Newsletter 2012.07

 
 

Welcome to the METHOD IT Newsletter for July 2012

Why choose Office 365 over Office 2013?

This month Microsoft unveiled a preview release of Office 2013, with a simplified, touch-friendly interface and cloud integration.
Looking forward, the gap is quickly closing between the traditional, installed desktop version of the suite and its cloud-based counterpart Office 365. In fact it’s making more and more sense to leave the former for the latter. Consider:

Cost and Speed – Office 2013 licenses are likely to start in the region of US$100-150. Office 365 costs as little as $6 per-user per-month. This also gives small and medium-sized businesses a reasonably priced introduction to the very powerful SharePoint. With Office 365 you can be fully migrated up and running with SharePoint, Outlook and Web-based versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint within days.

Accessibility and Portability – As long as you have an Internet connection you can access Office 365 from anywhere using just a web browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android and other smartphones and tablets.

Updates and Maintenance – Office 365 is cloud-based, so all patches, fixes, software and hardware upgrades, etc. are handled by Microsoft who also guarantee 99.9% server uptime.

We specialize in setting up Office 365 for small and medium-sized businesses, migrating all your existing email, contacts, documents and data and providing on-site training and support. We can also help design and implement your SharePoint document management and collaboration platform.

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is a key component in our Back Office and Private Cloud solutions and one valuable piece of the Office 365 suite, but do you know exactly what it is? Find out what it does and why we recommend it for unifying and streamlining business processes.

Tips & Tricks

Skype Bug Fix

A rare bug recently made public can send previous messages to the wrong contact after Skype has crashed and is restarted.
This affects Windows, Mac, Linux and Windows Phone.
Read More >>

How to Choose a Strong Password

The recent spate of social network and website hackings is a timely reminder to take a second look at your password selection habits.
Read More >>

Free Olympic Smartphone App

Like us you’ll no doubt be glued to the Olympic action over the coming weeks. We’ll be keeping up-to-date with the free, official results app for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Get it here –
iTunes >>
Google Play >>

News from the Web

Windows 8 Release Date Set

Microsoft recently announced that Windows 8 will be released on Friday October 26th.
Digital-download upgrades from XP, Vista and 7 will cost US$40 with the retail DVD selling for US$70, both far more reasonable prices than earlier versions.
This is one of the most ambitious and risky overhauls of the operating system in its history with the new Metro interface and apps.
Expect Microsoft’s flagship Windows 8 device, the Surface tablet, around the same time.

iPad Mini and iPhone 5 Rumors

Following the debut of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, rumors have started up again of an iPad Mini – but it is looking to be more of a reality this time. Reports suggest a 7.84 inch screen with the first generation iPad resolution of 1024×768 allowing for compatibility with existing apps.
Meanwhile every day sees more iPhone 5 ‘leaks’ and speculation on the Web. Talk is of a completely redesigned body, larger 4 inch screen, faster A6 quad-core processor, improved camera, NFC (Near Field Communication) for digital transactions and a September-October release.
The one rumor provoking the most outrage is of a smaller 19-pin dock/charger connector replacing the 30 pin design that Apple have been using for 9 years and instantly rendering all your old accessories obsolete – no, wait, hang on, now there’s talk of an adaptor to solve this problem. All we can do is wait and see…

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Released

Wednesday July 25th saw the release of Mountain Lion, the latest update to Mac OS X.
According to Apple, over 200 new features have been added to the operating system. Highlights include saving documents to iCloud, the notification center, reminders, Game Center and messaging app from iOS, an in-app ‘share’ button with SNS integration, Airplay mirroring (wirelessly sharing your screen on other Apple devices), a dictation app and major improvements for Chinese language users.
Please note that some older machines have been rendered incompatible with this update. A list of Mountain Lion compatible Macs can be found here.

Mountain Lion is available in the Mac App Store for ¥1,700 / US$19.99.

Enterprise iPad Adoption in Japan and the US

In what is probably one of the biggest enterprise adoptions of iOS devices in Japan, Nomura Securities decided to kit out their entire sales staff with 8,000 iPads.
The new system allows those out-in-the-field to carry up to 300 volumes of corporate documentation, answer customer questions and provide quotations on-the-spot, receive pushed updates that were previously done manually on an individual basis and drastically shorten preparation time for meetings.
It also has the added bonus of reducing the weight of their luggage from an average 7 kilograms to 662 grams!
Read more (Japanese) >>

An interesting CIO interview this month with an IT manager at US biotechnology company Genentech, who talks in detail about the practicalities of managing some 14,000+ iPads in the workplace. A fascinating run through of in-house app stores, the virtues of going native app over HTML5 web app and the implications this has for employees using multiple platforms under a BYOD (Bring-your-own-device) IT policy.
Read More >>

Interactive World Map of Underwater Internet Cables

Telecom market research firm TeleGeography created a very cool and educational map of submarine Internet cables around the globe and their usage. Fun to click around and see what $5.5 billion worth of pipelines looks like! No surprises that Japan is a hefty user of bandwidth.

Rocket Launchpad Gopher Becomes YouTube Idol

A curious gopher captured on camera at a Russian space facility in Kazakhstan has gone viral on YouTube. The cute rodent that lives near a rocket launch site took an unusual amount of interest in a camera placed on the ground, even gnawing at the lens at one point. Awww!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXybg4u-wc4