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Advice for IT Support in working with End Users
I was lucky in having an amazing teacher when I was saved from the retail world of technology and brought into the real world. "The technology you know isn't as important as your ability to deal with people, anybody can be taught technology" was one of the first lessons I was taught and have kept it close. Between much talk on people's view of IT as a department and a new addition to my team I decided to document what I've been taught, learned over the years, or get bad results when I constantly ignore good advice.Read full article...
How to Provide Remote Support
The ability to connect to a users workstation from a distance and quickly solve the problem at hand has dramatically increased IT's coverage area. You no longer need a corporate IT budget and department behind you to offer remote assistance capabilities. Here's a few ways to get started...
Microsoft Remote Assistance (Free included with XP on)
MSRA offers a few options for offering or requesting help.Read full article...
DaaS - Is Desktop as a Service going to be the next big thing?
All this talk about "The Cloud" being the future of both personal and professional computing makes the thought of Desktop as a Service business model very appealing to me. Rapid growth in remote desktop capabilities increases benefits along with the potential market DaaS would appeal to.
The idea of access from any computer in the world is not a new one, desktops can be accessed using software like TeamViewer or services such as gotomypc.com and logmein.com. So what makes DaaS a radical improvement upon existing technologies?Read full article...
Increase Your Salary by Writing - Grow your Personal Network, Get Recognized, Be Ready for Future Promotions
Improving one's writing skills is an important aspect of career development in the field of Information Technology. Gaining recognition for knowledge in your field as well as the ability to effectively communicate to a wide range of other parties will set you apart from your peers.
I was introduced to the idea of climbing the corporate ladder through writing while at Intel. One common theme among the rising stars and seasoned pro's was participation in creating white papers, documentation and training materials that would further the organization as a whole.Read full article...
Theming Drupal Blocks in a Zen Sub-theme
Adding block styles to your sub-theme are important for several reasons. My original objective behind learning to style blocks was to eliminate large titles and awkward spacing that was inherited from the parent style sheets, especially the H2 tag. Once I got a grasp on how easy it was to style individual blocks or groups of them I started to utilize this more. Blocks.css comes packaged in your sub-theme's CSS directory with many useful classes and ID's listed (commented with their purpose as well).
Taking a look at the page source you can see how styles are applied to blocks...Read full article...
Taking on the Network Rack full of Spaghetti Cabling
We've all seen the rack from hell, but not many have the courage (maybe blind ambition) to take on the project of making it right. The bravery pays off since any management in your department will be able to physically see the difference and it cuts down on future tasks the rack requires.Read full article...
Effective Questioning Skills for IT Staff
It takes more than technical knowledge to be able to provide the best solution available for any given situation. Having a clear understanding of the requirements is crucial to meeting them and foreseeing future needs others may have overlooked. These requirements aren’t always clearly stated however. This is where effective questioning benefits Information Technology.
Simply put, you should be able to explain why this solution is the best avenue and what the benefit/cost is using the facts gained from your questions.Read full article...
How to Remove Malware: A Step by Step Guide
Malware is an everyday occurrence these days making the ability to remove it a must for anyone working with end users on workstations. I've outlined the steps I follow when combating these threats, comment to let us know additional steps you follow.Read full article...
Google will Teach your Mom Technology
How hard do you laugh when your friend's phone rings, they pick up and within seconds you know it's his mother wanting help with a task on the computer? It's just comical, for someone that can manage thousands of systems and users including providing support you'd think they'd be able to explain how to open a web page in a new tab and why you'd want to. It just get's ugly and you laugh more... then it happens to you!Read full article...
Internet chatter predicting the Superbowl Winners...
In my mind, this is pure inspiration. A company name Infegy has used data collected from internet trends to predict the outcome of this years Super Bowl. Finding that the team with the most internet chatter the month before the game each of the last four years has won the Super Bowl, they have predicted the Green Bay Packers will be victorious. Read full article...
