Technology Tips

10 Ways to Secure Your Laptop

Fast Company staff — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:15:23 -0400

While it might be a temporary inconvenience, a laptop can be easily replaced. It’s the potentially sensitive company data that can seriously hurt you, your business, or your clients and customers, if it falls into the wrong hands. Keep this in mind when you’re traveling with all this corporate info under your arm.

20 Coolest New Products from Top Design Shops

Fast Company staff — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:30:06 -0400

From Smart Design: Good Grips thinking moves from the kitchen to the home workshop with features such as a level with a magnetic bottom and a hammer with a bumper to protect surfaces when prying nails.

From $8

From Smart Design: Theis wildly popular Flip Video Ultra video camera does away with countless buttons that can make other models seem intimidating.

$150

Abusing Social Media

Caroline Waxler — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:45:54 -0400

Thanks for nothing, Web 2.0. With each sexy bit of social media that catches fire with users, lame companies get another fresh opportunity to pretend they know how to connect with customers without understanding what they're doing. No business is abandoning traditional advertising in favor of these gimmicky, halfhearted efforts. They're just abandoning any self-respect they once possessed. Whee!

7 Tips for Protecting Your Identity Online

Rachel King — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:15:15 -0400

When connecting your computer to the Internet, anti-virus software is an absolute must. Viruses, trojans, worms and other harmful attachments can destroy your computer, and even your life. Threat levels range from spam and pop-up windows to identity theft, where the culprit copies and sends your personal documents to other computers -- with the bug attached. The easiest way to prevent this from happening: simply download anti-virus or anti-spyware software.

Not So Fast: The Breakup

Steve Johnson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:31:08 -0400

Dear Quicken,

It's over.

You thought you could play your little power game, threatening to withhold "support" unless I, once again, reaffirmed my commitment to you. You call it a renewal of vows. I call it psychotic clinging.

Straight to Video

Robert Scoble — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:35:14 -0500

When CEO Tom Dickson first fired up his low-cost camera to record what happens when you throw a wooden rake handle, among other things, into one of his Blendtec blenders, he had no idea that within days he'd be an Internet superstar. Between YouTube and the company's willitblend.com, viewers have watched these extreme experiments more than 75 million times. His blenders are the ones whirring at Starbucks, but Will It Blend? is what juiced online retail sales more than 500% in the last year.

The Future of Fun

Alison Overholt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:29 -0500

The consumer fetishism of the Internet boom may be fizzling on U.S. shores, but not even torrential summer rains -- much less an economic slowdown -- can dampen the capitalist fervor of Hong Kong. I recently spent six days in the former British colony (now Special Administrative Region, or SAR, of China) and discovered that much has changed since my last visit, in 1999 -- a new flag, a more crowded skyline, and a few landmarks reduced to rubble -- but the culture of business and money is very much alive and well in this island society.

Technology Tomorrow

Fast Company — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:20 -0500

Determined scientists have been working to perfect robotics and artificial intelligence for more than half a century. Four years have passed since Deep Blue dethroned Garry Kasparov, the best (human) chess player of all time. Surely those scientists must be close. Surely Steven Spielberg's forecast of a thinking, interacting, loving "mecha" (mechanism) can't be that far away.

Our Favorite Things

Fast Company — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:38:54 -0500

Here at Fast Company, we take business seriously. We like to think big, work hard, and, on a good day at least, feel that we're creating value for our customers. But we like our toys too. We're gadget freaks -- and we're not afraid to admit it. Here are a bunch of our favorite things -- stuff we like so much that we wanted to share it with you. And if you like what you see here, be sure to visit Hot Stuff, an online gallery of products and services offered by our advertisers.

Email Habits Die Hard

Cecilia Rothenberger — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:36:33 -0500

Email is a window into a manager's soul. Or, at least, it's a juicy peephole, says organizational-behavior guru David Owens.

Calling All Geeks

Michael A. Prospero — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:59:28 -0500

Want to connect your Canon digital camera to your Dell computer and use a Linksys router to wirelessly send the images to your HP printer? Well, good luck with that. Unless your neighbor's pasty-faced kid spends his waking hours playing Halo 2, chances are you'll need to call someone. But who? HP? Linksys? Dell?

Word Constellations

Keith H. Hammonds — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:44:56 -0500

The Visual Thesaurus, by Thinkmap Inc., maps relationships among words in three dimensions, rotating to reveal the entire universe of related words. It's like the class know-it-all, but more fun: Placing the cursor over a word (colored by part of speech) reveals its meaning; placing it between words shows how they are related. Clicking on a meaning reorders the universe with the new word at the center. Online subscriptions are $11.95 a year (www.visualthesaurus.com).

Something Phish-y

Scott Kirsner — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:44:10 -0500

Surely the email from AT&T Worldnet was a scam: Something was wrong with my account, it said, and they wanted me to click on a link and give them my credit card number. Sounded like "phishing," one of the newest mutations of Internet skullduggery.

What's phishing? It's "any email communication that looks legitimate, but its sole purpose is to defraud you of your account information and the money in your account," according to Bill McCumber, cofounder of the Dallas info-security firm Privacy Inc.

Time (Zone) Travelers

Scott Kirsner — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:51:52 -0500

Claude Philipps is not a happy man.

He's standing in the middle of a sea of cubicles at the headquarters of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Organising Committee, the group responsible for putting on the Summer Olympics this month.

The World Is Their R&D Lab

Jena McGregor — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:50:17 -0500

It was the American Idol of the Jiffy-envelope-and-ink-jet- cartridge crowd. At the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, 12 nervous finalists awaited the coronation of the $25,000 grand prize winner of the Staples Invention Quest, a national search for the "next great office product."

A Little Help from Your Friends

Alison Overholt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:50:08 -0500

Related Stories:

It's a Blog World After All: How companies such as Verizon, IBM, Microsoft are using blogs for knowledge management -- and marketing

Professionals, Publishing for the People: David Weinberger on how conversations within companies can scale globally

read more

Good To Great

Alison Overholt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:49:38 -0500

There's a reason the BlackBerry wireless messaging devices by Research in Motion (RIM) have been branded "CrackBerries" by cognoscenti. Once you have access to always-on wireless email from the road without having to lug around a laptop, it's impossible to quit tapping out messages--on the subway, on the street, even during family meals.

Best Blog Ever

Jena McGregor — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:49:26 -0500

Related Stories:

It's a Blog World After All: How companies such as Verizon, IBM, Microsoft are using blogs for knowledge management -- and marketing

Professionals, Publishing for the People: David Weinberger on how conversations within companies can scale globally

read more

Worker, Hack Thyself

Ryan Underwood — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:48:55 -0500

I know it was for demonstration purposes only. But still, when John Nunes, an information security consultant, called my cell phone and rigged the caller ID to display my office phone number (even though I was staring at my office phone at the time and Nunes placed the call from 300 miles away), it was spooky.

Networking Overload

Scott Kirsner — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:48:38 -0500

I don't know Kenneth Norton, but he's a mere two degrees of separation from me. Norton is director of product management at Yahoo, and he has coined one of the best new words of 2004. The word is "snam."

Everyone knows what spam is--unwanted email. Snam is a mutant variant. It's unwanted email generated by such "social networking" Web sites as Friendster, LinkedIn, and Tribe. Social networking . . . snam? Get it?

Post(er) Boy

Jena McGregor — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:48:22 -0500

Related Stories:

It's a Blog World After All: How companies such as Verizon, IBM, Microsoft are using blogs for knowledge management -- and marketing

Professionals, Publishing for the People: David Weinberger on how conversations within companies can scale globally

read more

It's a Blog World After All

Jena McGregor — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:48:11 -0500

My Web Poll

Where do blogs offer the most potential for business?
read more

Between the Lines: Six Degrees of Competition

Alison Overholt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:48:05 -0500

Related Stories:

It's a Blog World After All: How companies such as Verizon, IBM, Microsoft are using blogs for knowledge management -- and marketing

Professionals, Publishing for the People: David Weinberger on how conversations within companies can scale globally

read more

Tech Support

Scott Kirsner; Danielle Sacks — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:44:54 -0500

Filtering Spam Filters

Spam is like the weather and taxes. Everyone gripes, but no one ever does anything about it.
read more

Office Handbook

Ryan Underwood — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:43:58 -0500

In the course of your work, you likely will engage in teleconference calls. To maintain standards of decorum, please note the following guidelines.

Extraneous noise: Heavy breathing, coughs, and sniffles are amplified to disturbing proportions by teleconferencing equipment. Please address outstanding respiratory issues before calls commence. Heavy breathers should maintain a distance of four inches between mouth and phone.
read more