallFlakes (Android)

For managers and coordinators, CallFlakes is a charm.

After a call, or receiving a text message, CallFlakes gives you the option to schedule a meeting, send email attachments, make notes or do a Google search—all the typical things you’d normally do after a meeting or a call.

Zite (Android, iOS, Windows)

Zite is your intelligent magazine!

If you’re like me (yes, it’s about me now), you enjoy staying up to date on just about everything—politics, marketing trends… even the latest gossip. You could surf the web for hours on end, going from site to site to find the news you’re craving.

Or you could use Zite. It creates a personalized magazine with all the subjects that matter most to you. You can customize and filter the content of your magazine, and the app learns from this, proposing content it thinks you are probably looking for. No more wandering around dozens of websites in search of articles of interest.

We could go on and on about other apps we like for improving day-to-day productivity in the office or at home. But since you’re probably using a bunch of great ones already, why don’t you tell us which apps are making your life easier?

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March Madness craziness hits data backup

Here is another classic in the making, this time in the data backup field: In-House solutions versus Cloud solutions. In-House solutions get fairly good press, but the Cloud has some key players in its lineup: security, reliability and flexibility. Will online backup run the score or will the In-House solution shut down its opponent?

Without further ado, we present you the Backup Madness infographic:

(Click to enlarge)

If you are looking for an online backup solution, SherWeb can fill your needs! With SkyNox online backup, you get military-grade security and automatic, continuous backups from a renowned provider. To learn more about SkyNox advantages, visit our website.

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The post March Madness: Data Backup Matchup – In-House VS Cloud [Infographic] appeared first on .