Ferrum Technology Services Blog

One nail-biting aspect about email is that you’re never sure if the person you sent your message to has actually opened it and read it. This is especially the case if it’s an important message. When you don’t hear back as quickly as you’d like, you then begin to doubt if the message was ever even received, which could lead to unnecessarily contacting them by different means. This only looks desperate. To calm your nerves, there’s an extension for Chrome that tracks details like this for Gmail.

Who is Cortana? Windows 10 users all over the world are finding this out as they turn to Microsoft’s newest personal assistant with their important questions. One thing we know for sure about Cortana is that she can do a lot more than just search Bing. Here are six useful things you can have Cortana do for you.

One of the greatest parts of the Internet is how easy it is to search for new information on a particular subject you’re unfamiliar with. Usually this is done by utilizing a search engine like Google, but the search giant’s web browser, Google Chrome, makes this way easier by providing built-in search functions into the browser, including a super-simple drag and drop search function.

It turns out that the Internet isn’t as anonymous as it seems. This is a hard lesson learned by more than 37 million users of Ashley Madison, a website dedicated to cheating on one’s spouse. In July, the site was hacked by the hacker group, “The Impact Team,” and they’re currently threatening to expose the cheaters by going public with the database. In this particular case, Ashley Madison users should have known better--on two levels.

The Internet has given modern businesses the ability to grow like never before. On the flip side of the coin, the Internet can quickly bring down a business if a dissatisfied customer chooses to broadcast their negative experience and opinions. Therefore, it’s essential to take customer service seriously.

In last weeks’ tip, we discussed various ways you can prepare for a big presentation, including the content development stage, audience definition, and practice sessions. This week, we’ll be discussing ways in which you can ensure that your presentation goes off without a hitch, so that your audience (and you) can benefit from it as much as possible.

Whether you’re presenting at a trade show, webinar, conference, or giving a sales demonstration, giving a solid presentation is a crucial skill to master and add to your strategies. However, if you are part of the 74 percent of people who suffer from speech anxiety (glossophobia), these opportunities may seem incredibly daunting. With some solid preparation before your presentation and a few tricks to master while giving one, any professional can master the art of public speaking.

The smartphone was an incredibly valuable introduction to the business world, allowing entrepreneurs to exponentially increase productivity both in and out of the workplace. However, they are a double-edged sword, capable of cutting down barriers, or slicing productivity to ribbons with time-wasting apps and texting.

There is so much content on the Internet that finding exactly what you’re looking for can be quite challenging. Search engines like Google and Bing help out immensely by narrowing down your search to one web page, but how do you find what you specifically need on a single page?

With each new generation comes a new group of workers, and attracting good, quality help can be difficult. Even if you can find good help, it can be a challenge to keep. A study at Cornell University has proven that workplace flexibility can greatly improve the odds of finding good employees - and keeping them around.

When you first started your company, you may have had a group of close friends who were your original employees. They started off ambitious, like you, but gradually they grew more and more complacent. Now they are a hazard to your company’s future, and you don’t like that. You feel like you need to replace them with someone who cares about the company’s future, or maybe you just found someone who has more skill than them, but what if you don’t get along as well with the new employee? And how do you fire a friend?

It’s fun to find new ways to customize your PC’s desktop to fit your taste and personality. In fact, we bet that your current wallpaper image speaks volumes about who you are. Did you know that you can even adjust your desktop’s icon sizes?

We live in an age where we are trying to get the most out of our employees, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep up the hard work all day. Productivity applications and software can only go so far when your team is exhausted. Sometimes you might wish you could be back in the good old days of elementary school when naptime was a thing. So, why not give it a try in the workplace?

Business is booming, and you are busier than ever. Your company is expanding at a crazy rate. But, what if something were to happen to you? Would your company be able to carry on in your stead, or would it crash to the ground in a blaze of glorious defeat?

Some business owners rely on their iPhone for a lot more than just work-related functions. With so many applications and whatnot consuming your phone’s processing power, your iPhone’s battery can quickly get drained. This, in turn, drains your productivity. If your phone is always dead, you can’t get much done with it. Shouldn’t there be a way to boost your battery’s efficiency?

No matter what kind of business you run, you’re likely to gain many friends and allies in the war of entrepreneurship. However, you’ll also gain a lot of enemies (i.e. your competitors) that you’ll need to one-up somehow. Of course, you could always just exploit what they are doing wrong, but what about what they are doing right?

Have you ever been prompted to change your password, then forgotten what the new one was twenty seconds later? Changing passwords consistently is a good practice, but let’s face it; unless you have them put away somewhere, you are probably going to forget about them at least once (unless you use a post-it note on your monitor, which is never a good idea). Additionally, if passwords are short and easily guessable, you risk being targeted by a phishing attack or other hacking attack.

“What kind of computer have you got there?” For a novice computer user who knows very little about this sort of thing, being asked a basic question like this can be baffling. You don’t have to be embarrassed by your lack of technical prowess. Microsoft makes it easy to find out what you’ve “got under the hood.”

Wireless connections like WiFi can be tricky at times. Either they don’t work, the connection isn’t a very good one, or there are too many people using it for it to be effective. Whatever the reason, you can bet that there are people using your WiFi who shouldn’t be can be. This can lead to many problems including security concerns, slow browsing speeds, and more.

When a disaster strikes, you should be able to recover quickly and efficiently with minimal downtime. Unfortunately, for some businesses, things don’t work out quite so smoothly. If your backup doesn’t process correctly, you might be in a bind when it comes time to restore operations from your backed-up data. How does one go about troubleshooting a failed backup?