If you’ve asked us about purchasing a new computer, then you know that we have a special place in our hearts for Dell’s business line. In recent years, we have grown a strong relationship with our Dell Partner Team who are always willing to help us out when we need a quote or simply have a question for them. Because of our strong relationship, we have almost exclusively sold Dell’s equipment to our customers. We’ve stood by their support and service to be the best in the industry.

While watching video footage of the Tsunami, I started asking myself “what would Cage Data do if we had a disaster and we lost access to our main facility in Wallingford.” Cage Data has a disaster plan, and this latest disaster has caused us to check and double-check our plans to make sure that we are able to be up and running in a short amount of time if the unthinkable were to happen.

My question to you is this: What would you do if you lost access to your business facility and your computer systems?  Cage has addressed backup issues with some of our clients, but not everyone. What would happen if you lost all your computer systems? Over the next couple weeks, we will be looking at disaster recovery and what you need to do as a business or an individual to protect the most important aspect of your business-your data; the information that makes your company work.

In a couple of weeks, Cage will have an exciting announcement which will help everyone in the event of a disaster.

Maybe you've heard the buzz out there that Microsoft released Exchange 2010. Maybe you had no idea and maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about period. This week's newsletter has five key features that we think will benefit you whether you've already upgraded or are considering upgrading and we will specifically focus on the new Outlook Web Access portal or as we call it OWA.

We received some good feedback from the latest newsletter, and we wanted to send a follow-up with some more information to clarify some things, so here we go…

iTunes and multiple devices

So you have an iPad, an iPhone and your PC and you want to have the same music on all your devices. Well, syncing an iPhone to iTunes will be done the same way as syncing an iPad. Any music you have on your computer, you can tell it to go over to the devices.

Oh where, oh where has my iphone gone…

With the iPhone 4 (iOS 4.2), iPad (iOS 4.2), and iPod Touch (4th Generation), you can sign up for a free mobileme account and if you lose your device, you can sign in to me.com to locate it on a map, display a message on it, and remotely wipe the device. You also have the ability to have your device sound an alarm so you can locate it even if it’s buried under a stack of newspapers. This works even if the device is set to silent.

More about global use

Although this was mentioned in the last newsletter, I wanted to expand on the GSM/CDMA network issues. Yes, it’s true that the Verizon iPhone has the hardware (Qualcomm MDM6600) to be a GSM/CDMA phone, however, the lack of a SIM slot will limit the phone to only work in the 40 or so countries that use the CDMA network. A full CDMA country list can be found on Verizon’s Website.

iPhone 5?

We briefly mentioned that most likely Apple will be releasing a new iPhone this summer. The rumors have been flying around, and while nothing is confirmed by Apple, here’s what we’re seeing.

• Release sometime in June or July
• Thinner and sleeker design
• 4G Capable
• 32G and 64G models
• Dual-core processor
• FaceTime on 3G and 4G networks
• Face Recognition Security
• Wireless Sync with iTunes
• High-definition Audio
• Message Indicator Light
• Extended Battery Life
• Dual-band (GSM/CDMA) capability?

Since we’re most likely only four to five months away from a new iPhone, you may want to hold off until the summer to upgrade. Signing a contract now, you’ll be locked in on the iPhone 4 for two years. If none of the features of the iPhone 5 interest you, then perhaps getting the iPhone 4 is the way to go. Also note that when Apple releases the iPhone 5, the iPhone 4 will more than likely drop in price as well.

So the iPhone is coming to Verizon and you’ve held out for years because you knew in your heart that Verizon would one day get the iPhone. Well, here it is and you’re about to take the leap, but before you do, here’s “the tech guy’s” take on the two companies.

Now, I’ve been an iPhone user since the first generation in 2007 and I’m quite happy with my phone. I’ve upgraded every two years and if Steve Jobs follows suit from the past 4 years, I’ll be upgrading again this summer and more likely than not, I’ll be staying with AT&T. Here’s why.

Procrastination is a double-edged sword. It’s like hitting the snooze button: on one side you get to stay in bed longer and catch a few more winks of sleep. On the other side you’re late for work.

The same thing is true of computer systems. We’ve recently seen a large volume of client hardware orders. We don’t know the exact reason for the increase, but here are some thoughts: One, procrastination. As a business owner you want to get as much return on your hardware investment (ROI) as possible. Years ago we used to say computer systems were being replaced every five to maybe even eight years. Not anymore. It’s amazing the number of conversations I have with people on a daily basis about the age of their computers. It may come as a shock to you, but it’s become common for us to replace computers every two to three years.

Sure you can get more use out of your systems, but if you haven’t replaced them in three years or more you need to create a plan to replace them soon. Technology changes so quickly. Systems which were released three years ago, running Windows XP with 512MB of RAM just aren’t powerful enough today to run new releases of software. Can we make them work? Sure, but productivity will suffer and the potential for system failure increases. And it will fail, eventually. Having a plan to upgrade your computer system is like carrying a life insurance plan. You never know when the systems will fail but as each year passes and technology changes, your system failure rate also increases.

Our second thought is the business climate. The economy has forced many businesses to reset spending priorities. Until recently, replacing and/or upgrading computer systems have moved to the back burner. But that is turning around big time as noted in the October 2009 Forbes.com article as they looked ahead to this trend for 2010. We can certainly see the changing trend and we expect it to continue well into 2011.

This trend reminds me of an old Fram Oil commercial. Picture this: in the foreground an auto mechanic, holding an oil filter in one hand says to his customer, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later,” motioning to the car being towed behind them. Just like taking care of the family car, it’s less expensive to keep up with the maintenance in small, incremental steps than it is to pay for a big repair down the road that may bring your productivity to a screeching halt.

Cage Data would like to partner with you and your business to help maintain a high level of productivity. We offer an onsite review of your information systems, a technical consultation to increase business productivity, and provide a competitive quote for new computer equipment, if needed.

Call us today to set up your onsite review and consultation.

Often, viruses start with a pop up on your screen, but pop ups are not always bad. If you know what to look out for, you can prevent a virus nightmare from occurring which saves you money and time. A couple of things that clue me in as a tech are the types of pop ups you have on the screen, the wording/grammar in the text of the pop up and the content of what’s in the pop up. Most of the time the language of the pop up window want to get an emotional response from you about the security of your computer system.  If you have this kind of response, most likely it's not safe, and you're playing right into their hands. Pop ups shouldn’t come up unless you’ve just clicked on a request for either a link or a download or something like that. If your computer has pop ups that come up on their own without any request from you, then you’ll want to get your computer checked out.

The “bad guys” who are attaching their malicious pop-ups onto sites want you to click on theirs, so they’ve become really good at making them look legitimate. Often, they’ll look like a Microsoft program or telling you that you have been infected and in order to get rid of it (remember the emotional response), you must download their software and pay a fee as well. By “purchasing” their software, you’ve just given your credit card information and have made it easy for them to steal your identity.

We see a lot of users who have 2,3,4 and more virus/spyware removal tools. Did you know that if you have an antivirus program installed and then install another one, your computer may not be able to get into Windows the next time you reboot? Because of those risks, we recommend only having one type of antivirus program installed on your computer at a time.

If you think that your computer may have viruses or spyware installed, please let us know and we’ll be happy to take a look. Often, we don’t even need to come out to your office to remove the malicious software. Through the advancement of technology, we’re able to set up a remote session with your computer so that we can take control and get rid of all those things that are slowing you down.

This past year has been a huge year as far as the web area of Cage Data.  We have seen an increase in clients, faster deployment rates using open source technologies, and better applications. We are really excited about the direct for the web business and equally excited about the great team which is developing within the web business.

Use of Open Source Technologies

In 2010 we began using more open source technologies to deploy client websites and applications faster.  The biggest open source application we added was the Mura Content Management System (CMS).  Mura is a fantastic CMS to provide many backend functions necessary to controlling a website.  Our own website is powered by Mura and we love using it everyday.  In the past months some awesome updates have been made to Mura including the use of CKEditor to build content, and a more elegant management interface.

Another open source application that Cage added in 2010 was the OpenCart E-Commerce system.  OpenCart is a freely available E-Commerce system designed for smaller businesses with fewer products.

If you are interested in getting either a CMS backed website or E-Commerce website contact us to get a quote.

Client Work in 2010

Cage Data has had new clients across multiple industries in the past year and also has revisited clients who have had websites done in the past that needed to be revamped.  Some of our largest clients to launch websites with Cage are:

Evergreen America

Evergreen came to us early in the year looking for an informational website and e-commerce solution.  After building a custom design we attached the design to both a Mura and OpenCart backend.

Evergreen's Mura based website ended up being a total of 177 active pages and 67 files, and with the help of the built in functionality of Mura we were able to make each page easy to access with only a few clicks or a small search.

Evergreen's OpenCart powered shopping cart now contains 28 products to help maintain the life of almost anything that would need lubrication, from guns to cars to construction equipment.

CT Academy for Education

Cage has worked with the CT Academy for Education to provide both IT support and website support since the early 2000s.  Their website was originally launched in 2003 with a basic content editing tool and not much else.  The navigation was one of the best that you could have at the time, with impressive drop down menus and being able to edit content on your own back then was almost unheard of.  Fast forward 7 years to 2010; the world has changed, drop down navigation menus are everywhere and it is almost unheard of not being able to edit your own content.

In mid-2010 Cage took on the task of moving CT Academy's website from a very basic custom built content management system in Mura.  The project entailed a basic site redesign to make everything a little more friendly and easier on the eyes, a new flash navigation on the home page showing a couple of popular pages, and a couple of listing of organization members.

Internal Work

We here at Cage are firm believers in the idea of not pushing anything out for clients that we wouldn't be willing to use for ourselves.  That is why our first Mura based website was actually our own website. In the beginning of they year Cage over went a complete overhaul of our web presence.  We started with a new website which included our new logo and a more modern up to date look and feel.  We will miss our good ol' cow, but we felt that in order to better connect with the level that we put our clients at we needed to do some massive upgrade.

As another year comes to a close, the team here at Cage took some time to sit down and look back at 2010. Among the many discussions we had, we took a look at our projects from this past year and we wanted to highlight a few of them for you below.

Server 2008 migration

Yes, we know it’s almost 2011. You may be wondering why we’re bragging about rolling out a server operating system that’s three years old. Most of our clients have been running servers that were rolled out circa 2003 and it’s now getting to a point where that equipment is getting old and tired. Since SBS2008 is the latest and greatest (still), that is what we have been upgrading out clients to. Now, this is no easy task; technically speaking, it’s pretty simple, but working on it is a different story…

Windows 7

With Windows 7 being the latest and greatest operating system from the big boys over at Microsoft, you can imagine that we’ve spent a lot of time rolling these out to our clients and answering a lot of how-to questions. Yes, it looks different, but everything is mostly in the same place as it was with XP and it is very sweet, and we all have grown quite close to it, here. If you’d like to upgrade or are a current user and have questions about it, let us know and we’ll be happy to help in any way we can.

Exchange 2010

This fall we took a step to upgrade our internal email system. We have been running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and with the release of the newest version Exchange 2010 we decided to take the plunge. It was a very good learning process. We attempt to run most processes on our own network and server, before rolling them out to clients, so we have a thorough working knowledge of new products and systems before it touches any of our customer’s networks.

Barracuda Anti-Spam

Are you sick and tired of getting emails about “\/|@gr@”? Yeah, so were we. This past summer, we rolled out a Barracuda Anti-Spam system for one of our close clients and let me tell you, it’s one kick-butt spam-blocker. It’s relatively inexpensive and is up and running in about 30 minutes. The way this works is we point all your mail to hit this device first before it even connects to your servers. This keeps all the bad stuff out and only lets through the stuff that you need and care about. If you want some more information or a referral from a user of the system, let us know and we’ll get you the hook-up.

As the Cage team started to think about this newsletter it became clear we are starting it at the end of 2010. Usually December is not a great time to start things, unless it is shopping for Christmas… oh that reminds me, but I digress.  So rather than put off starting to the beginning of 2011 we decided to take the first few post to take a look back at some of the things that have happened at Cage over the last year.

It has been a very busy year at Cage and as many of you know there have been many changes.  Most of them are good changes others are just changes; not bad just change. This past year we have added a number of new clients throughout the state.  We are excited to be working with the likes of CyVek and Galvin Financial as well as Connecticut Hone.   

We are looking forward to the prospects of 2011 and learning new businesses.  As Cage starts to work with clients we learn a little bit about you and how you operate, and what makes your business tick.  We don’t become experts, we reserve that for the computer business, so you can focus on what you do the best.

I guess that is what it is all about, helping you and your business do what you do the best. Taking away the worry of dealing with the day-to-day frustration of technology.  Will there be frustration with computers, you bet, but with Cage we hope to help take some of that frustration away.

At Cage we try to take on the attitude that your computer problems are our own. We are hoping this newsletter will be an extension on that idea providing you with practical and helpful knowledge to run your business on the cutting edge of technology.

Not Spam

We don’t like SPAM and we know you don’t like it either, so this is not our intent. We’d like to hear from you about useful topics and information that will be included in this newsletter. We do have a plan for the near future but would really like to have input from you so this newsletter can be relevant to your business.

Who Is Cage Data

Cage Data, Inc. in business since 1997, provides information technology support service to businesses throughout the Northeast. With over 50 years experience in the technology industry our lead team provides desktop and server support services, network integration and support as well as web design, hosting and application development.

Tonight the children are at Wellspring Church in Berlin, CT and the children will be traveling through Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey for a couple months.  They have already been in the country for a few weeks now performing throughout New Hampshire.  If the children are singing at a place near you then I urge you to go to see them.

Tour Schedule

CagEComm is currently being prepped to go into private beta and Cage Data is looking for people to test it.  No experience is necessary outside of a knowledge of basic internet usage.  If you can navigate around the web then you can help.

If interested in testing out CagEComm please visit http://docs.cagecomm.com/index.cfm/signup-for-the-beta/ and signup.  All accepted registrants will receive an email containing login information for the bug tracking software and how to get into the application.

One problem with the calendar navigation component as is is that it does not display the title of the calendar so people can’t see what they are looking at. If we just blindly throw the title onto it for every page then we will show it on the Calendar page (if the content object is displayed there) which causes a bit of unnecessary redundancy. So I came up with a solution that was surprisingly quick as you will see in the following post.

Over the past couple of months Cage Data's web team with the assistance of Lui Nobrege of Spring Innovation has worked on building a full website and e-commerce site for Evergreen and we are proud to announce that as of today, August 6th 2010, we have launched their website to the public.

You can see Evergreen's main website here at www.evergreenamerica.com.

You can also find the products that they sell here at store.evergreenamerica.com.

On behalf of myself and the rest of the team at Cage Data we thank Evergreen America for joining our family.

So I realized that I needed to tweak Mura a little bit to get this to work.

So the HTC Aria is a really nice little phone.  It is small enough that you feel like you are actually carrying a phone again, but not to small that you can't do or see anything on it.  The preloaded apps are also pretty nice.  You have your email client, calendar, and your usual AT&T apps (Mobile Banking, MobiTV, etc), but it also comes with some other nice apps like Peep, a pretty nice mobile Twitter client; Facebook; and FriendStream, an app to get notifications from Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

One thing that is really nice about the Android OS is that you can set your own Scenes, which are organization of your apps on the 7 home screens you have.  It is a really nice feature if you have a set of apps that you use during the work for work and a separate set of apps that you use during the weekend.  It is a nice feature to keep your work life and your personal life separate.  I personally don't foresee myself using the feature too much, but it is a nice one to have.

Another nice feature is that they separated Gmail into it's own app separate from the traditional email app. This is one feature that seems small, but I am really excited about.  My biggest problem with the iPhone, was that Gmail showed up terribly in the Mail app.  I love using label in Gmail rather than folders, and the iPhone mail app just didn't organize it well enough.  I found myself seeing new email come in and going to the mobile website to read the email.

The phone and video camera aren't as good as the iPhone 4, but they still are pretty good.  I have never been one to take many pictures with my phone, but I may find myself doing it more now with the 5 megapixel camera that is built in to the Aria.

The battery life on the Aria so far surpasses the iPhone by well a lot.  I don't have experience with how the iPhone 4's battery is, but as far as what I have heard about the 3GS and my own 3G the Aria so far has been running all day with me constantly using it, like a kid with their new toy, and the battery is showing 75% battery life.