Task Management With Email is Very Limited. Asana’s New Calendar Feature Gives a Fresh View

I’ve been using Asana for several months, to manage the various projects we have at smallbiztechnology.com - I’ve even used Asana to assign personal tasks to my wife.

Instead of the massive back and forth using email to manage tasks, Asana, and other task management tools let you manage your tasks via a central dashboard where you can assign individuals, different tasks, with dates and more.

Asana recently announced a new calendaring featuring which enables you to not only see tasks - listed as a task - but also see tasks viewed in a calendar. This new view makes it easier to view your projects within the context of advanced planning and priorities.

According to Asana’s press release, because Calendars are views on top of the Asana Work Graph, they’re always current. Changes to a task for a due date made by someone else are reflected immediately in your Calendars. Drag and drop a task to a new date, or click on it to change the assignee or add a comment. Everyone else will see your changes right away.

If you are just using email to manage your company projects - you’re wasting money and operating inefficiently. Use a task management tool like Asana and which your productivity increase.



Review of the Kickstand Micro Projector from BEM Wireless

micro projector

Have you ever arranged a sales presentation with a prospect of one only to have four people show up to the meeting? Did you have to huddle around your laptop? Probably not ideal, but there are a variety of solutions. A relatively new entrant is the Kickstand Micro Projector from BEM Wireless. This tiny, handheld portable projector is elegant and compact.

Okay, micro projectors like this come with a lot of technical jargon (which I list a bit of below). But, let me keep it simple for now - if you need a small, travel-warrior-ready projector to show presentations to your prospects and customers, this baby is it. You can connect with a USB or HDMI cable (HDMI included). The BEM Wireless Kickstand Micro Projector is affordable at $499 when compared to similar quality projectors.

As you can see in the photo above, the Kickstand folds out from a slender, closed position. The silver leg folds in, and the projector itself swivels into that frame. The opening at the top is your carrying handle, but it comes with a durable carrying case to protect it.

You can place this projector just about anywhere that has a flat surface. Keep it close to a wall for a small one to two foot screen or move it as far as ten feet away for a 96 inch display (8 feet).

The display resolution from the full ten foot distance is terrific at 720p. Of course, it may serve for more than business purposes with an auxiliary Audio Out jack - for a portable home theater or playing games on a big screen. I had fun with the evaluation unit the company loaned to me.

What I Really Like:

  • You could walk into an office with a USB stick, plug it in, and start your presentation.
  • Remote control that lets you adjust what is called the keystone - when the top or bottom of the image is narrower on one end - looks trapezoid-ish.
  • You can move the Kickstand so you can project images on the ceiling, too.
  • Utilizes WXGA 1280 X 800 for higher widescreen resolution (720p) - and is powered by LEDs versus standard bulbs.
  • 400 Lumens.

What I’d Like to See:

  • Clarity on the name - I thought the projector operated on a wireless frequency. It does not. The company got its start in wireless speakers and thus the company name creates a little bit of confusion.  However, small point - the projector still works great and when I think about it - trying to run big files via wireless would be pretty tough.
  • More details and troubleshooting help on the website. Although LED lighting lasts a long time, it would be good to know how to replace the LED, if needed. BEM estimates the bulb will last 20,000 hours, however, unless you bang it around. It should last through lots of presentations and movies.

You can get far more powerful portable projectors with 1,000+ Lumens, but you’ll be carrying an extra bag. Likewise, you can find some smaller handheld projectors, but most don’t offer more than 100 Lumens. So, like all technology, there are tradeoffs.

You can read more about the Kickstand projector on the BEM Wireless site. For the road warrior or person giving lots of presentations, this is a lightweight, affordable projector that is worth checking out.



New Logiteh Video Conference Solution Is Ideal for Small Groups

There’s two kinds of video conference solutions on the market.

1) Those big, multiple thousand dollar video conferencing systems that are in most corporate offices in America.

2) Then there are the handful of desktop video conferencing solutions which include (Skype, Zoom.us, Webex, GoToMeeting Fuze, Google Hangout, Microsoft Lync and many others).

What happens if you have executives in a conference room, but your  budget does not support an expensive video conferencing solution?

Logitech has a new solution which bridges the gap between price and functionality of a desktop video conferencing solution and corporate room system.  The Logitech ConferenceCam CC3000e system includes a desktop camera designed and a table top microphone which is ideal for small groups to remotely communicate.

Check it out and see if its for you.



NHS website directs visitors to malware

The NHS Choices website has been directing visitors to advertising and malware websites.

The bug saw more than 800 web links on the nhs.uk website send visitors to websites showing advertising and malware, all unrelated to the NHS, and was fixed by the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) on Monday afternoon.

The group has put the issue down to an “internal coding error” which sent users to a mistyped URL, and was keen to stress that no third-parties were involved.

“We can confirm that this problem has arisen due to an internal coding error and that NHS Choices has not been maliciously attacked,” said a HSCIC spokeswoman on behalf of NHS Choices. The group added that the owner of the mistyped URL most likely took advantage and registered the domain to serve ads and malware to the redirected NHS website visitors.

Reddit user ‘Muzzers' was the first to come across the issue, when he found that an NHS website link had directed him to a different website.

“While attempting to access flu shot information I stumbled upon a page which redirected me to an advertisement. Digging a bit deeper I found hundreds more pages which redirect to either an advertisement or malware-infested page,” Muzzers posted on Reddit.

Cigital principal consultant Paco Hope told SCMagazineUK.com that this is proof that developers must be diligent, not just with their code, but with website links too.

“On the Internet, typos do not go nowhere - they go somewhere. In this case a simple typo pointed innocent users to the domain owned by the hacker who was prepared and just waiting. The lesson for software developers is to be diligent not just with code, but in testing all the links on every web application. Not every typo ends in an innocent "404" error. Some will end with malware shipped to a user.”

“It is important to note that medical records and NHS data are unlikely to be at risk: the threat is to individuals' PCs and contents via a malicious website,” Hope added.

“Interestingly, the first people to be infected could have been software developers who do the web site development. They would have been the first to load up the typo-affected web pages and would have been the first potential recipients of malware.”

At the time of writing, most of the links had been corrected by the NHS HSCIC.



US hotel franchise investigates customer data breach

White Lodging, a company which maintains the Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton and Westin hotel franchises in the US, is looking into claims that guest credit and debit card information may have been compromised.

This news comes after independent security researcher Brian Krebs reported that the breach includes credit and debit card information on thousands of guests at US Marriott hotels since March 23, 2013.

 

“Earlier this month, multiple sources in the banking industry began sharing data indicating that they were seeing a pattern of fraud on hundreds of cards that were all previously used at Marriott hotels from roughly March 23, 2013 on through the end of last year,” wrote Krebs on his website. “But those same sources said they were puzzled by the pattern of fraud, because it was seen only at specific Marriott hotels, including locations in Austin, Chicago Denver, Los Angeles, Louisville and Tampa.

“Turns out, the common thread among all of those Marriott locations is that they are managed by White Lodging.” White Lodging's website details that the firm is a “fully-integrated owner, developer and manager of premium brand hotels” which manages 168 hotels under various brands in 21 US states.

In response, the company said in a statement:  "An investigation is in progress, and we will provide meaningful information as soon as it becomes available.” Partnering hotel Marriott added that it was “working closely with the franchise management company as they investigate the matter”.

Sources told Krebs that the breach “appears to have affected mainly restaurants, gift shops and other establishments within hotels managed by White Lodging - not the property management systems that run the hotel front desk computers which handle guests checking in and out.”

 

Experienced infosec analyst Phil Cracknell, now head of security and privacy services at Company 85, told SCMagazineUK.com that large corporations - and their partners - must ensure security is high on their ‘to-do' agenda.

 

“It is essential that large corporations with an important brand to protect ensure that their third party suppliers and partners not only take security as seriously as they do, but that they are auditable and assurances can be gained for businesses such as Sheraton, Marriot and Hilton because consumers could so easily lose trust in a brand.”

 

White Lodging is the latest in a long line of big US firms to have suffered from major data breaches in recent months. Target Corporation lost 110 million customer records (including 40 million credit and debit card details), while US retailers Michaels and Neiman Marcus have also been targeted.



Orange France confirms hackers stole 800,000 customer records

Orange, the world's largest mobile operator, suffered a massive data breach in mid-January as hackers stole 800,000 customer records.

French media report that Orange France was targeted by unknown attackers on 16th January, with the attackers seemingly gaining access to the accounts section on the Orange website.

Orange has since told PCInpact that the “My Account” portal on the website was hacked and added that three percent of customers (that's approximately 800,000) were compromised.

The section was promptly closed and the security flaw was corrected within hours. The personal information is said to have included names, postal and email address, as well as phone numbers. Although passwords were not affected, the company has nonetheless urged users to change their password in an email sent out to affected customers.

One of the main risks of such a breach is that criminals could use the stolen details to carry out further attacks, such as spear-phishing attacks or phishing attacks to steal more sensitive information, such as banking credentials.

Tim Holman, CEO of 2-sec and president of ISSA UK, pointed to Orange's spotty record in regard to data breaches (the firm also suffered a huge email data breach in 2010), and said that the attack is likely “some sort of SQL injection”.

“The anatomy of the attack appears to be something wrong with the "My Accounts" page, for French customers, which suggests some sort of SQL injection attack being used to exfiltrate hundreds of thousands of customer records,” he told SCMagazineUK.com.

“Given the volume of exposed records, then SQL injection is very likely, as opposed to cross site scripting, broken authentication/session management.”

Brian Honan, founder and analyst at BH Consulting, concurred that the issue likely arose due to vulnerability on the Orange website.

From a business perspective Orange France should ensure that all areas of their online presence are regularly tested for security vulnerabilities, that anyone involved in developing their online presence is fully aware of how to develop code in a secure manner, and that their incident response plans are reviewed as a result of this breach to see what areas, if any, should be improved,” he told SCMagazineUK.com.

“Indeed, all companies should pay heed to this security breech, and breeches in other companies, to see what lessons can be applied to their own environment.”



Amazon Could Offer Small Retailers a Kindle Checkout System

Amazon.com may be planning to give small and mid-sized retailers Kindle tablets that act as a checkout system.

This plan could come to fruition by this summer or it could be scrapped altogether, according to a report from Wall Street Journal which quotes unnamed sources for the information. The plan likely would target small retailers that don’t have a complex or expensive checkout system already in place.

Several acquisitions Amazon made last year point to the possibility the online retailer wants to get into brick-and-mortar retail, various news sources indicate. Amazon also hired engineers away from GoPago Inc., a start-up company that offered checkout services through a smartphone app, the Wall Street Journal also suggests.

If Amazon does proceed with a plan to put Kindle tablet-based register systems in brick-and-mortar retail businesses, it would be joining an increasingly busy market. Square Inc. offers the Square Register to businesses as an alternative to the traditional cash register. Square Register uses an iPad or tablet that’s connected to a credit card reader to process transactions.

Square also has a smartphone plug-in device to accept credit card payments, as does PayPal with PayPal Here, and Intuit with its GoPayment device.

Though Amazon leads in online retail sales, about 90 percent of all retail sales are still conducted at traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. If Kindle register devices start appearing in traditional retail environments, Amazon could begin to have access to the data of millions of other customers. A Los Angeles Times report suggests that Amazon has already compiled information on consumers through the 230 million credit cards it has processed through online sales.

Image: Amazon Press



Hactivists deface eBay and PayPal websites

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is claiming responsibility for a DNS hack on the UK websites of eBay and PayPal over the weekend.

Visitors to both websites were redirected to defaced pages with offensive messages overlaying the Syrian flag in the binary code.

Specifically, the attackers carried out the attack by changing entries in the online look-up table that translates the PayPal.co.uk URL into an IP address computers use to route surfing requests.

Servers and customer records were reportedly unaffected, and the service returned to normal over the weekend.

The SEA, which says that it carried out the attack, reveals that the hijack was motivated by eBay's stance on doing business through PayPal with users in Syria.

“For denying Syrian citizens the ability to purchase online products, PayPal was hacked by SEA," wrote the pro-Assad hacktivists on the Official_SEA16‎ Twitter account.

PayPal, meanwhile, played down the incident in a statement:

“We were not hacked. For under 60 minutes, a very small subset of people visiting a few marketing web pages of PayPal France, UK and India websites were being redirected,” said PayPal senior director of global initiatives Anuj Nayar.

“There was no access to any consumer data whatsoever and no accounts were ever in any danger of being compromised. The situation was swiftly resolved and PayPal's service was not affected.”

Veteran security researcher Graham Cluley said that the companies can count themselves fortunate that no customer data was stolen.

“As with other hacks conducted by the group, there is no suggestion that customers' information was exposed - or even that any servers belonging to PayPal, or its owners eBay, were compromised,” he said on his blog.

“Instead, it sounds more likely that the pro-Assad hacking gang managed to redirect visitors to the sites to a third-party website under their control, perhaps by hijacking eBay and PayPal's .co.uk DNS entries.

“Of course, anyone who visited the websites during this episode should breathe a sigh of relief that the apparent hijacking was not done by someone more malicious with the intention of spreading, say, a drive-by malware download.”

Jarno Limnell, director of cyber security at Stonesoft, a McAfee Group Company, told SCMagazineUK.com that politically-motivated attacks like these will continue to rise.

“Cyberspace is increasingly being seen as an essential aspect of modern conflict,” he said. “Large organisations, particularly financial ones, are perfect high-profile targets for hackers, such as the SEA, to garner attention and amplify their cause. In the near-future, as attacks become more frequent, ideological groups are most likely to begin diversifying their targets. 

"Likely these will be key infrastructure projects, such as power grids or water treatment plants that form the foundation of society,” concludes Limnell.



Reinventing Your Business: Get Inspired For Less

Innovation is all about taking risks, trying new things, and building on your success. Every business reaches a point where old methods don’t work and demand begins to wane as new companies fill even the narrowest niche market. How can an established company reinvent itself to compete with brash newcomers without breaking the bank?

Blow Things Up

First, evaluate your product or service. Is it still relevant? Are your customers still responding favorably? Before you make the kind of epic decision Coca-Cola did by changing the formula of its flagship product, make sure you know whether product improvement will be welcomed, and evaluate the impact it will have on your business.

After fifteen years of slipping sales in an increasingly saturated market, the company felt it had to make a change to give their customers what they seemed to crave: something new and exciting. They did plenty of market research, testing the taste of New Coke® with nearly 200,000 consumers before launching the product. Then, for 79 days in 1985, Coca-Cola faced unprecedented customer wrath, a veritable firestorm of protest.

The decision to change the formula for Coke was heralded as the worst marketing decision in history.

The most interesting part of this story, however, is the effect on the market. Sales skyrocketed as customers panicked and hoarded Coke. Protest groups formed to bring back the Coke they knew and loved. And everybody everywhere was talking about it. Even in a pre-Facebook era without the lightning rod of social media, word spread faster than an internet meme. Faced with the loss of the world’s biggest soft drink, people remembered how deeply the brand was embedded into the culture.

Coca-Cola responded by reintroducing the original formula and sales soared. Coca-Cola regained its market share…and never lost it again. Was it all a brilliantly staged ploy to regain customers who had drifted away, or were company executives genuinely committed to the change? Maybe we’ll never know, but the most disastrous marketing blunder in the world certainly ended well.

Most businesses and products don’t have the kind of macro-scale marketing oomph to make a splash this big, but you can learn from the experience. Blow things up once in a while. Keep your customers interested by launching new products that speak directly to their wants and needs.

Be brave. Even the biggest disaster can end on a win.

Embrace the Tech

Going virtual may be a little intimidating for an old dog trying to learn new tricks, but it’s an exciting way to make big changes without a big investment. By taking your business to the cloud, you can save significant money with employees working from home and on the road, and increase customer satisfaction at the same time. One of the most widely used and useful business applications is customer relationship management (CRM) software.

You can use a CRM to enhance customer relationships by creating a more personal relationship. When you put detailed information such as preferences, purchases, and contact history in the hands of customer service representatives, you empower them to anticipate customer needs and communicate using more specifically targeted terms.

Small business CRM pricing is surprisingly affordable; Insightly, for example, offers free accounts and low-cost options. The innovative advantages of an online CRM don’t stop at cost and functionality. To get the most out of your CRM, you can integrate the program with other applications, including MailChimp, Google Apps, Outlook 2013, and Office 365.

Get a Personality

It’s not easy to stand out, but some companies have used social media in ways that feed the internet dweller’s ravenous hunger for quirk to great advantage. The best thing about using personality to gain attention online is that it’s cheap. It requires cleverness, humor, and personal interaction, but not necessarily a big budget. Oreo’s Twitter team regularly delights and surprises its 221k followers with a steady stream of humor, sillyness, and kooky item giveaways called #DunkSwag.

In 2010, formerly unhip company Old Spice rocked the internet when it hired former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa as its spokesperson, and cranked up the volume of the campaign by turning him loose on Twitter. He responded to random tweets with hilarious personal videos. In the aftermath of this intensive campaign, sales went up 107%. Using a sexy man to sell men’s products to the women who do most of the shopping was a risk well worth taking.

Hiring a celebrity may be outside your budget, but you may have all the resources you need in-house. A personable employee with a smartphone could deliver personal video answers to queries and comments on social media, along with helpful tips, company lore, and interesting tidbits about products and services. Check out how DiGiorno’s Pizza recently got major attention by live-tweeting during The Sound of Music. Cheap and effective!

While humor is an effective tool, developing your company voice is no joke. Your social presence will be most effective if it authentically reflects your corporate culture and resonates with your core customer base. If you understand your customers, you’ll know if your tweets should be the bees knees, groovy, rad, or fresh…whether you’re a startup seeking lean marketing strategy or an iconic brand reinventing your business.

Sherry Gray is a freelance content writer from Key West, FL, currently suffering the burbs of Orlando. She’s a science geek, a political junkie, and a regular contributor to ChamberofCommerce.com. She writes about business, marketing, technology, medicine…and everything else.

Fewer Small Businesses Paying Late in 2013

Small businesses were prompter at paying their loans and bills in 2013 than in 2012, data from several sources reveals. Moody’s Analytics and Experian reported substantial declines in both 30 and 90 day small business credit delinquency rates during the past year, part of an improving trend since the summer of 2011 when those rates ...

The post Fewer Small Businesses Paying Late in 2013 appeared first on Small Business Trends.



Fewer Small Businesses Paying Late in 2013

Small businesses were prompter at paying their loans and bills in 2013 than in 2012, data from several sources reveals. Moody’s Analytics and Experian reported substantial declines in both 30 and 90 day small business credit delinquency rates during the past year, part of an improving trend since the summer of 2011 when those rates ...

The post Fewer Small Businesses Paying Late in 2013 appeared first on Small Business Trends.



HP Expands Its “Just Right IT” Portfolio for SMBs

This past week HP expanded its Just Right IT program for small and medium sized businesses, with new offerings. The goal behind the Just Right IT program is to enable small and midsize businesses to scale up their information technology (“IT”) infrastructure as they grow.

Think beyond desktop computers or laptops.  Yes, HP offers those.

But the Just Right IT Program is about servers, virtualization, collaboration tools, cloud computing, storage, networking and the tools to support that kind of infrastructure, along with financing options to invest in it.

The HP SMB Approach

HP first launched the Just Right IT program ten months ago, back in March of 2013.  The concept is that HP is making plug-and-play components available that are designed to be less complex to configure and deploy than IT for large enterprises â€" and affordable on a smaller budget.  A small business can start out by meeting core needs, say with a server, email, and central database and software.  As the business grows, the IT can be added on to, without having to scrap everything and start over.

To make it easier for small and midsized businesses to choose, HP has set the solutions up into “bundles” depending on the size and needs of a business. The latest launch layers on more product and service choices to the core program.   New are HP ServeIT and HP ServiceIT.

The new offerings build on the HP ProLiant servers, which form the foundation of the Just Right IT program:

  • HP’s ServeIT program offers flexible bundles (“Flex-Bundles”) to keep pace with the demand for virtualization as well as Microsoft Exchange and VMWare technology, suitable for businesses either just getting started with virtualization or further along.  For instance, HP’s SMB First Server Solution has a form factor that can even fit into a home office.
  • The HP ServiceIT portfolio includes cloud services including cloud software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service solutions.  There are also support services at various levels, from foundation through to advanced.  And HP Financial services assist with making the investment in IT affordable.

For Various Sized Businesses … and Channel Partners

HP defines small businesses as those with under 100 employees.  Midsize businesses are those with 100 to 1000 employees.

The HP SMB approach is to add efficiency whatever the size of the business, as it grows, especially in a changing computing environment.

Demands on IT infrastructure are evolving, according to HP representatives.  The Bring-Your-Own-Device to work (BYOD) trend, as well as the explosion in mobile devices, have required IT infrastructure to stretch in new ways.

But therein lies the challenge.  Choosing IT can become more complex.  Yet, time and resource constraints put pressure on smaller businesses.

“SMBs don’t want 125 different options. They want focused choices,” said Lisa Wolfe, Leader, Worldwide Small Midmarket Business, HP Enterprise Group, in an interview.  The Just Right IT program, including the latest offerings, is designed to try to make the selection, implementation and support of IT more streamlined, to save time and money.

HP has also made a point to tie in its reseller channels.  Many SMBs rely on outside consultants and service providers to assist them with choosing, implementing and supporting their IT infrastructure.  HP respects those channel relationships, Wolfe added.

Image credit: HP

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