IT Support and IT Outsourcing Company

National, July 12^th, 2010 – With the Internet binding the world closer and closer together, IT support and outsourcing company Spirinet Technology Services is proud to announce their partnership with Translation Services USA.  “The world gets smaller every day,” explains Spirinet co-founder Kirill Bensonoff, “and we want to make sure our clients have every tool at their disposal to compete on the world stage.  That’s why we felt our partnership with Translation Services USA was such a strong direction for our combined companies.”

Translation Services USA will primarily augment two areas of Spirinet’s service offerings.  First, they will provide website translation.  Secondly, they will provide software localization services, which is the process of adapting existing software platforms to fit the needs of specific language and cultural groups.  “Spirinet has always been international in scope, but our partnership with Translation Services USA will allow us to serve an even broader group of clients, and make sure that cutting edge technology is available to all, no matter what language they speak.” From words of Alex Buran, President and CEO of Translation Services USA: “Partnership with Spirinet will open up many possibilities never seen before. Sometimes, when we are serving the needs of our large companies, we have to scale up our IT solutions rather quickly in order to accommodate the most demanding needs. This is where Spirinet comes handy and we look forward to working with them”.

Spirinet Technology Services was founded in 2005, and is a premiere provider of IT outsourcing and consulting services for small and medium-sized businesses all over North America.  They are headquartered outside Boston, Massachusetts.  The partnership with Translation Services USA is just the latest in a long line of innovative technology solutions.  One such solution is AppsOnDemand, which leverages cloud computing to deliver applications to SMBs, anywhere, anytime, on a pay-per-user model.

Translation Services USA was founded in 2002 as LeoSam Translations.  They are based in New York City, New York, and count many Fortune 500 companies as their clients.  Like Spirinet, they are international in scope, and can translate to and from over 150 languages.

For more information, please visit Spirinet’s website at ComputerSupport.com, or Translation Services USA’s website at Translation-Services-Usa.Com.

I recently upgraded from exchange 2007 to 2010. I followed a nice easy to use upgrade guide found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exdeploy2010/default.aspx#Home .

So you might be wondering why upgrade to Exchange 2010? On the surface it looks awfully similar to Exchange 2007 but comes packed with some nice new features. The following are some of the features I like best.

Online Mailbox Move– You can now move mailboxes during  business hours without any interruption to the users.

Database Availability Groups – You can now have  up to 16 Mailbox  servers that host a set of databases and provide automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases.   

Archiving – You can now preserve email data with archiving policies while seamlessly giving users access to the through either Outlook or Outlook Wepp App.

This was going to be my first blog written from an iPad, unfortunately, it seems Safari does not yet like Wordpress. Oh Well.

I wanted to write a brief review of my new iPad. The short of it, as you may have already heard elsewhere – is it a cool toy? Yes. Is it a laptop killer? No.

The iPad is a 9.7″ touch-screen with a 1024×768 resolution. My model came with Wi-Fi only but there will be a 3G model available soon. The cost for this model was $499 and the cost for the 3G model will be $629.The iPad can play a variety of audio and video formats, and can run apps from the iTunes app store. There are specific apps written for it or ported from the iPhone, but you can run iPhone apps on it directly, albeit with a smaller size or poorer resolution.

As always, Apple makes the experience pleasant, from shipping (and arriving on time) in an easy t   open container, to quick setup. I had my Exchange email and calendar syncing within 2 minutes. I am not an iPhone or a MAC user, but can definitely get used to the smooth display, great graphics and fast Internet (compared to my Blackberry Storm2).

Some downsides – weight is a major one for me. It comes in at about 1.5lbs, which does not seem like a lot, but when you are trying to hold it, type and do other things, it feels heavy. I personally don’t care much for a camera, but would be nice to have for the sake of video conferencing, if this was to be a true “laptop replacement”. Also, my recommendation would be to not bother with the 3G model – 3G is too slow anyways. Wait for Verizon to roll out 4G, and by that time I think the iPhone and the iPad will be available on that network. And AT&T still hasnt earned its’ stripes as a carrier for businesses.

To sum up, iPad is a nice device to have laying on your couch in case you need to look something up, watch a quick video or send an email. But it will not replace a laptop for small businesses or knowledge workers in corporations. At least not until iPad 2.0 is out.

Microsoft Exchange 2010 new Outlook Web Access (OWA) features will surely make the latest installment of OWA a more appealing way for users to access their email. OWA packs new features such as :

Side-by-side comparison of calendars:  You can now open up a shared calendar and view it right next to your own calendar. This makes It easier to compare and coordinate schedules.

Ability to attach messages to messages: This is a nice feature especially useful if you are concerned about a message and would like an administrator to look at the message prior to opening.

Access to mailbox archives: Allows users to access archived mailboxes from within the OWA interface so you can view your archived messages no matter where you are.                                              

Support for multiple browsers such as Firefox and Safari: OWA fully support Safari and Firefox to get the OWA premium experience.                             

This newest installment of OWA has some out there believing that you could use this as a full time mail client. I wouldn’t go that far but it seems like a huge improvement over its predecessors. As Microsoft continues to move into the cloud concept, I believe you will start seeing more and more people switch to OWA as their go to mail client.

Continuing on from Part 1, I am going to list some more SEO rank factors, in the order of importance. I have covered topics such as age of the domain, inbound links, tags and keywords on pages. Here are the remaining factors:

6. Page load times: Google started looking at this more recently. Make sure your pages are optimized, and your server takes advantage of gzip compression. I would suggest you use Google Webmaster tools located here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/ to measure the load time and compare to other websites.

7. Hosting: this is important because google still uses IP addresses to track spammers, blackhat sites, etc..If you host your domain on an IP that has been linked to a “bad” website before, you can get penalized, through no fault of your own..I would recommend using a respectable web host that understand small businesses – try www.webmasters.com

8. Internal link structure: this is important..While I feel that inbound links are most important, internal links are as well. Make sure your pages are linked, and you have a site map so that google can crawl easier. Avoid using javascript when linking as much as possible.

9. URL Structure: last but of course not least, the URL strcuture is still important. While I feel that Google learned, and is always getting better at recognizing various URLs, I always recommend an SEO-friendly URL structure. For example, on my website, appplication hosting URL in this link is very clear, so when a search engine crawls this page, its that much easier for it to recognize what the page is all about…

I think most of the stuff about is just common sense..After all, Google is programmed by humans, and its made to think like a human as much as possible. So, if it makes sense to you, it probably makes sense to Google.

If you haven’t heard of 201 CMR 17 and your company handles personal information for your customers you will have to read up. “Every person that owns, licenses, stores or maintains personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth shall develop, implement, maintain and monitor a comprehensive, written information security program applicable to any records containing such personal information”. Luckily Massachusetts has postponed the deadline to be 201 CMR 17 compliant from January 1010 until May 2010, but you should still start working towards being compliant as soon as possible. I know The Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation has received a lot of backlash due to this new law, and I for one am for it. I have worked for companies who enforced data protection and who didn’t. The ones who did used encryption, etc. I know the costs to implement such things can make even the mightiest CFO cringe. At the end of the day with the dawn of a new decade hacking means have matured exponentially and the most important thing to the customer is who will be protected most, and I for one welcome anything that will protect my personal information. Below is just a short list of things you will need to do:

- Need to have your email secure and possibly encrypted.
- Audit and detection software so you can audit file access and also detect unwanted access.
- Encrypt all removable media
- Tighten security

I recently came across this blog post: http://bit.ly/8zg35Dand decided this may be an interesting post for some of the visitors to our blog, who may not be SEO experts yet have an interest in making their website rank higher. Disclaimer: I personally am not in the SEO field professionally, but take an avid interest in it and would like to share some of my knowledge with those that may find it interesting. With that, here is the list I compounded from the above blog and other places, of Top SEO Factors:

1. Age of Domain: I feel this, and the second item on this list, are probably the 2 single most important factors, especially for Google SEO. Unfortunately, this factor is often times beyond our control. If an opportunity arises, do purchase a domain name with significant age. Google does penalize you when the domain registration information changes as it knows the ownership changed, but the penalty is not severe.

2 .Inbound links: this is another very important factor. The basic premise behind Google algorithms is still the number of quality inbound links pointing at your domain. The higher the number, with the right anchor text (e.g. Application Hosting is the anchor text of the link, and the link point to http://www.computersupport.com/application-hosting.html) , the better you rank. Of course, quality, or authority, of the links plays a huge factor – get an inbound link from the whitehouse.gov, which is considered an authority on government matters, and the benefit of this link is much higher then from some unknown site.

3. Title Tags: Title tags are what you see at the top of the browser (see pic), and what shows up as the website title when you do a search in google. Place your most important keyword closest to the beginning of the sentence, those count more.

4. Keyword on pages: Its only obvious that a search engine reads the text on your page, and sees if there is relevant content to the search query, and takes that into ranking account. Make sure your pages have relevant keywords, but do not overdo – this should come naturally if you have good content. Bolding important keywords makes a difference as well.

5.H1, H2 and alt tags: These HTML Tags are important to Google – you should have your most important keywords in H1 tags, less import in H2, etc..Also, every image should have an alt tag with a description. Please make sure to run your site through W3C markup validion and be sure it is error-free. http://validator.w3.org/

Well, this is it for part 1…to be continued….

Hello, my name is Rob, and I am now a Blogger. I am a Systems Engineer at Spirinet Technology Services and have decided to participate in the Spirinet Blog. I have never shared my opinion on a public forum and have successfully stayed away from Social Networking Sites such as Facebook and Myspace.   I am guilty however of living vicariously through other people’s dedication to social networking sites since I get a daily synopsis of what’s happening in that world. I have never understood why people would share and post everything about themselves on the internet for all to see, but that’s another topic for another day.  As of now I don’t know what I’ll be blogging about, but rest assured it will have something to do with Technology.  I look forward to sharing my opinions with the world.

-Rob

I am sure many of have been bombarded with Kindle ads in the last couple of months. They seem to be everywhere – magazines, billboards, online display ads of different sorts. So you probably already know that Kindle is the e-book reader from Amazon. Nook and Alex (not yet released) are two of its competitors. As we go into 2010 and beyond, I foresee that e-books are going to (eventually) completely replace paper books. So save your hardcopy collection, you may be sitting on an antiques fortune!

As a technology enthusiast, I took the time to try Kindle first hand, and read reviews on other deivices. I wanted to share my thoughts about these devices with those of you who may be interested in purchasing one for yourself or your business.

Kindle2 by Amazon - the pre-emenent e-book reader device out in the marketplace. Based on E- Ink technology (E-ink is a company that was started in 1997 by MIT grads based on research done there; it uses ultra-low power to generate paper-like appearance on thin, light form) , it also sports a cellular modem which allows you to download content wirelessly (the updated version as of October 09 rides on AT&T GSM network, so it works inside and outside of US). The device can hold 1500 titles in its memory, so you will never run out of reading material. Thoughts: I tried this device out for a few days. I think it works well generally, and is good enough for what I consider to be a Gen1 ebook reader. The drawbacks for me are: no native PDF support, no web browser, you have to pay(!!) to read blogs, can’t browse Google Books for free books, and there is no feature to “lend” books amongst devices. Also, E-Ink is a bit too slow on the refresh for my tastes. This device has a 4-star rating on amazon.com

Nook by Barnes and Noble - This was supposed to have been a Kindle killer. However, plagued by lawsuits, delays, and out of stock problems, it didnt turn out to be. This device uses E-Ink technology just like Kindle, but has a smaller color display on the bottom. This device runs the open source Google Android OS (which can be hacked to enable the full browser and other apps!!), and can store about as much content as  the Kindle. It also rides on AT&T network and works in and out of USA. In addition, in supports a feature called LendMe, which allows you to lend books to your freinds – it is removed from your library for the duration of the “lend”, which is up to 14 days..Thoughts: The positives about this device are its price ($259 as compared to $299 for Kindle2), the AndroidOS, the color mini-screen, LendMe, PDF and e-pub support, Google Books support..So on paper, this is the Kindle Killer! In reality though, the device has been plagued with delays (latest ship date – 1/11/2010 for orders placed before Christmas, 2/1 for those after). There are also early adapters reporting that the device performs sluggush, its hard to find books, and the interface is not intuiative.

Alex by Spring Design - this is device worth waiting for in my book. It should have been released by end of year 2009, however, their website still shows “coming soon” as of today. This device is based on Androis OS, and has 2 displays similar to Nook, however, the color LCD display appears to be larger. The display features a built-in browser and and interactive technology called Duet Navigator that allows for multimedia integration between what you are reading and browsing. It works on 3G networks such as GSM and CDMA, as well as Wi-Fi. Other details are scant, but this is the one to watch!

Bottom Line:  we are going to see a lot more new e-book readers on the market this year. Asus is coming out with one in March, and Sony Daily Edition is out (I did not review it as I feel it is overpriced for what it does). 2010 may yet turn into the Year of The EBook.

I think this is a pivotal time for all of us who use, service or otherwise take an interest in technology. As you are all aware, Microsoft put out 2 version of their operating system in the last few year – Vista and Windows 7. While Vista proved to be a flop in my opinion, I believe the era of the OS and desktop computing is on the decline. As this http://bit.ly/6g72rS and many other articles point out,  and in my opinion, Cloud Computing and SaaS only makes sense.

What does this mean for you?

I think what it means is that we will see less hype around the desktop, and the operating system. Yes, the MAC still does have a “cool” factor, however, when in comes to productivity at the workplace, cool may not be a substitute for fast, cost effective and available. And this is what The Cloud promises us. As we see widespread adoption of broadband across the US and other countries, and in the next few years we are also bound to see blanket, high-speed wireless coverage finally taking place, I believe more and more businesses will elect to move their computing environment to the cloud. Perhaps this full-on adoption will be slower with the larger companies who have their own, highly customized applications, lots of confidential data, entrenched IT departments, etc…but for the smaller, more agile firms out there, this should be a way forward.

The benefits are numerous:

• Always On – access from any location 24/7
• No upfront costs
• No worries about upgrades or new releases
• No “server down” situations (in a properly architected cloud environment redundancy should be in place)

..i can go on, but I think I have made my point. The technology will mature, and more and more businesses will find themselves using cloud computing in one way or another..Meanwhile, Spirinet has build a cloud computing and application hosting environment built with the small business in mind called AppsOnDemand. It’s core package includes Office 2007, file storage, email and other things that will serve as a starting point for most companies..And in case you need other apps, we can easily add them. Please check out our new product and provide any feedback, it is appreciated.