Tired Of Juggling The Many Apps Your Team Uses?

by Felicien | Mar 13, 2018 | Education

Integrate and Collaborate Seamlessly Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams has become the go-to chat-based workspace in Office 365. It’s more than just a hub for teamwork. It’s even customizable for each type of team.
Microsoft Teams is perfect for one-on-one conversations, open group discussions or even public meetings. It has many modern features that make meetings more fun and productive. For instance, there are cool GIFs, stickers, and emojis available so team members can show a little personality. The program integrates well with Outlook email and it’s easy to switch between teams. Add to that the ability to use video calling on Android that includes mobile voice and you’ve got an excellent business resource.
The Microsoft Teams app provides users with all the tools necessary to facilitate meetings for corporate America as well as freelancers and even educational institutions. With so many people now taking online classes, the Teams app can give a tutor and student the perfect place to discuss Algebra or learn a new language. The app is fairly intuitive and most users pick up all the fine points of how to use it very quickly.
How Microsoft Teams Sets Itself Apart
With so many meeting apps available now, organizations want to know why Microsoft Teams is better. That’s a good question and it does have a good answer: because this app is included in Office 365, it seamlessly integrates with all the programs that today’s business professionals are already using. Within the Teams app, users can access all files and any Office programs such as PowerPoint, Excel, Word and OneNote. In addition, the app features integration with Power Bl, SharePoint and Planner Intelligence using Microsoft Graph.
Though you can open these files using other meeting apps, they are seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft Teams app, limiting the additional steps that users must perform. Many of the exciting features are available with just a single tap. Regardless of what type of business you’re in, the Microsoft Team’s app can be customized to work the way you need it to. That’s one of the big reasons why people in so many different industries choose Team. The app works just as well for a few people or a dozen. It works nicely for business pros, teachers and students. The app is easy to set up and takes very little instruction to get started. With custom memes and tailored channels, most people quickly become expert Teams users.
Beyond the Basics
After using Microsoft Teams for a while, most people start looking around at some of the more advanced features, of which there are many. Do you need to integrate some common cloud services into your meeting? It’s a simple process.
Partner integration is available for Trello and SAP but Microsoft will be adding new partners in the future. The individual channels contain Bots that can be working in the background on important tasks. In addition to those great features, the Teams App is served from the Microsoft global hyperscale cloud. That makes it available from anywhere in the world, so if you need to meet with people Japan, in Taiwan, someone in Quebec and a group in India, it’s a simple matter to do so. Team players can share their documents, show a PowerPoint, go over an Excel spreadsheet and work on many other tasks like these. There are virtually a limitless number of tasks that can be done and without the help of an IT specialist.
Ideal for the Medical Field
Since the Teams app is compliant with HIPAA, ISO27001, and others, it’s perfect for use in a medical facility of any type or size. However, the app could also work well in telemedicine. Though live face-to-face meeting software is included in most programs for the telemedicine industry, Teams could be used in numerous instances. Say you were on the go and needed to use the app from your mobile phone. It’s not only quick and easy but remember that it is compliant with most HIPAA guidelines. Talk to a colleague or patient. Sometimes you just need a quick face-to-face with someone and that’s it.
Excellent Built-In Security
The Teams app is big on security as well. With so many thousands of cyber-theft events taking place each year around the world, you just can’t be too careful. Sometimes a team might be talking about their favorite flavor of ice cream and sometimes they might be discussing a new hyperdrive for America’s next rocket ship. Multi-factor authentication and built-in data protection are just two ways Microsoft ensures that your meeting will remain confidential.
Use Teams to Enhance Customer Service
Though this is being done in some organizations, in the future there may be a great number of businesses that contact their customers using apps like Teams, to let customers know about some problem with an order. Perhaps you just sold hardwood flooring to a residential customer for their whole house but now you’ve learned that the flooring is back-ordered for six months. Wouldn’t it be better to speak to this customer face-to-face when you break the news to them? Customers may be less upset when they realize that the store cared enough to have a manager call them and speak to them in person about the problem. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to retail sales.
In the sales world, it’s very common to have angry customers whose brand-new refrigerator/stove/television/computer just stopped working. Mitigating customer problems is a great way to use Microsoft Teams.

Working Together
Microsoft Teams encourages people to work together. You can bring up the new budget from Excel and let everyone go over it, make comments, and suggest changes. You can open the new marketing plan in Word so that a whole room full of execs hear about the latest marketing campaign. They need to become familiar enough with it to pass on the information to employees in their department. Since most people have Office 365 already on their computer, there’s nothing new to install.
How to Set Up a Team
Simply go to the Office interface and click on the Teams App. At the bottom left corner of the screen, select “Create Team”, then type a name and short description. Next, add people to your new team. Using Microsoft Outlook, you can add an entire group. Now click “Done” and create a general channel. Other channels may be added later as needed. Name and describe this channel, click “Add” and it’s all set up. Within just a few minutes you can have a specific meeting place set up where you can meet each week with co-workers, students, your doctor, unhappy customers and much more.
Miscellaneous Features
Adding and removing team members is simple and only takes a few moments. A tutor who is working with five different students throughout the day could easily change the student’s name quickly in between each lesson. You might start with a private chat, just between the teacher and student. However, what if you wanted to add a second teacher or several more students? It’s easy to do that. Just list the name(s) of the people you want to attend, then compose a new message in Outlook to invite them to attend. While in a chat, you can make a video or audio call by selecting the icon for it. Chats can be renamed, which is good for those that get transferred to a different department. You can continue using the same chat room; just add or remove people as needed.
Microsoft Team has so many more features that make life and work much simpler. It is quickly becoming the favorite virtual chat room for business people in every industry. If you’re still feeling you need some help with setting up a chat room, Microsoft offers a great range of informative YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions for how to do just about anything.

Has Microsoft Won The War?

by Felicien | Mar 12, 2018 | Education

Do Your Employees Think Of Your Meetings As Nap Time?

by Felicien | Mar 12, 2018 | Education

Weekly leadership meetings can be boring for everyone involved. It can be difficult to get anything real, tangible or important accomplished – unless you have the right strategy put in place.

The concept of the leadership meeting started out with the proper intentions. Entrepreneurs wanted a way to improve their leaders and inspire organic growth throughout their company. Over the years, these leadership meetings have morphed into dull, tedious get-togethers that nobody wants to attend. So how can you put some life back into your weekly leadership meetings? How do you get everyone so keen on attending that they arrive early? It may seem impossible, but it isn’t.
Step One – Create Interest
People love contests, and they love winning things even more, so why not incorporate that concept into your weekly meetings? At the end of each meeting, challenge the participants to find the answer to some question that relates to your business, your industry and/or its history. It could be anything from “Who held the first patent on an automatic dishwasher?” to “What was the slowest day in New York Stock Exchange history?” Winners could receive a free lunch or have their photo posted on the bulletin board. Get creative and come up with some great challenges for your participants… items that will really make them think. There are endless ways to create interest for an upcoming meeting. You could even put together a small team whose job is to plan unique meeting events.
Step Two – Time
Late arrivals can cause meetings to get off to a rocky start. Get your people in the habit of showing up five minutes early and always end the meeting on time. Time flies when you’re having fun, but it drags when everyone is bored silly. So, put together an interesting agenda for each meeting; something with a theme can be fun. Then start and end on time. Adjust meeting lengths so that you don’t have 20 minutes where nothing happens. Try to be flexible with meeting lengths. You may have a week where there are lots to discuss and other times where there’s almost nothing to talk about. Don’t force people to sit for 30 minutes in a meeting when there’s really nothing to say or do. Getting out early always perks everyone up!
Step Three – Get Everyone Involved
Many meeting goers just sit quietly during the whole time and say almost nothing. How can you get everyone involved so that the meeting is a big success? Each week, assign several people to come up with pressing topics for the next meeting. Try to involve everyone at some point instead of calling on the same people each week. People will just naturally become more interested if they are part of putting together the meeting agenda. This also helps you to identify natural born leaders and people with creative thinking. Ask different people to be responsible for refreshments, topics and other meeting-related things.
Step Four – Solve Real Issues
One thing that can really make a meeting a yawn-fest is when there’s nothing interesting to talk about. Try to solve real issues at each meeting. If you aren’t sure, then ask employees to submit items they think are company-wide problems. Maybe there are specific issues in the accounting department that need to be dealt with. Employees usually know more about what’s really going on than the management does, so enlist their help to identify real problems that need answers.
Everyone likes to think they’re contributing and helping to make their workplace better. Don’t be afraid to tackle the tough issues, such as appropriate workplace dress codes. There are always a few renegades in every company who will show up to work in house shoes or skirts that are too short. If your workplace doesn’t have an established dress code, then this would be a good topic for a company-wide meeting. Employees must realize that dress codes are set in place so that no one is paying more attention to what a person is wearing instead of their job.
Step Five – Get People Talking
Many of us are simply not good at speaking in public. In fact, the majority of meeting-goers will sit quietly the whole time and never say one word. How do you get everyone talking? How do you get their attention? One great way that always works is to begin each meeting by asking each person to talk about themselves. Most people enjoy talking about themselves. So, start each meeting by going around the room. Give each person five minutes to tell everyone what they’ve been up to. What are their hobbies? Do they have pets? What did they do last weekend? This can become a great time of bonding where employees learn more about each other.
Generally speaking, people get along better if they feel some sort of connection with each other. This can also lead to better cooperation in the workplace and fewer disagreements.
Next Steps
Putting together an effective meeting week in and week out can be challenging. Why not assign meeting agendas to small teams each week? Try to be flexible and change things up now and then by holding the meeting in a virtual space like Zoom or Go-To-Meeting. Change up your venue as well by holding one meeting each month at a local coffee shop. Try to meet in well-lit rooms with multi-media available. People tend to nod off more when they’re sitting in small, cramped, poorly lit rooms with dingy walls.
Once a year, take your meeting to another city. You might choose a city of historic interest or someplace where you’re thinking of building a new office/location. When your meeting times are interesting, fun and lively, people will get involved and you’ll notice that the meetings are making a positive impact on everyone. Try to remind your employees that weekly meetings are meant to help them grow as people and as employees. If your company isn’t benefiting from weekly meetings, then they’re a waste of time and resources.

Tired of Your Local Shock Jockeys?

by Felicien | Mar 9, 2018 | Education

Give Free Global Radio A Try Instead
Listening to free, global radio stations is a great way to broaden your horizons and liven up your listen to habits. It’s also a lot easier than you may think.

Why Listen to Global Radio?
Many people are saying that radio is dead, but that’s not true at all. It has morphed into something much greater than it once was. Today, many of us have friends and family living in other countries, which is why someone might want to listen to a radio station in Hong Kong. There is a wide range of other reasons as well. Maybe you grew up in the Philippines and just want to keep up with what’s going on in your hometown. Tuning into one of their local radio stations is a great way to do this.
Say you just moved from Seattle to New York, but maybe you’d like to continue getting daily news from Seattle. Or maybe you might be thinking of moving to New Zealand. What better way to find out what life is really like there than by listening to local radio stations?
Get Local News & Weather
You can get local news, weather and other fun, interesting or weird information by tuning into radio stations in other parts of the world. The best part about this is that there are now several services that offer you the ability to listen to dozens of different radio stations from Ireland to Australia. Many of these services allow you to browse by station or by country. Let’s say you want to listen to a radio station in Latvia.
Latvia is a small country on the western border of Russia. Estonia lies to the north, while Belarus lies to the south. In spite of this being a small remote nation, one global radio service offers 19 different radio stations in Latvia. Some of these stations are broadcast in Russian while some are broadcast in Latvian or other Baltic languages. If you’re trying to learn to speak Russian, listening to a Russian radio station would enhance your efforts.
Whether you were born in France and yearn to hear the language spoken by French people or you are trying to learn about a new culture, listening to a French radio station would make your efforts more enjoyable. As mentioned above, access to global radio stations is free on many websites. Most of these sites give you choices as to what you’d like to listen to. You can listen to talk radio shows, local news, and weather for any city, sports news for any country or city, or just music from the city or country of your choosing.
How to Get Started
Search for internet radio stations or services that provide multiple choices. Good search phrases for this include:

Listen to radio stations worldwide
Global radio stations
Internet radio

Multiple choices will come up depending on exactly what you typed in the browser. Some of these will be paid services like Amazon Music Unlimited. Though they do offer 30 days of free music, at some point you’ll have to start paying to listen. Of course, a paid service will offer other perks like being able to listen using your Echo device. These are Alexa voice-controlled devices that make it easy to hear your favorite tunes from Spain, India or anyplace in the world.
If you’re not ready to sign up for a paid service, you’ll also find many free services like Pandora, Screamer, TuneIn, and Jango. Most of these allow you to search for your favorite artist, search by genre, or search by specific song/artist titles. You might be looking for the latest Hip Hop music or some good music for your workout routine. Simply click on something that peaks your interests and listens. If you don’t like what you hear, use the back button to return to the original page.
At Pandora, you create your own personal “station” by choosing favorite artists or genres of music such as country music. You can add favorite tunes or artists as you desire. Pandora offers ad-free listening for around $5 per month. This type of “radio station” does not include local news and weather; it’s just music.
Tips for Success
With so much cultural, musical, and lifestyle information available through radio stations, there’s no reason not to become an avid listener. You can broaden your musical tastes or just find out what’s going on today in Rome simply by tuning into an Internet radio station. However, there are many other reasons to listen – become better informed about what’s going on in the world, or track new emerging technology in Southeast Asia.
Since there are so many choices now available, select a station or service based on what you’d like to accomplish. If you simply want to listen to music, then Pandora or Jango are both good choices. If you want to listen to an actual radio station, then Screamer and TuneIn are good ideas. Most stations and services offer ad-free content for an additional charge. You may have to pay extra for specific content, such as comedy programming.
The interface for many worldwide radio stations will allow you to manage volume control, play, stop or resume listening. They may also have an information box that will tell you what song/artist is currently playing. You can tag a song or a station as a “favorite” so that it’s easy to return there.
Improving your Sound Quality
With music, sound quality is usually important. That’s where many computers and laptops fall short. You may have to spend over $1,000 to get a computer with a decent sound card. If you are unable to afford this, there are workarounds. Amazon and other online sellers, offer devices that allow you to hook your computer up to external speakers.
External Speakers
To find out more about this, simply search online for “how to hook up my computer to external speakers” and other similar phrases. Usually, it’s just a matter of wiring your computer to a device like a Lepai LP2020 amplifier and then wiring that device to your external speakers. You can also purchase external speakers made specifically for this purpose. These speakers will have a 3.5mm jack or USB plug that can be plugged directly into the laptop or computer.
Of course, all computers have a headphone jack. For about $100 you can buy headphones with amazing sound quality. This will make your listening experience more personal and intimate. This is a good idea when you have others in the family or home who may not want to listen to, say, Latvian Folk Music.

Exploring The Dark Net and Deep Web – What Are They, Really?

by Felicien | Mar 8, 2018 | Education

Though terms like the Dark Web and Deep Web are often used interchangeably, they aren’t the same place at all – read on to learn everything you need to know about both.

The term Deep Web is used to describe any content that is not indexed by Google. These are typically not the disgusting, creepy sites that might contain illegal images, drugs, and other nefarious information.
Instead, the Deep Web contains any gated content that requires user login credentials. Sites like this might include a company’s backend intranet site or a university site where only students can access the content. Organizations that host their own intranet cannot be crawled by Google Bots and therefore are considered part of the Deep Web. Even your Gmail account cannot be indexed by Google Bots and so it is considered Deep Web content.
The Dark Web is a subset of the Deep Web. This is like the Back Alley of Main Street USA, where all sorts of (often) illegal interactions take place. There, you’ll find a wide range of seedy content and illegal activities, along with products and services that most folks would prefer to avoid.
The Dark Web requires a special web browser and other tools that can protect your identity. The most common browsers used to access these areas are Tor (the Onion Browser), Freenet and I2P. Though many people are curious about the content on these sites, just a single visit to one of these sites may place you on an FBI watchlist, so proceed with caution.
How Big is the Internet?
Some experts say that only 4 percent of the whole Internet is readily available to users. The other 96 percent is hidden behind walls that require special tools to access. Much of this content is not illegal or unethical; it’s just content that the creators do not want to be made public for whatever reason.
On the other hand, there is a huge amount of content that is of questionable origin. For instance, one very well-known black market online site called Silk Road was highly popular on the Dark Web. At Silk Road, people all over the world could purchase illegal drugs, fake IDs, and other such items. Silk Road was finally shut down by the FBI in 2013, when the owner Ross W. Ulbricht was arrested. Other similar sites have tried to spring up, but the FBI keeps close tabs on this type of illegal drug trade on the Internet.
Proceed With Caution
You should never visit a site like this without a VPN, which will mask your identity. Many other precautions are usually recommended, such as enabling “noscript” in the TOR browser and turning off your webcam. Even with all precautions in place, just one visit to a Dark Website can alert local police. Sites like this always deal in Bitcoins and rarely take credit cards. No one wants a $50,000 transaction to hire a hitman to show up on their credit card statement.
Many people, even savvy Internet users, are very uneducated when it comes to the Dark Web and that’s actually a good thing. It means they haven’t gone searching for content that is probably illegal or unethical. It’s also a topic that has been so taboo in the past that users simply couldn’t or wouldn’t go looking for answers. Though there are a great many Dark Web sites, how do you find them?
As mentioned above, you need a special browser, but often word of mouth is one way people find out about sites that might deal in unlawful activities. There are a number of forums and directories that also make mention of Tor activities, such as Reddit.
The Tor network hosts many clandestine or hidden services that you can’t find using a regular browser, including hacking software.
How to Access the Deep Web
Typically, those who want or need access to corporate content already know how to access it. Other examples include webinars or forums that require registration. This includes online classrooms and other teaching materials owned by schools and universities. Most company databases cannot be indexed by search engines. Academic journals and scientific papers are also excluded from the indexing process. Your banking information and most other personal financial information is not indexed by search engines and therefore considered deep web content. It is possible to exclude your website from search engines and sometimes people do this to protect their privacy.
How to Access the Dark Web
First of all, not all sites on the Dark Web are associated with illegal activities. The well-known site, WikiLeaks first began on the Dark Web as a secret place where whistleblowers could vent. In addition, the FBI has been cracking down on sites that deal in illegal drugs and dozens of these sites have recently been closed down.
Tor software encrypts web traffic in layers that allow it to bounce traffic around the world. With each pass, a layer of encryption is deleted before the data moves to the next network. Though it isn’t foolproof, it’s the best-known way to prevent anyone from spying on computers that enter the Dark Web.
Below are the step-by-step instructions for accessing the Dark Web. Remember to tread carefully. Enter at your own risk:
Step 1: Install the Tor browser on your computer. The download begins with the Tor bundle and you’ll need to install all of this onto your system.
Step 2: After the download is complete, install all files. Follow the screen prompts to correctly install everything.
Step 3: After installation, open the Tor browser.
Step 4: Install an Advanced VPN Service. There are numerous VPN services available today, such as ExpressVPN, PureVPN, and Hotspot Shield. These services charge a monthly fee ranging from just a few dollars per month to $30 per month. The rates are typically based on how many countries you can access, whether streaming services and games are included and other perks like that.
Step 5: Type something into your Tor browser that indicates your interests.
Security Tips
In spite of all precautions you may take, the Dark Web can be a dangerous place to hang out. For that reason, it’s a good idea to take certain precautions:

Cover your webcam.
Be sure to turn on the “NoScript” extension in the Tor browser and enable “Forbid Scripts globally”.
Never trust anyone you meet on the Dark Web.
Create a virtual identity.
Be aware that government law enforcement organizations may still be able to track your activities.