Tag | direct and indirect costs

If You Use Time Warner You Might Not Be Able To Read This

August 27, 2014Leave a reply

There was (is) a huge outage on the Time Warner Internet Access Network this morning.  Starting around 4:30am a maintenance upgrade has gone horribly wrong.  Which is to say, if your on Time Warner Cable it’s likely you can’t read this (until your service is restored, anyway).

Here’s the constantly updating map of the Time Warner Network online status.  Just like weather radar…  Red is bad, green is good.

http://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable/map/

The cost of this?  Well, Time Warner won’t lose all that much money.  It’s not likely that they will give credits/refunds for a few hours of downtime.  But, if your business is on Time Warner, it could cost a ton of bucks.  Can’t process orders?  Credit Card and Check payments?  Access suppliers?  Put that big “one day” promotion online?  Can’t do that if your Internet is down.

Which brings us to the real purpose of this little screed about the incompetence that is Time Warner Cable’s latest faux pas…  If your business relies on the Internet (and few do not anymore), you really need to have a plan in place for when bad things happen.  It’s not always bringing in a competitive alternate Internet feed, either.

What you really need is a team of people that have “been there, done that” and work with them to make incidents out of your direct control nothing more than a minor hiccup…  Instead of a money draining loss.

Give OPENRSM a call (or email), and let’s get your business back online and have your business prepared for when bad things happen.

 

Microsoft Shows Us Why Automatic Updates Arn’t A Good Idea

August 23, 2014Leave a reply

Oh, don’t get us wrong..  We love being able to update systems at the click of a mouse!  But, having systems updates just “happen” is rarely a good idea.  And Microsoft has shown us all why in a big way.

This past “Patch Tuesday” update from Microsoft is causing Windows7, Windows8, and Server2013 systems to BSOD (blue screen of death).  It’s widespread enough that Microsoft has withdrawn the update!  For Microsoft, this is a huge deal.  But, not quite as huge as all the people whose computers were “bricked” by an Automatic Update!

Microsoft Patch Tuesday Update Creates BSOD

This is why you should NEVER have updates happen automatically.  And why businesses should have a company like OPENRSM do the updates for them.  Why?  Because their tested before being accepted.  Will that Java update break that required program your suppliers make you use?  Does that security update declare that your anti-virus program is a virus?  Will a general “patch fix” from Microsoft render your machine useless?  Well, if your simply accepting automatic updates for Windows, OSX, Java, Adobe, etc., you could have a very bad day.  Best to let people who test these things with the software you already use update your systems for you.  Only, after they are tested!

 

Just How Much Personal Info Are You Giving Away?

July 6, 2014Leave a reply

It’s pretty well known that many websites make an effort to track you online.  Even when your not on their site!  But, just how much tracking is going on?

We decided to do a “quick and dirty” look at a few popular websites to see just how many different trackers are deployed.  And, it’s not pretty.  In fact, it’s pretty ugly.

  1. Drudgereport.com is by far the worst offender with at least 37 different cookies, trackers, advertising preference systems, etc. looking at you.
  2. The Kansas City Star’s website, KansasCity.com has 13 peeking at what your doing.
  3. KCTV5.com weighs in with 16. 
  4. The popular humerous headline site Fark.com is a heavyweight with 19 different trackers.
  5. And last, but not least, on our list is the popular fact checking site Snopes.com.  Which is using 28 different tools to see what your doing online.

Now, what happens when you block most (if not all) of these different little logical spy devices?  When tested on a 1.5Mbs DSL connection (fast enough to get results, slow enough to calculate differentials) we got some significant results.  Here’s what we did:

  • Blocked all advertising trackers.
  • Left open all trackers that serve a useful purpose (live support, security checking, etc.).
  • Loaded a predetermined set of websites and a Firefox Macro Script that would load each page in succession.  After one page fully loads, it loaded the next.

We cleared the system Cache between each test run (and we did 10 runs of the tests).

Well, go figure!  You can surf much faster with all that “spying into what your doing stuff” turned off!  Significantly faster (tests ranged from 10-14% faster).  And, we wern’t leaking all kinds of personal data, surfing history, etc. out to other people we just think have no business tracking us.

Want to protect your personal and business information?  Give us a call or email.  We can not only block out the “bad actors” that are tracking you and your employees every online move, it’ll get you a little bit more out of your existing Internet connection speed too.

 

 

 

How To Stop Annoying Interactive “Creepy” Ads

June 14, 2014Leave a reply

Have you noticed that when you search for something on Ebay, Amazon, Google, that the advertising on pages seem to know what you’ve been looking for?  For Example, look up “LED 3051 Strips” on Google and suddenly ads for lighting fixtures, Ebay auctions, LED suppliers and the like now appear on every page you look at.  It’s call “contextural advertising”.  Web sites are setting “cookies” in your browser that their advertising networks look at when you surf a page and then display advertising for the things you’ve looked for most recently.

Sometimes it’s okay.  You can find things that your looking for via an ad.  Sometimes it’s just creepy.  Don’t believe me?  Then google for “Hot Crossed Buns” and see what happens to the ads that are presented to you.  Yeah, creepy.  But, you can put a stop to sites that you don’t want tracking you (like Facebook) by using the Opt Out from Online Behavioral Advertising site.  A self-regulation effort that is honored by Ebay, Facebook, etc.  It’s not perfect.  But, it really helps.  Here’s how it works (from the page itself, which is located at http://www.aboutads.info/choices

 

  • Find out which participating companies have currently enabled customized ads for your browser;
  • See all the participating companies on this site and learn more about their advertising and privacy practices;
  • Check whether you’ve already opted out from participating companies;
  • Opt out of browser-enabled interest-based advertising by some or all participating companies, using opt-out cookies to store your preferences in your browser; or
  • Use the “Choose All Companies” feature to opt out from all currently participating companies in one step. GO

Need even more powerful blocking?  Call, email, or simply CLICK HERE and OPENRSM can take care of it for your business.

 

 

Saving Money Upgrading Office with Open Source

June 19, 2010Leave a reply

Recently OPENRSM did a software upgrade for a business as they moved to Windows7.  And we saved this company significantly by upgrading their Office with Open Source Alternatives.  Using our emphasis on Business Engineering, OPENRSM evaluated the documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and even normal email coming in and out of the business.  And with this information it was determined that upgrading the Office applications did not make economic or operational sense when quality Open Source alternatives exist.

The Open Source Alternative is a direct replacement for Office, can both read and write Office documents, can write directly to .pdf format, and integrates well with the existing network, printers, etc.  Also key in the decision is that very little training is required.  Users were instantly productive with the Open Source Alternative.

Also note that this is a small incremental step.  The OPENRSM Customer saves significant money on a software upgrade now, and repeats this savings far into the future.  No upheaval in the operation of the business at all (in fact, it takes less time to install the Open Source Alternative than performaing an Office upgrade).

Here’s the financial breakdown:

Office Upgrade $239.00 per install + labor ($32.00) = $271.00 per computer

LibreOffice        $    0.00 per install + labor & Training =  $  65.00 per computer

Savings per computer = $174.00 per computer

Now, it is important to note that the upgrade cost on Office depends on which version(s) of Office your already using (which also affects how much time an individual upgrade takes).  This cost was for this particular business.  But not to worry, OPENRSM will meet with you and help you evaluate the technical feasability, and  what your direct and indirect costs and savings would be.

Send us a note and we’ll work with you to determine just how much you can save by upgrading your Office with Open Source Alternatives that will be suitable for your business.