Well we have been busy robots lately and have not had time to update the blog in the past month. But I wanted to announce that we have started re-designing every aspect of our sites including the blog. We are very excited about the new designs, are keyboards are thundering with code, and the late nights are inspiring some great work. We will be posting some screen shots in the coming week, so any input would be great.
Thanks and have a great week!
If you have not heard yet Microsoft has released a new search engine today called Bing. That’s right, Bing!
Microsoft is touting Bing as their most powerful search engine they have made to date. Microsoft is no longer calling it a “Search Engine” but a “Decision Engine”.
We were some what blind sided with this release. We heard many rumors of it’s earlier then rumored arrival, but we were under the impression that it was not ready for the lights and the show just yet. Obviously we were wrong.
Bing’s goal is to be a search engine to help people cut through all the clutter that exists on the Internet and gives people a wide range of “intelligent” information designed to help people make decisions faster. It’s designed to meet the needs of today’s searchers and those needs go beyond simply behind a simple search engine.”
I myself am always skeptical of new ways to search the web. The marketing and advertising guru’s do such a good job at telling you the consumer of how revolutionary their product is going to be, so game changing. So you wait, and wait for that product, and when it is released you are once again disappointed. Now this has happened very recently to me, actually twice in the past 8 months. The first was with Cuil, then the second with Wolfram Alpha. As you can tell both of these products are search engines, and they are both yet to be game changing. So I reminded myself to be skeptical of Bing and all of its promises.
I wont make my full analysis about Bing for another week. I want to see how well it works out in my day to day routine. But so far so good.
But don’t be surprised to see Bing really take off by the end of the year. Microsoft has put so much money (roughly $160 million) , work, and creativity into developing a whole new platform, we hope it pays off for them.
Some of the new features include:
Best Match: A fast way to identify the best matched site for a given query. Target is a great example. Try it here. Definitive card (D-card): More insight into a particular site such as the hard-to-find customer service telephone number. Try it here for UPS. Answers: Easy access to information designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page. For example – ask Bing “who was the 11th president?” or “what time is it?” and you will get an Instant Answer. Preview: With so many clicks coming back from unsatisfactory results, this feature lets you preview what is on a site from the results page, to help reduce wasted trips to sites you weren’t looking for. Explore Pane: We have introduced the new left hand pane, which we call the Explore Pane. This is where we offer features that help with searching such as Quick Tabs, Related Searches and Search History. Search History: This feature is aimed at helping you get back to the searches you’ve done before and save you clicks. You can see it in the left-hand Explore Pane. Quick Tabs: The Quick Tabs give you easy access to the most common refinements for a given query. This categorization is aimed at making it easy to refine your query and reduce information overload.Give it a try for yourself. Take the Bing challenge, make it your homepage for a month and see what you think.
If you are a visual learner like myself then check out this informative and very interesting video created by the Bing team at www.decisionengine.com
Or you could just jump right into Bing! Try it at Bing.com
BING IT
October 22nd, 2009 !!!! Remember that date, put it in your PDA, add it to all your calendars, stamp it on your forehead, get it tattooed on your hand. Do whatever it takes to remember this date. October 22nd, 2009 is the day the highly anticipated Windows 7 hits the masses. Can you believe it?
Our good friend over at the Official Windows Blog let us in on this sweet tip. We are more then ecstatic about this release date, it gives us a chance to finally push Window’s 7 out to our customer base. We have been tooling around with Windows 7 beta, and Windows 7 RC for the past couple of months and we are in love. We have created numerous test environments to see how the rollover will affect our current customers. We have ran into some small snags with some legacy software, but nothing Windows 7 XPM wont fix, which is built into Windows 7. We want to bring the best environment with the most flexibility to our customers and we truly feel Windows 7 is the key. We think Windows 7 will eventually gain the Zeus like status of XP, and dwarf all competition in its wake.
OCTOBER 22nd! Image burn that into your brain.
Click here for Release date
Brandon Leblanc over at the official Windows Blog lets us in on some other great information regarding Windows 7 and why you SHOULD NOT wait to purchase that new PC (okay maybe wait about two months).
This is a great day for Microsoft, and a great day for business. Finally a practical Operating System that is powerful, scalable, flexible, reliable and beautiful.
Once again OCTOBER 22nd, 2009.
Give Terablock a call with any questions about Windows 7, and how we can help assist you in this crucial rollover.
Have a great day!
Okay, so I’m not a network ninja, a pen tester or even claim to be “techy”, but I do appreciate the finer points of customization. I customize everything. My laptop has a skin, my toolbars are colored, my wrist support, mouse pad, mouse, and even Zune all are all covered and colored! Of course, I don’t stop with my gadgets either. My scissors support breast cancer but I bought them because they’re pink with ribbons on the blades. My post-it note holder has flowers on it, and you can bet my post-its are not yellow! You can imagine my surprise when I installed Windows 7 and found everything…well… customized!
Just look at this image below it’s from the “Characters Theme” in Windows 7. It’s so off the wall, but yet so great. This OS brings creativity to a whole other level.
Crazy theme
My backgrounds can be chosen from different themes and within the theme you can right click and select ‘next desktop background’ and ta-da, you’ve moved onto the next one. And these are cute! There’s characters, nature scapes, scenes, landscapes, architecture just to name the ones I like best. Now I liked Vista (again being superficial) but I was about to throw my Christmas present away because it made my Acer Aspire One run like a fat kid. That was yesterday. Today it’s running like a cheetah! The icons are designed to please, the layout is easy to transition about, the user interface is so pleasing. Everything seems right. The new taskbar is great. My taskbar isn’t cluttered- it lumps all the duplicated applications together just like the old taskbar, just improved to the 10th power.
What a difference one day and an upgrade made… I get to keep my laptop, my sanity, and my customization together in one place. Thank you Windows 7 team! I will buy you a doughnut- how would you like me to decorate it?
-Janna
The highly anticipated Windows 7 Release Candidate came out late last night for public download. You can find it here. Our good friend Brandon Leblanc over at The Windows Blog explains the details and directions on how to obtain and download the new RC for Windows 7.The term release candidate (RC) refers to a version with the potential to be a final product; ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. In this stage of product stabilization (read QA cycle), all product features have been designed, coded and tested through one or more Beta cycles with no known showstopper-class bug.
At Terablock we have been testing the Windows 7 beta for the past couple of months and we really have enjoyed it. Vista obviously had some pit falls to it but 7 looks like the blockbuster Microsoft has been waiting for! From our point of view, this is the OS that will finally conquer XP in the business world. A lot of enterprises have been skipping Vista, for legitimate reasons, but with 7 those reasons do not come into play.
We are always out for what is best for the customer so we look at many things an OS has that will make the transition less painful. With 7 you don’t run into the system resource issues as you do with Vista. It is a lightweight OS. What I mean by “lightweight” is that this OS can run on a small netbook with no problem. It is quick and responds to mostly anything you throw at it (even in beta). 7 is by far the most secure OS Microsoft has come out with to date. Granted, once the world has its talons in it, we will start to see security patches rolling out. For us it’s all about deployment and management. When we suggest an OS platform to a customer those are the two key points at the front of our cortex. The reasoning for it is simple. If it is easy to deploy and manage, then it is going to save everyone time and a lot of money.
What you are going to get with this OS is a bonafide business class OS. Its features are a clean, easy, functional user interface that is quick to pick up, so that the training turnaround is very minimal.
Let’s be frank; no other platform supports businesses as well, or as much, as Microsoft does. Not any form of Linux or Mac. In the long run a business owner will be saving money with an OS like Windows 7. Every aspect of your business will benefit from it. Yes, Linux is free- to an extent. But when you start to run into issues with your software who do you call? Terablock at 503.625.9865. But why not just do it right the first time? What are most business students and schools using as a platform for education? Windows. Have you ever hired an employee that only has used a Mac? What was that transition period for that employee? What are most business class applications developed for? Instead of going the complicated route why not make your business software work for you, instead of you having to work for your software?
Windows 7 is here, embrace it, download it, start now, and start here for Windows 7.
Now we are not saying that Linux or Apple are not the way to go, but for 90% of businesses the Windows platform is truly the only ticket. Linux and Apple have great products that have paved the way for other great technology that this world could not live without.
If you are interested in chatting about how 7 will affect your business, give us a call. If you are looking to start planning a road map to 7 for your business then Terablock is the company that will get you where you want to be.
-Keegan
I guess “slow and steady” is better then the opposite end of the spectrum. The blog is a new section we are trying to provide for our customers, potential customers, or whomever would like a good read.
Right now we are working some kinks out on the blog, but we decided to keep it up while we are working those out. In the meantime we are going to try to provide daily content in the form of many media’s. Currently we are working on more Terablock Tip’s footage, so that should be up on the site very soon.
You can also check out our other sites for more info about who we are and what we do. Terablock’s Main Site Terablock Web Design
We all know that you’re supposed to “treat your password like your toothbrush”, but I’m going to take it one step farther. What is your personal password policy? If your answer is either I don’t know, or I don’t have one then you need some positive re-direction in how you configure your digital password policies.
To start off with let me tell you why I say you should treat your password like a kitten. About 8 months ago, we salvaged a shy, innocent, white kitten from homelessness. When we brought Ronin home he was scared of everything and it took about 2 weeks before he ventured out from our room. And now? A closed door means he is on the wrong side. It doesn’t matter what side he is on, he doesn’t like to be locked out! He will put his paw underneath and bang it back and forth. He has ripped up he carpet. He is no longer shy, innocent, or white, and there are no closed doors in my house. I gave in.
What does this story have to do with passwords you ask? Your password is the door to your personal information: bank accounts, email, bill pay, etc. You think that when you close the door, you are the only one who can get in and out. This is simply not true. There are identity thieves sitting on the outside who will wiggle that door back and forth until they get in. Is your password the same on all your accounts? If they are and someone gets in, they will have free run on all your accounts like Ronin has over my house. Although it requires a lot more patience and work, you must create unique, complex passwords that differ for each login account you access.
A unique, complex password must be at least 8 characters and one from each of the following categories: uppercase English letters (A-Z), lowercase English letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and non-alphanumeric (!,@$&, etc).
We understand that its tedious and troublesome to keep 10 to 15 passwords and accounts straight. So we have came up with a neat trick that a lot of us are trying out.
So how can you create a good, well written, and secure password that you can remember — yet circumvents the issue posed above? Here’s a simple way to create a unique complex password.
1) Find a password you like, for example the name of your pet. Like mine would be Ronin.
2) Replace one or two letters with a number or character. In this case Ronin becomes R0n1n <– here’s your primary password. I used the replacement characters 0=o,1=i, but you can do any other combination.
3) Make your custom password. Any time you visit a new website where you need to register and create a password, use the website’s name as a prefix to your password. My preference is the first 5 characters of the website name it’s easy to remember, but you can use any number of characters. For example, if I register at Terablock.net, I would use a password like terab_R0n1n. Or lets say you have a have a yahoo email account, I would use yahoo_R0n1n.
If you want to go one step farther you can reverse the first five letters of the websites name (terab=baret).
Try it out, no really do it !
-Janna
Sshhh.... I'm hunting gwasshoppers
