Get your slice of TOAST…
05/10/2012 3 Comments
Gmail has received a series of important upgrades over the last few weeks, and I am colored “impressed.” The entire system was overhauled earlier this year, adding new features, additional storage, and better integration with desktop and smartphone apps. Here’s the breakdown in case you missed anything: Read more of this post
03/05/2012 Leave a comment
In 2005, I received my first phone with Internet access: the Nokia 3650. I was at my son’s baseball game, and during a lull I decided to check out my work website. It took 2 minutes to appear and looked like one of those magazine clipping ransom notes you used to see in old TV shows. I tried using the Internet access a few other times with similar results: slow and completely unusable. I hoped for a day when I could use the Internet from a lawn chair just as easily as from my desk.
Of course, that day has since arrived. In fact, many of us can’t imagine a world where we aren’t able to check Facebook or read the news from our mobile devices. Sales of smartphones even surpassed PC’s last year, making them one of the most popular methods of connecting to the Internet. Mobile Internet is trending so quickly that many businesses are in danger of falling behind if they don’t start re-thinking their mobile strategies. Read more of this post
01/10/2012 2 Comments
Being a gadget hound, I’ve been ogling over the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show like an eight-year-old with a Toys “R” Us catalog before Christmas. The show is used to showcase the way technology is heading, and this year there is a clear message: Consumers don’t want to stay stationary. Read more of this post
12/14/2011 2 Comments
I was driving home from the office the other day and felt the urge to blast some tunes. Without even looking, I hit the power button on the radio, hit the scan button several times, and adjusted the volume just loud enough to blast away all thoughts of the TPS reports and stapler requisition forms due the next day. If you think about it, a car radio is a perfect example of “transparent technology.” They are all designed to fit the car’s environment, the controls are easy to use, and they work without having to put much thought into it…the radio is a part of the car rather than its own special-needs device. All technology should work this same way. Its whole purpose is to make lives easier and more efficient, not complicated and expensive. Many tech-curmudgeons will say “All modern technology is complicated!”, and that’s a true statement. The trick is to make sure you’re using appropriate technology. Read more of this post
11/21/2011 Leave a comment
This week, I’ve been messing around with our new Web Presence Builder. As you may have heard, this is our new tool allowing anyone to build a professional looking website in minutes. I’m happy to report it works VERY well. I’ve been having a lot of fun using it: when you log into Web Presence Builder, you are presented with a list of different templates that cover nearly any situation you can think of: Law firm, plumbers, wedding planning, birthday, hobbyist, musician, car repair, physician, health club…there’s dozens of choices, and if you’re one of those strange people who doesn’t fit into any category you can even make your own. Read more of this post
11/17/2011 Leave a comment
TOAST.net has been singing the praises of cloud services for years, and with good reason. Cloud based email, document systems, security, and web tools are easier to use, easier to maintain, incredibly less expensive, and now it turns out they help to save the planet. Read more of this post
11/04/2011 Leave a comment
We all know the old joke about men and maps. We always get lost, and we’ll never stop and ask for directions because we like to think we’re always in control and know what we’re doing. This joke isn’t as relevant anymore because of the advent of GPS devices, so the new joke is about the guy that can’t program a GPS to give him directions and won’t call technical support because he likes to think he’s always in control and knows what he’s doing. We’re stubborn on a multi-generational level. Read more of this post
09/23/2011 3 Comments
I was reading some forecast reports by IBM about Small and Medium Business (SMB) trends for 2012, and it’s reassuring to finally see an agreeable roadmap. In fact, here at TOAST.net we’ve been saying a lot of the same things as IBM for a few years now. SMB’s have under-invested in technology over the last 3-4 years, and in doing so have lost a lot of the edge needed to compete. Technology generates efficiency, which in turn lowers costs. Things that were preventing SMBs from expanding their technology base have been expense and the economy — understandable factors. However, 4 years ago nobody could have predicted the huge drop in tech costs due to cloud technology. It’s an exciting time for SMB owners because new advancements are allowing them to outmaneuver larger corporations and bring a competitive edge back to the marketplace. Here’s the top 5 areas SMBs should be focusing on for 2012 to stay ahead of the game: Read more of this post
09/21/2011 1 Comment
I don’t want to be a doom-and-gloom promoter, but it gets frustrating. It’s a tough economy out there. We all know that. There’s so much uneasiness in the business climate that everyone’s cutting back because of fear of the future. I just read a report saying companies are sticking hoards of cash under their mattresses because they’re afraid of investing it and never getting it back. A lot of this cash is coming from cost cutting, and it seems one of the first things that gets cut when times are tough are IT resources. Getting rid of the maintenance people leads to putting Band-Aids on problems…never really fixing them, but just doing the minimum to make things work for one more week. Read more of this post
09/02/2011 Leave a comment
At the beginning of 2011, Google announced it has given up on Google Gears, its work-around gadget that allowed offline access for Google Mail services. Gears worked, but was a bit clunky so I can see why it was discontinued. Google wanted to shoot for a better solution based on HTML 5, and it looks like they’ve just about completed their task…with a catch. Read more of this post
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