Cut Down Bandwidth Cost!

Anytime anywhere access is what everyone these days expect from any application they work on. Today business is no longer confined to office, and people need freedom to work from anywhere. This change has made bandwidth all more critical and regulating its usage an important task for IT department

Sandeep Koul

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Protect your laptop from scuffing

If you’re a frequent traveler, you might be used to the standard airport security drill of removing a laptop from its bag for screening. But crowded airports are not always very friendly towards unprotected electronics. That’s why a simple laptop sleeve can do wonders to protect your laptop from scuff marks. Most country regulations permit the screening of a laptop while in a sleeve (including the stringent TSA checks at US airports).

SOFT SKILLS FOR IT MANAGERS

Many people believe their value is based on what they know—and they don’t want to give that up

Most of us have, at one time or another, worked with a colleague who hoarded information as if it were gold. And let’s not forget the manager who passed on company information

only on a need-to-know basis (kind of like working for the CIA).

This approach to information is frustrating and counterproductive, but understandable. Many people believe their value to the company is based on what they know—and they don’t want to give up that perceived edge. Their theory is that if they share that knowledge with their co-workers, that will increase the co-workers’ value and diminish their own.

This is a battle that business has been fighting for decades, but it’s heated up during the past few years of ongoing layoffs, when employees are more interested in surviving than collaborating. Ironically, this is happening at a time when knowledge management and collaboration technologies are getting a lot of attention from business leaders, who understand how these technologies can benefit their organizations.

Learning to share requires a change in perspective. Instead of focusing on what we as individuals are giving up, we need to focus on what we as a team—and a company—are gaining: We are exchanging knowledge, learning new skills, and improving the health and stability of the business. Taking a long-term view, that means we are all more likely to keep our jobs.

That sounds like common sense. However, a speaker at the recent World Innovation Forum in New York pointed out that emotions often trump sense. Chip Heath, a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, noted that individuals find comfort and security in the old ways of working. Analytically, they may know that they need to change, but emotionally, they don’t want to change. He added, “People hate change because change is hard.”

"Learning to share requires a change in perspective"

So what can enterprises do? Management may understand that knowledge sharing and collaboration.

can increase productivity and have a positive impact on the bottom line, but they may not know how to get employees to accept a new, collaborative way of working.

That’s clear from the survey Baseline did on knowledge sharing, which combines knowledge management and collaborative technologies. The survey found that better employee information exchange is the respondents’ top goal in both technologies, but one of the leading challenges is employee resistance. It’s No. 5 in knowledge management and No. 4 in collaboration.

Let’s face it: Employee resistance can be a technology killer. Think of the excuses given in the past for stonewalling older technologies:

We don’t need that—things are working fine just the way they are. … It will take longer to do it with technology. … It’s just a fad, anyway. … I wouldn’t trust that (list the technology du jour here) as far as I could throw it. The list goes on.

This kind of misguided attitude is disheartening, but, when it comes to knowledge sharing technologies, we seem to be making some progress. Among our survey respondent, 75 percent are currently using collaboration technologies, 60 percent are utilizing document management and 58 percent are using knowledge management.

If that’s the case, Heath had some suggestions for a plan to overcome that resistance: Start with small changes so employees don’t get overwhelmed. Then find out what’s working and do more of that. Motivate people by appealing to their emotions.

Give them credit for what they’ve already done and encourage them to do more. Finally, consider the work environment and see whether a different environment would help employees accept change more easily.Yes, change is hard, but people can—and do—change all the time. They just need a good reason..

"Start with small changes so employees don’t get overwhelmed. Then find out what’s working and do more of that"

Sound system

The best way to determine what sound system you want to buy is to firstly analyze your needs. Do you listen primarily to music? Most music (even flac) is encoded in stereo (2.1) format which use only the front speakers. However, if you watch hi def movies and play games then 5.1 is the way to go with almost all movies and games supporting surround sound.

Customize your desktop Rainmeter

Rainmeter is a free desktop customization tool with which you can totally change the look of your windows PC. Compact applets, sidebar gadgets or even the dashboard widgets of the mac can be added and the best part is how little memory it consumes and has negative impact on performance. You can even keep track of RSS feeds, emails, weather forecasts and twitter feeds straight from the comfort of your desktop!

Android task manager for better battery

Many Android phone users complain about battery life. However, don't blame the phone manufacturer just yet. Sometimes, apps don't shut down properly, run in the background and drain the battery. Just head over to the Android Market, download a free app called 'Advanced Task Killer Free' and set it to kill apps which are unnecessarily running. You can also manually kill the apps. You'll notice a definite improvement in battery life.

Ever taken a photograph in a crowded tourist spot, only to be bothered by the constant stream of people? Snapmania’s Tourist Remover is an online service can be quite useful. All you need to do is set your camera on a tripod and take multiple photos of the same scene. Make sure that each part of the background you want to appear in the final image is captured on at least two photos. The software then blends them into a composite photograph without any of the unwanted subjects in it. Sign up for Snapmania for free here.

Protect your laptop's battery

Are you planning to leave your laptop unused for a long duration (more than a couple of weeks)? To prevent damage or reduced charge retention, don't leave your battery in a completely discharged state. Before switching off the laptop for the last time before the sabbatical, charge till 50%.

Extending your laptop battery life

On the move with no charging point in sight and desperate to stretch your laptop battery life to the max? Here are some simple measures for you to follow. Lower the screen brightness and disabling the fancy OS visual effects. Unplug any unused USB devices, disable the wireless capabilities (bluetooth/wifi) and try to avoid using the DVD drive. This might sound restrictive but alteast your laptop will last until the next charging pit stop!

Changing application settings in facebook

After facebook went through a gradual revamp over the last few months, many changes both desirable and undesirable were made overall. One of the gripes which users had were about deep the Application settings were buried. Click here to go directly to the page where you can edit,modify permissions or even remove any unwanted applicaiton without any hassles.

Smart Phone battery life

Kill background tasks for better battery life

Android phones can have poor battery life, largely because Android OS allows a lot of apps to run in the background. They hog memory, eat up battery life and in some cases, even keep pulling data from the internet. Install any of the free task-killer apps from the App Store- Advanced Task Killer Free and Task Panel. They will let you kill apps regularly, and can even be configured for an auto-kill. This benefits both the battery life and responsiveness of the device.

Internet on your TV

If you have a HD flat panel TV, you can use it to browse the internet in HD using a laptop or desktop connected via HDMI. But since the standard browser is not optimized for TV use, you may have to squint a fair bit. Instead, use Kylo, a web browser specifically designed for this purpose. Not only are all the fonts and buttons larger, you also get a large address bar and easy navigation shortcuts.

Light Shot Print Screening

Try some skillful print-screening

If you take a lot of screenshots, you’re probably used to clicking ‘print screen’ and then pasting the image into an image editor. Well, with LightShot (available as a Firefox or IE addon or desktop application), you can select a small area of your screen to take a screenshot of rather than the whole screen. This saves you the time taken to crop screenshots later. An online editor also allows you to edit your screenshots as soon as you take them.

Maintain real time 'To Do' lists

Here's how: Maintain real time 'To Do' lists

Life is busy. You might be working with To Do lists, both at work and at home. But what if multiple people need to work on the same To Do list? And what if they're in different placed? This is where Thingler comes in. Using it is simple; visit www.thingler.com and it automatically creates a unique URL which you can share. Any updates you make or things you cross off your list will be visible to anyone you've shared the link with.

Computer speakers perform better

Make your computer speakers perform better

If your speaker setup has a downfiring subwoofer, instead of keeping it directly on hard floor, place the sub on a carpet. This will remove the boomy effect of the bass bouncing off the floor and help increase the clarity of output.

Clean your computer cabinet for longer life

 

Computer cabinets suck in a lot of dust which can pile up and reduce the efficiency of the fans and coolers. This means that various parts may be running hotter than normal which will lead to a drop in performance and higher wear and tear. 

Use a blower to push out the dirt and a soft cloth to wipe out dirt stuck on metal parts such as hard-drives. The effort will be well worth it.