Tornado Reflections (May, 2013 in Edmond & Moore)
By · CommentsWith the tornados this week in Edmond, Luther, Shawnee, Carney and of course Moore, it’s just not the week to write about tech. I live in Edmond and a tornado came within 1/2 mile of our house Sunday afternoon, May 19. I was keeping my eye on the TV and even had our under-the-stairs-closet ready to dive in with my dog, Sophie along with a few supplies. My husband was at a meeting at the church building and had called me from there. I heard the TV guy say, it sure is an interesting formation in Edmond right around 33rd & Bryant and it’s… then the power went out and Sophie and I went in the closet! It was very still, very little rain and no hail. We waited a while and then came out. I didn’t hear a thing right around here.
Shortly afterwards, I got a couple of text messages from friends and family asking if we were OK and that’s when I found out one had gone through some neighborhoods to the north of us. When Doug got home, we got in the car and did a little tour and found so many huge trees down in the neighborhood next to us.
The video is more up close to the damage with fallen trees very close to the road – you’ll hear chainsaws going, and this was just an hour or two after the tornado went through.
Then Monday came along with many warnings that it was prime tornado-making weather. It was already muggy and warm early in the morning with lots of clouds. I turned the TV on in the early afternoon as clouds looked more and more threatening and I knew all the local stations would be in full weather broadcast mode with helicopters and every available news person and accompanying camera man spread all over the metro and parts of the state. The video of that huge, black mass of destruction hitting Moore, Oklahoma was incredible and it was horrible to watch. I’d check the #okwx Twitter stream to get up to the second information and see photos. I passed along a few tweets of information I thought would be helpful, but mostly felt helpless and sickened by the damage I knew it was doing.
Then Oklahoma became the national news target once again with every national and cable channel represented here for a couple of days. I was proud of our Governor, Mary Fallin as well as the first responders and city officials. Things were well organized in a short time. The over-flowing of prayers, money, food, supplies and volunteers hasn’t stopped and won’t until the need is gone. Oklahomans have a history of being incredibly generous and giving and I see it time after time.
To bring technology into the picture here at the end, it was interesting that the plain-old SMS, or text message became the go-to communication vehicle during the Moore crisis. With no power, that meant land lines were gone and the cell towers were strained to the max so the news outlets let the people know to use texting to let people know their status.
Here are some resources to get information and links on how to donate to the Tornado Relief. I think it’s effective and worth-while donating through our church.
Great Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MooreTornado?hc_location=stream
Website: http://www.ok.gov/okstrong/
Local Radio: http://www.ktok.com/main.html http://www.kokcradio.com/
Do be careful when you donate as there are always the scammers out after tragedies.
Pros & Cons of Jailbreaking Your iPhone
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Guest article from Dylan Johnson-brief bio below. Thanks for offering to guest blog, Dylan!
Jailbreaking your phone allows you to gain access to areas that are normally off limits. Normally, Apple has total control of your phone but by performing this process, they lose the control. In the case of the iPhone, jailbreaking the phone allows users to access things not offered in the Apple store, which means third-party apps not authorized by Apple. Even though companies like Apple do not like this idea, it is not illegal and there is really nothing they can do about it. However, just because you can do something, does not always mean it is a good idea. Here are some pros and cons to jailbreaking your iPhone and you can decide yourself “To jailbreak or not to jailbreak.”
The Pros
Traveling Internationally
When you travel internationally, roaming charges would normally be incurred when you are outside your home country. If you jailbreak your iPhone, you will be able to purchase a very inexpensive SIM card from the country where you are visiting and put it in your iPhone. Although you will be using a different phone number, local calls will be a breeze and very inexpensive.
Get Any App You Want
Although Apple has quite a selection of apps for the iPhone, there are some things you just cannot get through Apple. By performing a phone jailbreak, you can gain access to anything. Not only can you download apps that are not available with Apple, but you can also customize settings and themes for your iPhone. These are features that are not available from Apple.
Reactivate Phones
The same way you can buy a SIM card overseas or international, you can buy a SIM card to put in a phone that is no longer activated. Instead of giving the phone to someone, who in turn will have to get a contract to use it, if the phone is jailbreaked, they can switch carriers. This will definitely be less expensive than signing a contract and you can budget your expenses with a pay as you go card. There is a small downside, some of the features that AT&T offers will not be available, like the voicemail but all and all it is a great idea.
Fully Reversible
If you are unsure this is what you want to do or not, jailbreakme is an app that is fully reversible. That means if you do not like the functionality of your phone after it is jailbreaked, all you need to do is re-sync your phone to the computer via iTunes and it is back to new.
More Customized Content
Cydia is a great app to revive the look of the iPhone. You can change wallpapers, statuses and even icons by using it. Of course, it only works on jailbreaked phones so if you are interested in these features, jailbreaking might be the choice for you.
The Cons
Bricking
This is a phenomenon that can occur when jailbreaking an iPhone. It does at it implies, it makes the phone unusable, thus named a brick. It will require a complete reset and restore, which will wipe out all information on the phone. It can be fixed but it can be quite a hassle.
No Apple Warranty
If you alter your iPhone in a way that is not approved by Apple, i.e. jailbreaking, the warranty becomes null and void. One of the great things about Apple is that you can take your phone to any Apple store and have your phone serviced. This is a convenient and helpful feature to go with the iPhone because you are assured customer support.
The Potential for Bugs
Well, if you change your iPhone’s functionality, you might remove some of the protective features. This could make your iPhone susceptible to bugs and viruses. Features such as FaceTime and MMS have reportedly been rendered useless due to bugs on unsupported jailbreaked iPhones. Although software and app developers have been able to work out quite a few of these issues, you are still at risk if you jailbreak your iPhone.
Security
Again, by kicking Apple out of your iPhone, you have many risks. One of the most important of these is security. Apparently, hackers are able to hack jailbreaked iPhones and plant virus software on the phones from a remote location. The thought of your phone being a breeding ground for viruses might deter a jailbreak for sure.
No Updates
We all know Apple as well as other companies with smartphone technology offer frequent updates. If your phone is jailbreaked, you will not receive these automatic updates. This could affect the functionality of your iPhone drastically. You can install jailbreak updates, they are just a little trickier.
All in all, jail breaking your phone has a bit of a bad stigma and scares people a little, however a lot of it is unfounded. There is not as much to fear as one might think. You do lose your warranty with Apple, however if you are cool, there is no harm in trying to bring it in to apple. I have actually heard it usually works anyways. So, if you like to play it safe, there is no harm in that and you and your phone can live worry free. If you are feeling adventurous or you’ve got a knack to hack, then this is rookie stuff.
Dylan Johnson is photographer and creative director at Security Options He writes on home automation, green technology, music and photography.
Talking SkyDrive at the IVAA Live Summit
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This was my first time to attend the IVAA Live Summit, (the International Virtual Assistant’s Association), a group run for and by VAs to strengthen, train and network. I joined the group just last year and while reading through the website, I saw they were looking for speakers for their conference which was held just last week (May 1-3), in Philadelphia.
Since I’m a SkyDrive Insider, I thought I’d like sharing what I know about SkyDrive to the group. So many people just aren’t aware of all the great things SkyDrive offers. So I spent a couple hours filling out my form and found out my application was accepted!
Fast forward to April, and I was working on my presentation and practicing it quite a bit. The conference began on May 1st and my SkyDrive presentation was Thursday, so I got a bit of time to watch the other great speakers and their presentations as well as talk to people who asked me questions about what SkyDrive is. I was happy to share with them what it is, how I use it and outlined how I thought it could benefit them and their teams and clients. Most weren’t aware of the free Microsoft web apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote), neither did they know about the collaboration features.
Before my presentation, I was also asked about Office 2013 and Office 365. Since I use both of these products, I told them how it helps me in my business, i.e. I don’t have to administer my own email, it syncs flawlessly among all my gadgets, mail is backed up and I also get SharePoint storage and Lync. I decided to incorporate a couple slides into my presentation about this and showed them how easy it was to save and share documents right from within Office 2013. The handout condensing my main points is below.
Microsoft SkyDrive-For Your Team, Your Clients, Your Life
SkyDrive – Updated – Apps for IOs, Android, Mobile & Tablets
Key Features
· 7GB storage with options to purchase additional storage per year at a price less than Google or Dropbox
· Access your files from anywhere
· Collaborate on documents at the same time, version history, chat, leave comments, use Facebook chat on SkyDrive
· Use free Microsoft Web Apps to create or revise Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents in the cloud. No need to have Office installed on your computer
· Upload files up to 2GB to SkyDrive (when you have the app installed on your computer)
· Selective sync – want to use SkyDrive on your mobile device, but don’t have much space? Choose to sync only the folders and documents you need on each device
· Upload any type of document including executables, movies, photos, pdfs, etc.
· Easily share an entire folder, or just a document with whomever you wish. Your recipient will not have to have a Microsoft account or have to sign in to access what you share with them
· Get an embed code to share a folder or photos or documents from SkyDrive
· Share Presentations, Photos, documents easily with your social networks via SkyDrive
· Excel surveys – use this free feature to create a survey to send out
· Recycle bin feature-users can put documents in there with the ability to restore them later and it doesn’t count against your storage limit
Bonus Features to Be Discussed
· Time permitting, we’ll go over two options to apply your custom domain name for free with two service providers you may not know about. With Google Apps discontinuing their free service last December, many VAs and clients may be looking for an alternative.
· We’ll look at Office 2013 and how smoothly it integrates with SkyDrive
Other Notes
Thanks to Microsoft for supporting the conference by donating enough 3GB memory cards for everyone attending. When they add this to their existing 7GB, that’s 10GB of free storage. Very nice!
The Ace Conference Center in Philadelphia was our venue. It was a great facility, very roomy and the meeting rooms were up-to-date technology wise and the staff was so accommodating. We had great food and snacks every day. Meeting so many new VAs was a great experience. I went there not knowing a soul and came home with quite a few business cards and hope to keep in touch with many.
Importance of Attending Live Conferences
By · CommentsThis week, I’ve been in Philadelphia at the IVAA Live Conference. (International Virtual Assistants Association). I’ve only been a member of IVAA for about a year and felt that getting to know some from this group would be an encouragement to me and perhaps I could encourage others. In addition it’s a great networking experience and I’ve always found it worthwhile to meet people. A fellow VA I met said, ‘It’s so nice to meet people in person rather than looking at a flat photo’. I hadn’t thought of photos being ‘flat’, but they certainly are. Although we had a program book with people’s photos and bios, the meet and greet process is so superior to that.
Before I’d decided to attend, I saw they had a call for speakers to pitch them on topics. Since I’ve been a SkyDrive Insider, I thought perhaps a session on SkyDrive tailored for the VA’s business might be something of interest. I filled out an extensive form last Fall and found it was accepted early in 2013. So the last couple of months, I’ve been putting together a presentation geared towards the VA’s needs as well as sharing with them the advantages of Office 365 and Office 2013. I’ll do another blog post on that later.
So here are some reasons to attend conferences.
Networking Opportunities
For those of us established or new in our fields, conferences are a great way to either strengthen your network or start a network of folks to help in your business. This is not the place to be shy or stay in your room all the time. I came here not knowing anyone and will leave having met 10 or more people I’ve been able to have conversations with people about everything from the ‘hot’ VA topics to how and why of the different types of social media we use.
Increase Your Knowledge
A well put together conference will have topics of interest to fulfill a range of needs. In the case of the IVAA, they did a masterful job choosing topics with a blend of nuts and bolts (how to use specific software) as well as getting the right people here to coach us by giving us concrete business building blocks to take home and implement.
Revitalize and de-stress
Many conferences are simply a series of rah-rah moments strung together, so it’s important to intentionally choose the type of conference that will send you home renewed, yet relaxed. If you head home with a list of things you want to implement along with a renewed sense of purpose, it was time and money well spent.
What conferences have you attended recently and what was your purpose for attending? Was it meaningful and would you go back to that one and why? Please leave your comments.
Lessons From ‘Renegades Write the Rules’
By · CommentsIn January, I attended #NMX, or BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. This was the largest blogging and social media conference I’ve ever attended. I was excited to get to either meet or sit in on sessions of folks whose netcasts I’d been listening to for some time. Checking out my conference-issued goody bag, I found a copy of the @AmyJoMartin book, ‘Renegades Write The Rules’. I’d never heard of Amy Jo, but she was a keynote speaker, so that was definitely on my schedule.
Amy Jo rocks at Twitter and, in fact, makes her living by showing, teaching and training others how to effectively brand themselves by using social media. Check out her website and business. She even set up a hashtag for people to use when commenting or referring to her book #TeamRenegades – pretty cool. I started reading her book on the way home and wrote in my weekly blog, that her talk was one of my conference highlights. I even tweeted her with a link to my article, and to my utter shock and delight, she answered! This is a woman with over a million twitter followers, and she took a moment to reply back to me! Because of listening to her and reading her book, I really changed my mindset towards Twitter. You see, my mindset was that Twitter was intrusive, too revealing and not my style. But something she said during her talk and in the book gave me great pause:
Using social media is not paparazzi – you have full control over what you post
I’m in charge of what information I want to share–don’t know why that hadn’t sunk in with me. Since she asked for my thoughts after finishing the book and I said, “will do”, I’ve been giving it quite a bit of thought. I made notes of some of the most meaningful quotes from her book or her talk and they are in purple below, so read on!
Amy’s (with my) Thoughts from her #NMX Talk and Book
(Quotes from Amy Jo are in purple)
Everyone can post content and information, the differentiating factor is you and your personality. Think about who you want to buy products and services from, who you’d want to work with or for. Most likely, it’s the person you’ve gotten to know, either via their blog, personally, or through social media. They have differentiated themselves from the crowd. We like to deal with people we know, have a connection to and those connections are forged by how we present ourselves.
Social media gives you access to people previously out of reach. I’m convinced this is true after getting a tweet both from @AmyJoMartin and from @JayBaer (75,000 Twitter followers). He was also a speaker at #NMX. I was very impressed with his talk on Youtility and tweeted about it, and I was once again very surprised that he’d take the time to respond! When the prominent social media personalities take time to respond back to ‘regular’ people like me, it makes us loyal fans.
On the other side of genuine, I was rather disappointed to find out @chrisducker, in his session, asked those of us who had signed up for his session if we got a tweet from him. Mine is below. Since he has his photo and his name front and center, I thought the tweet was coming from him. He proclaimed to all that it was not him but one of his assistants who tweeted to all who had signed up. If someone tweets me and uses the pronoun, ‘I’, I’m going to believe it’s that person sending me the tweet, not a ‘ghost-tweeter’. I can’t speak for how others felt, but I felt like one had been pulled over on me-not a good feeling.
Who is your brand? The answer is that our brand is what we make it. It’s up to each of us to develop and build it for us or our company.
Access leads to connections, then relationships forms. Twitter allows us access to anyone out there. It’s up to us to form the connection and then relationships with people. If you observe the Twitter streams of those you admire or have gotten to know, you see they are having conversations, not just the posting of links and information. A couple people’s podcasts I’d been listening to were Dustin Hartzler’s weekly WordPress podcast (excellent quality material for those of you interested in WordPress), and Todd Klindt’s weekly SharePoint netcast (also recommended as a source of quality information). I knew Dustin would be at #NMX, he even coordinated a great breakfast meetup which I really enjoyed. When looking through my Twitter feed Sunday morning, I saw that @ToddKlindt posting he was needing some directions getting to registration. I was able to help him out and then asked if he had time to meet up with me that morning. So it was great getting to meet these guys – as a result of Twitter and social media!
I also want to shout out to @BeckyMcCray. She lives in a miniscule town in Oklahoma, (and I live in Oklahoma), yet she’s used that along with Twitter to brand herself very successfully. She’s uber well connected and has written a very well-received book (yes, I have it and read it). I’ve exchanged some tweets with her and got to meet her at #SMTulsa last month. A particular tweet she put out impressed me. She tweeted something to the effect that she was honing her HootSuite to carve out all tweets containing links. Her goal for Twitter is conversations with people. And she’s very good at it.
Influence converts. Here, I believe Amy Jo is saying as we build ourselves into our ‘brand’, we become an authority in our chosen field and with persistence, we become influential and that influence we have attracts people to us and they realize we can help them.
Where your passion, purpose & skills reside – that’s your Royal Bliss. Social media is the Royal Equalizer – it gives you a voice and opportunity. Love these statements. They seem to sum up Amy Jo’s philosophy succinctly and of course, go along well with her Digital Royalty University!
So Amy, if you’re reading this far, thanks for the education and influencing me to use Twitter more. I’m still not where I want to be, but better than I was.
Have any of you had a change in the way you think about social media because of an event or book? Please share with us in the comment section.
Outlook – Some Productivity Tips
By · CommentsDo you get a lot of email every day? Most of us operate on email overload on a daily basis. Do you have a system to quickly handle each item? Many experts tell us to handle an item only once. If you open it, take action then – don’t close it and deal with it later. Some experts say to turn off the auto-check feature that Outlook has. They look at email as an interruption to productivity and suggest that checking email perhaps 2-3 times daily makes us more productive. 
What do you think? Can you ignore your email half a day to focus on your work, or is your email your work? I think the type of position we have in a company determines how we process email. If you’re in a support or customer service role, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to turn off Outlook for a specified period of time. However, if you have a deadline and really need to focus, or your position has more of a thought/long range planning emphasis, it probably makes sense to not let incoming email distract you.
Whatever your role, you may benefit from the three Outlook tips featured this week.They are:
- Effective ways to sort and organize your mail.
- Take an email item and make it a calendar or contact item.
- Fast searches to quickly find what you need.
Outlook Message Sorting
Check out your ‘View’ setting in Outlook. This is a quick way to cycle through all the choices available to you. The default is date with the newest on top. But check out the other options. Are you looking for something with an attachment – click on that. Have you ever tried out conversation view. I’ve found this one useful when needing to find and follow a thread of conversation. This feature is in Outlook 2003 and later. With Outlook 2010, there is a feature that will ‘clean up’ duplicate conversations, which is nice.
Below are links to ways to change how messages are grouped in Outlook. The defaults are listed in the links. There are instructions for making your own groups.
- InOutlook 2010
- In Outlook 2007
- In Outlook 2003
To be more productive in your email, I find it’s helpful to create folders. Then when items come in, I can file them in their proper folder. You may want to make your folders topic based. Studies show that most email is for reference, so you may want to have folders to file this material in by topic or by who it’s from. The method just depends on the way you think is effective. Someone else may have a totally different system, but it works for them.
Perhaps flagging or categorizing mail (using color) works best for you. Take a little time to set up your perfect system and then tweak it from time to time.
Take an email item and make it a Calendar, Task or Contact
If you’re like most people, you get many items via email that need to go to either your calendar, a task to be done or you’d like to add the sender to your contacts. I used to 
copy and paste or just open up my calendar and type things in from the email. Then I discovered drag and drop.
Use drag and drop to take an email and put it in your Calendar, Tasks or Contacts! If you want to put an email item on your calendar, Left-click and drag the item down to your calendar icon (see below). If you have more than one calendar, the icon will expand to show all your calendars and you can drag it on to the one you want. Then an appointment box will open up (look on your task bar for it). You will have to fill in the time and date details, but the body of the email will be in the appointment.
The same works for making an email into a task or contact. This is a great time saver.
Fast searches to quickly find what you need
Have you ever noticed the ‘Search Folders’ folder? It’s the last folder in the illustration below. It can become a powerful tool and timesaver for you. Use it to aggregate and/or sort your mail into specific categories. You can see below I’ve named a search folder ‘for follow up’. This contains all the emails I’ve flagged for follow up. Now they’re all in one place and I can quickly go to that folder to quickly check items needing attention.
If you have a team member(s) you collaborate with, you can set up a folder to capture all emails from people you designate. This can save you a lot of time and scrolling. You can also move your search folder up in the folder list. Simply right-click on it and follow the prompts to move it so it’s more in your line of sight.
Summary – Take Action!
Are you a ‘zero inbox’ person? I must confess I’m not. I’m one of those people who use Outlook as a repository of information, reference and referral. In my many years as an admin, I’ve had to go back and search for documentation to prove that yes, indeed, you did get an email on this and here it is! The Outlook search is powerful and effective for my needs and with the sorting features Outlook offers, I don’t see a need to change. I do need to go through and eliminate the junk I don’t need anymore and again, the sorting features in Outlook can quickly help me accomplish that.
What about you? Do you need help with your inbox or some organization tips? Perhaps I can help. Feel free to contact me via email, twitter or phone.
Use About.Me to Showcase Your Profile
By · CommentsAre you everywhere on the web? By everywhere I mean, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, your blog/website, YouTube; all the usual places socially connected people are. Once you’ve built up accounts at all your favorite locations, wouldn’t it be nice to have one url to share with your network? The site, About.Me does a more-than-adequate job in providing a one-stop shop for you to showcase yourself or your business by giving you a place to consolidate and show off all your social networks.
About.Me is stunningly visual because they allow you to upload a huge image – one that stretches and fills a whole computer screen, so make it a good quality photo. Then you’ll want to take some time to fill out a little biography on yourself and look into the other account settings, like notifications. If you want to be notified when people fave, compliment, share, reply, etc. to your page, this is the place to make your wishes known.
Next, is the most relevant part – adding the multiple ‘apps’ that let people know how to connect with you at most of your social networks. I say most because some are not there. Although there are six pages of apps to scroll through, Pinterest is noticeably absent from the list. Perhaps they are working on it.
Below is a snapshot of the Edit Page and some of the apps I’ve added. Be sure to click on the other tabs. Configuring your background, colors and fonts make your page unique and draws people in to look things over.
When you’re finished filling things out at the site, then About.Me gives you several ways to share your profile.
Below is code I put in a widget and then placed on my website. The social media icons will take you to my various sites.
About.Me adds Audio and Video Features to Bio
From the About.Me Blog, you can now add audio and/or video from SoundCloud, YouTube or Vimeo right in your bio. I haven’t tried this yet, but it’s a powerful way to connect with others and make your profile stand out.
Setting up your profile is free, so what are you waiting for?
How to Partition a Drive Without Destroying Data
By · CommentsThis week, I’ve been working on a donated laptop and getting it ready to go to the mission field of Mozambique, Africa. The laptop I got was loaded with Office and had XP Professional on it with no backup disks provided. The missionary wanted to have Ubuntu put on a partition of the drive, so my task this week was to figure out the best way to do that without having to wipe the drive and then make partitions. The more technical term is to partition a drive without destroying data. Oh, yes, and did I mention, I wanted to be able to do it for free!
Off I went to do my web research. I found a great wiki article that was quite helpful. It indicated whether the software was proprietary or not and if it was being maintained and by whom. So I was scrolling through this list.
I didn’t know from the list whether or not the software would partition an existing drive or not, so that needed further research. I found EaseUS and saw that it would be able to partition without having to wipe the drive, but you can see it is a for-pay program. Investigating further, I saw that for home use, it is free! In addition to making a partition, it can resize existing partitions, merge partitions and copy them. This software works for XP, Vista, Windows 7 and WIndows 8.
When I’m investigating software, I like to see how others have used it and actually how to use it. Are the directions clear, is the user interface friendly, have there been any adverse effects from using it, does it include any spyware – things like this.
I saw that CNET had rated it very highly and in fact, I was doing some of the research on their site, so I felt reassured using this program.
Next, I headed over to YouTube – font of much knowledge and great for those visual learners (that’s me, when it comes to software). I found this video from Butterscotch.com (a great tutorial and tech information site), that walked me though the process in less than 3”. A side note – there was a video from EaseUS, but since this software was not developed in the US, it only had text overlays on it, no speaking. I’d rather have someone talking and showing me at the same time, that’s why I found a video to meet my needs.
After the EaseUS software was installed, I just started following the instructions, referring back to the video for certain settings and it took less than 10” to make a new partition, name it and have EaseUS do its work. An automatic reboot was done and then during the boot-up process, the new drive was being created.
When it was finished, I saw my new U Drive (U for Ubuntu). My next project is to figure out how to get Ubuntu installed in the drive and how it will boot up – will I need a dual boot system for it, etc.
I do recommend EaseUS. They have for-pay version for people who are in business – if you have a need to partition a drive, re-partition or make changes, give this a try.
Social Media Conference-Tulsa
By · CommentsLast week, March 21-22, 2013, I attended the #smTulsa, or Social Media Conference in Tulsa. This was their third go-round and my first time to attend. It was very well run by a crew of volunteers from the Social Media Tulsa group and h
eaded by the effervescent and socially-connected Cheryl Lawson, otherwise known as @PartyAficionado. It was great to be around people from Oklahoma and get to know people and their many tech talents from our state.
Both days had pertinent keynote speeches as well as breakout/workshop sessions to attend. There was a pretty big focus on social media tools for non-profits, however, the tips and tools they spoke about work just as well for any of us, so I took advantage of some of those sessions.
A big focus and concern for everyone with a small business is email, collaboration, storage and sharing of documents. The speaker for this session mentioned Google for these services, but most of us know they discontinued their free Google apps for individuals, small business, etc. I was watching for him to talk about Microsoft SkyDrive (yes, I’m a Microsoft SkyDrive Insider!), but it wasn’t on his list of tools. I was happy to let him know about Microsoft SkyDrive, where you get 7GB of free storage, apps that can be downloaded for PC, Mac, and just about any phone or tablet. When you have SkyDrive, you can collaborate (your other collaborators do not have to sign in to an account), share and upload documents up to 2GB to your SkyDrive space. As long as you’re using SkyDrive, why not set up an Outlook.com email address for your business. Right now, I think Microsoft is the only source for free email (see my article a couple weeks ago on this). So attach your custom domain and set up as many as 500 email addresses for your company, all free. You can easily import your Outlook.com email into your desktop Outlook application. Many people aren’t aware that when they have their SkyDrive/Microsoft account they get to use the quite powerful Microsoft Web Apps. This is Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote in the cloud. It’s not a skimpy offering either. The features are rich and allow creation and editing of these types of documents. So then a business would have many startup headaches out of the way by using Microsoft SkyDrive and the many included features.
While at #smTulsa, I took some photos. Yes, I have a Windows Phone 8 and love it because any time I take a picture, I have it set so that my photo goes automatically to my camera roll folder in my SkyDrive. That gives me an automatic backup and an easy way to share at the same time. Because it’s in my SkyDrive, I can easily select pictures from an event and send them or just get a link and post it to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Here’s how:
- Navigate to the folder in your SkyDrive that contains the photos you want to share
- Click on the ‘Share’ button near the top of your screen
- You’ll see the below screen where you choose to get a link and an email right from this pop-up, use your own email service, or post to a social media account and you’re done!
If you choose to send a group of photos from your Outlook.com email, you’ll have the opportunity to send a really cool-looking preview grouping of your photos like I have below. 
You’re not actually sending the photos themselves and loading up someone’s inbox, you are sending a link where they can choose to either download or view them. Either way, when they click, they’ll be taken to SkyDrive to either view or download – the graphic preview makes the recipient want to click!
Take a look at my photo album from the Social Media Conference. If you have some great business collaboration tools to share, please leave a comment.
Office 365 and SkyDrive/SharePoint Collaboration
By · CommentsThis is the second in our series on Office 365 upgrades and what will change as well as looking at current features. This post will focus on document storage, sharing and collaboration.
Think of Office 365 as our small business alternative to expensive servers, software and maintenance. Office 365 can be used by one to hundreds of people in business at a very reasonable price point. To give you a quick look, here’s a synopsis of what you’ll get:
Office 365 Benefits
- Access to Office web apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint & OneNote). Share and collaborate in real time with co-workers or anyone you give permissions to. Bonus: anyone has access to Microsoft web apps even if they don’t have Office on their local computer
- Plenty of storage. I haven’t seen the exact amount, but I believe it’s 10GB for O365 accounts. Here’s what I’ve seen
- Sync up to 20,000 items in your SkyDrive Pro library, including files and folders
- Sync up to 5,000 items in other SharePoint libraries, including folders and files
- Ability to download files up to 2GB
- With SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint, you’ll have access to folders locally on your computer in addition to access from any connected computer and many devices (tablets, phones)
- For small companies, the SharePoint interface means you can set up team sites where employees can log in to access and check out documents
- Newsfeed-share, follow and keep up with teams, projects, etc. with this feature (newsfeed is an internal feature where employees can follow people or projects)
- You’re automatically upgraded and using the latest versions of Office
Storing and Sharing Documents
SkyDrive Pro lets you sync your SkyDrive library or other SharePoint libraries on team sites to your computer. You can then work with files in these libraries directly in Windows Explorer. You can access these files even when you’re offline. Updates to files sync with SharePoint whenever you’re online. This is from The Office website. The SkyDrive Pro feature allows you and your employees the ability to work on documents locally on your computer and then they will sync up the next time you’re on-line.
The O365 admin controls what is put in the ‘Team Site’ and who has access to the team site. That means certain employees have access to folders or libraries and some folders/libraries can be accessed only by the admin.
What is SkyDrive Pro? New!
The below is copied directly from the link above. So many people are confused about SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint, that I wanted to give you what Microsoft wrote
SkyDrive Pro is your professional library—the place to keep your work documents and other files. You can think of SkyDrive Pro as your SkyDrive for business. When you store your files on SkyDrive Pro, only you can see them, but you can easily share them with co-workers and access them from your mobile devices. Your files are safely kept in the cloud with SharePoint Online or on your company’s SharePoint Server 2013 servers, depending on what your company has set up.
SkyDrive Pro lets you:
- Store and organize your private documents and other files in a secure location in the cloud or on your company’s SharePoint servers.
- Share files and folders with other people in your organization and give them permission to review or edit the content.
- Synchronize files and folders in your SkyDrive Pro and other SharePoint libraries with your computer or mobile devices, so you can access your content offline. end of quote from Microsoft
How does SkyDrive Pro differ from SkyDrive?
Again, I’ve taken this from the Microsoft website: Here’s the difference:
- SkyDrive is free online storage that provides you with a personal library where you can upload and access files from any of your devices. Download one of the SkyDrive apps and you can easily save your documents, photos, and other files in this library, share them with friends, and even collaborate on content. For more information about using SkyDrive, see Work together on Office documents in SkyDrive.
- SkyDrive Pro provides you with a personal library for business, where you can upload and access documents, photos, and other files from your computer. This SkyDrive Pro library is managed by your organization and from there you can easily share and collaborate on content with co-workers. In addition, with the SkyDrive Pro client application, you can synchronize library files and folders with your local computer. (End of Microsoft quote.)
The New Dashboard Look On-Line
Here is a look at what current O365 user’s on-line Dashboard will look like. Click the image and you’ll be taken to my friend Todd Klindt’s SharePoint blog where you can read about Share-Point-y stuff. In the article this links to, he is talking about SharePoint 2013 and SkyDrive Pro-fascinating reading 
.
Below is what my current Dashboard looks like. I will be glad to get the navigation links (Newsfeed, SkyDrive, Sites) that Todd has. I think I’ll also get a link to email in my dashboard.
It All Boils Down To
- Secure storage for your business documents
- Ability to share entire folders, or individual documents with clients
- The admin has the ability to set up library/folder sharing for employees
- With SkyDrive Pro, your professional documents are available when you’re off-line and they’ll sync up when you’re back on-line
- If your company has a server at the office, employees usually won’t have after-hours access to them from their home computers. With Office 365, they can have access to documents from anywhere with an internet connection. Documents are available on smart phones or tablets (Android & Apple) with the Sky Drive apps for smart phones
We haven’t talked about all the different plans and pricing. There are a number of packages – you can look at them here. I’m getting along very well with the $6/month Small Business plan. There was a 30-day free trial with all plans, but now I see the trial is available only for the most expensive plan.
Consider what you get vs. what you have now. Do you now have mail that syncs across all your devices, do you have secure storage and anywhere access to your documents, would you like to have video conferencing, chat and file exchange with Lync? Since I manage my office set-up, things have been much easier since I switched to Office 365.
