Both one of my friends and my mother asked me about blogging this weekend. This is a topic that's been beat to death on the internet, and this probably won't be the most thorough report on what it takes to get a blog started, but it should be among the most succinct.
For all things technical, my first call, IM, or e-mail is to Damien Clark and his company Feedwire. His knowledge is vast, his explanations concise, and he is easy to get a hold of even with the strange hours that we keep in television. I highly recommend him for any small company looking to get a hassle free IT infrastructure in place. In fact, that is the words I would use to describe Feedwire - hassle free. They are able to really take all the guess work out of IT infrastructure, they are able to fix problems very quickly and make sure to always be accessible, so we never are left alone with an emergency.
Dave Barnett
Coordinating Producer
Big Brother
I am Scott Storey, a Production Designer who works primarily in the variety/reality side of television. I have a small design studio in my Venice house with 4 work stations. Design work depends heavily on computers and complicated software. Damien has built a smooth network, dependable back up systems and works space that can accommodate artists (not technicians). His attitude is fantastic and I totally trust him. and his tee-shirts are pretty smooth as well.
Scott Storey
Production Designer
Damien has been my go-to "computer guy" for many years now. He has helped me through many a computer jam. Most recently I was on location shooting Survivor and my entire computer went down. I lost everything. Fortunately Damien had created an excellent back up system for me that I left behind for safe keeping in Los Angeles. Damien got me a new computer, re-installed everything I needed and got it sent out to me on location. I barely missed a beat. Damien and his entire team are reliable and trustworthy. I recommend him highly.
Jeff Probst
Producer Host
Survivor
Most of us are used to software that runs locally - we use Mail or Outlook for our email, Office for our word processing and spreadsheets, and iCal or Outlook for our calendars. Google Apps, Gmail, and the Google Calendar duplicate much of the functionality of these desktop programs, but they require an internet connection to work. The engineers at Google and some enterprising independent developers have come up with a few tools we can use to more closely replicate the desktop application experience even when NOT online.
Clicking this link and granting their site permission to access your Google Gears plugin will enable offline sync and access to your Google docs. You'll be able to get to docs.google.com, even when disconnected from the internet, and your changes will sync up once you reconnect to the internet and log back in to your Google docs account.
Once installed, it has to be configured as the default mail program on your desktop.
To do so in Windows:
There are a few cases in which a more robust syncing solution will be necessary. CalDAV syncing on Google Calendar has problems with event notifications, and if you're using MobileMe to sync iCal with your iPhone, there's no support yet for CalDAV. BusySync, a tool I use, is an alternative technology for syncing iCal with Google Calendar.
If you need help understanding any of these concepts or implementing any of these solutions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. Happy syncing!
We use a variety of software and services to keep our business and our lives up and running. These are the heavy hitters in our list - the software that we use daily. In the web 2.0 world, not all software is installed and run on the desktop. The majority of this software is accessed via a web browser. There are several players in each of these fields, but these are the choices that work best for us. Get in touch with us and we can find the right matches for you.
I can't rave enough about Basecamp. I use this software to provide a virtual meeting place for me and my staff, and to keep my clients informed of the status of their systems and accounts. I've never felt more in touch and on the same page with my team as I do now. It's an office with no walls.
This is a call sheet on steroids. In an executive/assistant scenario, this software trumps kludgey excel and filemaker solutions that I've come across. Everyone I've converted is hooked. Will you be next?
Zendesk forces me to respond to problems. Every time someone asks a question, leaves a voicemail, or reaches out for help, we make a ticket in our Zendesk app. I can then view tickets by context, urgency, client, or age. This tool helps us keep response time down and accountability up.
Freshbooks makes invoicing simple and saves the planet (if only slightly) while doing it. Invoices generated with Freshbooks are delivered to my clients via email and the status is tracked online. This enables faster delivery, and tracking of statistics like payment time and average invoice size. They even offer postal mail delivery of invoices for those who insist on paper.
BusySync keeps us on-time. Both our appointment information and our time tracking for invoices is done in iCal, so calendars are important to us. There are a few players out there in the calendar syncing world, but our requirements are strict. We need by-calendar permission control, offline access to calendars, and near-realtime syncing. BusySync delivers.
Apple's OS X 10.5 Leopard's built-in backup software is called Time Machine. It's brilliant. This software protects against the three types of data loss: hardware failure, software corruption, and accidental data loss. Paired with a Time Capsule it's almost a perfect backup solution.
This is the closest thing to Time Machine I've found for the PC. It basically replicates the Time Machine feature set, though it's not quite as pretty.
Offsite backup. Network connections are finally robust enough that online offsite backup is practical for most small business and even some home users. This is not a replacement for local backup -- recovery times can be quite long for large data sets -- but offsite backup protects against disaster and theft. A backup is no good if it gets stolen.
If you're already a Feedwire customer, you've probably seen that voicemails you leave for us are transcribed into emails. This is a great time-saver. PhoneTag is the company that does this for us. It gives us only one in-box, which helps us to focus and keep our response times down.
Cloud based file storage systems are great, but nothing beats having a local copy of the files. Dropbox handles syncing our project files between Feedwire employees. We operate a distributed office and don't always have internet connectivity, so a traditional file server doesn't work for us. Dropbox keeps all of our computers synced and even allows us to roll back to old versions of files. How cool is that?
Outsourcing software and services can be a great boon to efficiency and productivity. The trend toward Web 2.0 SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud computing is simplifying once complex software and licensing issues. Your business is only a few clicks away from implementing a secure intranet, online accounting software, or a unified office, calendar, and email suite.
There are, however, things that can go wrong. It's the responsibility of every business and business owner to mitigate risks that threaten business continuity and integrity. Responsibility and accountability cannot be outsourced. If your business relies heavily on cloud computing, there are a few things you can do to reduce the damage done by outages and problems in the cloud. I'll use Google Apps as an example, but these principals apply to any hosted software.
In an office which relies heavily on web-based applications, an internet outage puts a stop to work. Access to documents, schedules, perhaps the business logic on which the whole company is run is abruptly cut off. Fortunately, we can plan for this and install a redundant internet connection. This used to be available only in very high-end installations requiring equipment expenditures in the thousands of dollars. Now, it's hundreds. You need only three things:
Making regular backups of your data is important, no matter where it is stored. When your data's primary home is your computer, we can use online services to keep remote backups. When your data's primary home is an online service, we can utilize local copies as backups.
If you're relying heavily on email and calendars, be sure to configure your local email and calendar software to sync with Google. This way you retain access to your email, contacts, and calendars even if Google's services have trouble.
It takes only minutes to set up local syncing of documents, contacts, calendars, and email. If you're interested in backing up your important information, get in touch with us.
We're stealing this policy from Bonobos, a company that has absolutely nothing to do with computers or technology. In fact, they make pants. The best pants.
Presenting Feedwire's new Band of Brothers policy:
If you are a public school teacher, a fireman, a public servant, a nurse, or any other profession where you’ve chosen to serve rather than to earn as a first priority, then you may qualify for a Feedwire Band of Brothers discount.We’d rather live in a society where school social workers earn just as much as commercial lenders, and people who save lives don’t have to work all their lives to save. We don’t love Ayn Rand, but we respect some of her ideas. Essentially, we’d like to make our services a bit more affordable for people that have consciously chosen a career that is less lucrative.
All you need to do to join the Band is to write us a short letter (200-500 words) explaining who you are, what you do, and why you think you qualify. We aim to accept all applications, and we try to respond within 24 hours.
