David Strom

Amazon this week announced the availability of its Cloud Drive to consumers; the global retailer will give away 5 GB of storage to anyone who has an Amazon account. How does this compare with existing offerings from Google and Microsoft?

[ See also: Amazon's Cloud Player has already won me over and Amazon disguises powerful online storage as cloud music service ]

These days, having access to wireless broadband is an absolute necessity for home offices and small businesses. And after more than a decade of innovations, you would think that the standard wireless gateway/router would be a picture-perfect product by now. Alas, no.

While many routers offer good features, most still come with flaws that can make life a lot harder, such as confounding setups or limited security.

These days, having access to wireless broadband is an absolute necessity for home offices and small businesses. And after more than a decade of innovations, you would think that the standard wireless gateway/router would be a picture-perfect product by now. Alas, no.

While many routers offer good features, most still come with flaws that can make life a lot harder, such as confounding setups or limited security.

Seinfeld episodes notwithstanding, buying a domain name may be easy, but managing the domain and making smart technology decisions is another story. Let's take a look at the steps and decisions involved in setting up Web and e-mail hosting accounts for your domain.

An online registrar maintains various DNS records about your domain.First some basics. Getting a new domain is the purview of a domain registrar, someone like GoDaddy.com, Register.com, or even Network Solutions. The registrar handles the paperwork details and bills you once a year for taking care of them. Each registrar handles the various Domain Name System records that tell everyone on the Internet where to find your Web, e-mail, and other servers. The screen shot at right shows a listing of the records for my domain WebInformant.tv.

I thought I would respond as a business owner to the BizFeed column published a few weeks ago about not running any endpoint protection. Certainly, you need something, and while there are numerous security suites from Symantec, McAfee, and the like that provide firewall and anti-virus, they aren't integrated programs: more a collection of software much the way Microsoft Office is a collection of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software.

Here are three different approaches: two software products from Symantec and eEye, and a combination of hardware and software from a relatively new company called Napera. All three of them combine firewalls, intrusion prevention with centralized management consoles and reports. They are also designed for small businesses with limited budgets. They all install quickly and have a small number of options so you don't have to become a security guru to configure and operate them. The central consoles give you a birds-eye single-screen view of what is happening on your network so you can be assured that all your PCs are protected.

First up is Symantec's Endpoint Protection for Small Business Edition. While a mouthful, it is a pretty neat product and a better choice for small businesses than the Norton security suites. You need to purchase a management server for $500 and the individual client licenses go for about $35 per year if you have any Symantec products already, which is a real bargain. You need to install a single software agent to protect each client PC. The client software runs on XP SP1 or later versions, and the management server doesn't run on Vista machines. There is a free 30-day trial available on Symantec's Web site.

One of the earliest uses for a network was to be able to share printers, back when printers cost as much as a small car. But as prices dropped on printers and GM goes into bankruptcy, there are still compelling reasons and plenty of different models to choose from.

You probably know by now that any e-mail that isn't encrypted traverses the Internet in clear text that can easily be viewed with little skill and just some patience. So what are you doing to protect your company's sensitive e-mail?

The right way is to encrypt e-mail messages in their entire path from sender to receiver. You also need to digitally sign them, to ensure that no one else has tampered with them in transit.

If you haven't looked at your network cabling in a quite awhile, it might be time to consider upgrading to an all-wireless network infrastructure. Why? Because wireless is a very viable option that can connect all your PCs together.

What's happened? Well, the cost of wireless network adapters is nearly at parity with wired ones, and if you are buying laptops as your main desktop, then there is nothing to add to your PCs because all desktops come with built-in wireless network adapters now. Second, the performance of wireless, especially the newest 802.11n-capable products, is also nearly at parity with wired networks, or at least to the point where for most common office tasks your users won't know the difference. Finally, there is better management software to handle administrative tasks, and better encryption software to protect your wireless networks from the hacker-in-the-parking-lot-with-a-laptop scenario (HITPLWALS).

Last week, this post in The Cost Cutter column spoke about ways to cut your cell bills. If you travel overseas, here are some ways to cut costs since international cellular calls can be pricey.

• Buy a phone calling card once you get to your destination and use it from payphones or your hotel, This is a good option, depending on where you are going and what your hotel charges for both toll-free and local calls. You should know that some calling cards may not work with some foreign pay phones.
• Buy a new SIM module for your existing phone, but only if you have either T-Mobile or AT&T/Cingular accounts. The SIM module is the small circuit card that fits inside your phone, and gives your phone its identity. Most of the world's cell phones (except in Japan and a few other places), work on what is called the GSM networks that operate at either 900 MHz or 1800 MHz. The US and Canada GSM networks operate at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. So if you have a phone that can work on at least the 850, 900 and 1800 MHz frequencies, you should be set to roam abroad.
• If you are on Sprint or Verizon, you have no choice but to buy a new SIM module and a new phone. That is because they operate on non-GSM frequencies.

If you replace the SIM card that came with your phone with a card that works in the country you are visiting, you get several benefits. First, you don't pay roaming charges for local in-country calls, although if you are calling back to the States, you will pay international long distance charges. Second, if people in-country are trying to reach you, they don't pay for the international calls either. (Some of the networks overseas have the more enlightened method of calling party pays, but we won't go there for now.) You also don't use any minutes on your American cell accounts, which can be good if you have a limited number of minutes - when you travel, you don't think about all the time you are on calls. The trouble is if you are going to several different countries, then you need different SIMs and have to keep track of the numbers too. That gets onerous.

If you're like me, you probably hate attending business meetings. But a number of useful Internet-based tools have arisen that can help workgroups schedule and run them more effectively. All of the tools here work within most popular Web browsers, and most of them are available for free or for fairly low monthly fees. The challenge is in understanding which tool suits a particular situation, because not every meeting is held under the same circumstances.

Sync Multiple Calendars

Certainly the most common situations are those where you want to synchronize a common calendar, such as between someone's PDA and their Microsoft Outlook desktop, or between a boss's calendar and an assistant's. Many services can make sharing calendars between work team members (or even between family members or friends) easier. Both Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar offer free calendar sync, and numerous other products--including Calgoo's Connect, Apple's MobileMe and iTunes for its computers and iPhones, NuevaSync, and SugarSync--work with both services. BusySync and Spanning Sync also can synchronize Apple's iCal calendars with Google Calendar.

If you are part of a business, sooner or later you want to be able to collaborate on a database with a colleague or customer. In the past, the easiest way to share a small database was to create a spreadsheet and email it to your collaborators. While this isn't the best method, it has withstood more sophisticated competition for several reasons:

First, databases are still tricky for some people to understand, and spreadsheets are more obvious. A spreadsheet is usually contained on a single screen, so it is easy for someone to figure out its logic, and the grid of rows and columns is also easier than the typical relational database with a series of tables. Tables are more than many people – especially those who don't have a lot of formal IT training -- want to deal with. Second, the database collaboration tools are tough to learn and use. Look at how many people still use Lotus Notes for email and not much else. And since most of us are comfortable with email, using it as the transportation system isn’t all that taxing. Until the day comes when three people are working on the same spreadsheet or database and make conflicting changes.