When I meet with Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing prospects, I often tell them that the most critical element of a solid relationship between Port-to-Port Consulting and them is the level of trust we have for one another. I tell them that we can't be successful together unless we trust each other. When we find a sour relationship between us and one of our network support customers, it's almost always because we or they have lost trust in the other.

I have a new IT outsourcing customer right now who is having an issue with trusting us. His previous provider turned out to be very untrustworthy. These guys did things that verge on criminal. We came in and went right to work correcting all that we could. We even brought in a competing company to help with an area where they are much stronger than us. One of the things we needed to change right away was their telephone service provider. We started by asking their Internet service provider to quote the addition of telephone service, thus reducing the number of vendors and lines to manage. The vendor was excited for the opportunity to get additional business until the sales rep discovered that her company couldn't (or wouldn't) provide the SIP trunking that we needed. When she told us that, we expressed our regret and told her we'd use a different provider. We also told her that their inability to provide this service would be a hindrance to their success at renewal time.

She must have taken that as a threat. Her next move was to call my new computer network consulting customer and tell him how technically inadequate our solution was and to offer her "much better" solution. In this case, much better meant she gets a commission. My new client didn't know what to do. I simply asked him to trust the people he hired to take care of this for him.

The episode completely destroyed any trust I had in this particular sales rep, and it soured my view of her company. When Port-to-Port Consulting thought there was a better solution for this customer than ours, we brought that solution to the table, even though we will make no money for doing so. If you find yourself double checking every recommendation from your IT outsourcing provider, then you probably don't trust him. It's time to make a change.

When I started Port-to-Port Consulting in 1991 the Internet was nothing like today, nor was email. I had had an email address in my previous company but it really was only good for sending messages to other people within my company. To communicate electronically with friends and family, there was Compuserve, and in a few places, AOL or Prodigy. All three of these were dial-up services. I still remember people telling me that they would NEVER use a computer to conduct real business communications.

Jump ahead two decades and we find the average person writing about 40 and receiving nearly 150 messages per day and spending two and a half hours dealing with them even though nearly half just get deleted. I was an early adopter of email but I can't wait for it to go the way of the fax machine. There is too much crap, and I'm not just talking about spam. Sending email has become too easy so we whip them out without much thought. Compare the amount of time you spend composing an email to the time spent writing a letter.

Unfortunately, the likely replacements for email are worse in this regard. No time is spent thinking about the proper composition of a text message or IM or social media update. And really, as I tell my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers all the time, my complaint isn't with the beauty of the prose. It's with the volume! I don't care how much thought you put into composition. I'd rather you put thought into whether the email needs to be sent at all, and, just as importantly, who needs to be on the receiving end.

My wife complained that our friend Roger had not replied to an email she sent him. When I saw him I asked why he had shunned the woman I love. He leaned over the table and said, "She didn't send me an email. She CC'd me on an email to someone else." STOP using the CC line. Either you want the person to do something or you should give them back the 3 seconds it will take to delete the message. Just think:

CC = DELETE

and BCC says you're petty.

That's the end of my rant about email. If you want to read more about the impact on your workday, check out the infographic from Liz Hover.

The next version of Bluetooth has already arrived in many of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers' offices. It came in on the smartphones in their pockets. The Motorola Droid Razrs and the iPhone 4Ss are Bluetooth 4.0 Ready. For the most part, no one noticed because they are compatible with the Bluetooth 2 and 3 standards. But soon you will have accessories that use the new 4.0 standard, and that's when you'll have to decide if you replace your current accessories. The decision is easy if your favorite accessory is running the Bluetooth 2.1 standard. An upgrade will make the device so much faster for whatever you do with it. For the 3.0 devices, it's a harder call. The data speeds aren't any faster in 4.0, however, the power consumption is considerably less. Your headset will last longer before requiring a charge, for instance.

I hate it when my wireless keyboard or mouse runs out of battery. The only indication I get is that suddenly it doesn't work. Inevitably I spend a few minutes trying to make it work before getting new batteries. Imagine having them work for their useful lifetime on a single set of batteries? It's possible with 4.0. Pairing devices will be easier too. I've not found it all that difficult but I frequently have even people inside my Indianapolis Information Technology support services company complain about the task.

If you're buying new devices or accessories, check to see if they have the new standard. They will have one of these logos:

I have a little app on my phone to keep track of all my passwords. I didn't use to need it because I had a simple algorithm for creating a unique and easy-to-remember password for every place that I needed one. That was before the designers decided that they wanted my password to be "difficult." In the minds of people who didn't study combinatorics, a difficult password must include a multitude of characters that are hard to find on my keyboard and nearly impossible to remember. Before when the only requirement for difficulty was length - a true measure of difficulty - I could generate memorable passwords on the fly. Today, I and my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers are forced to use an upper case letter, a lower case letter, a number, and often a special character.

These requirements fly in the face of our basic human laziness. The most popular password by far used to be "password". Now it's "Password1". Soon it will be "Password1!". The reality that passwords get harder as they get longer. Instead of making me create things that I cannot remember, thus forcing me to the laughably obvious, just make me use a longer password. "longpassword" is a harder to break password than "Password1!", but it doesn't meet the requirements for difficulty.

A recent survey by GFI Software found that businesses are still struggling to beat spam. This is a conversation I have with my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing custmers frequently. No matter what we do, eventually someone gets his computer infected by opening a bad message or clicking on a bad link. When it happens, they want to blame someone or something other than themselves, so they blame the crummy anti-spam software. It's not so much that the software is crummy, or that they did a very bad thing. It's just that spammers only have to win a small number of times to make their nefarious activity worthwhile. Sooner or later, we'll all have an inattentive moment and the bad guys will win that day.

So spam continues to increase both in actual quantity and in share of all email. And we continue to do what we can to keep it out of the Indianapolis computer networks we support. Smarter people than me have suggested ways of reducing the spam on the Internet. Each option comes at a cost that compares to our current costs of fighting spam with little more likelihood of better results. Spam is a part of the price we pay for having this wonderful Internet. When one of my customers call our computer help desk to complain about the crummy anti-spam software, we let them vent. Then we go to work getting their computer back in front of them so they can do their work.

The other day one of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers asked me what I must do to guarantee his data was safe from Internet hackers. I didn't have to think long before telling him, "Disconnect your network from the Internet permanently." While he appreciate the quick response, it wasn't exactly the answer he had hoped for. Unfortunately it's the only true answer. Information about you (and me and everyone else) is valuable to people who want to sell things to us. It's more valuable in aggregate than individually (for now), and the value goes up with the granularity of the information.

Hardly a week goes by that we don't hear about some reputable Internet company doing something untoward to capture data about you. Google overides your browser privacy settings. Facebook reads your text messages. Apple tracks your whereabouts. These disclosures should be thought of like roaches -- for every one you see, there are hundreds that you don't.

Perhaps it's time that we admit to ourselves that there really is a cost for all of that free stuff we get on the Internet. The cost is a little bit of our private information. Your personal data alone isn't worth much, as Kai Ryssdal discovered in a recent interview. But collectively it's worth a lot. So tell me, did you really think all that neat stuff was free? You knew there was a cost, and you thought (hoped) someone else was paying it. Well now you know. You're paying by giving up little tiny bits of information about yourself as you move about the web. The question you must ask yourself is, "How much is too much?" At some point, you will have to choose between that cool new web app and a piece of information that you'd rather not share. However you decide, just remember that someone has to pay. That's the game.

I have an Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customer named Mark Zuckerberg. That's right, just like the Facebook guy. We call ours the "original" Mark Zuckerberg since he's older. I can't begin to tell you the mileage he's gotten out of the name confusion. He's been interviewed by international media outlets, and is something of a local celebrity here in Indianapolis. While Mark didn't set out to become famous for his name, he's used it to his advantage as he promotes his bankruptcy law office. Mark's good fortune at sharing a name with the social media wiz is something he couldn't have planned, but boy is it a lucky break.

So along comes the Oscars and Angelina Jolie sticks that bare leg out just a little bit more than normal. Do you think she expected the gesture would take off online? Of course not. She couldn't have planned a media blitz like that. I'm not sure it will provide direct benefit to her future marketability, but she's certainly getting more mention now than any other actress that might be in consideration for a part.

We spend a great deal of time and money promoting our Pertingo Computer Support services to organizations in central Indiana. Some of our best media coverage has come from things that were unplanned and out of our control -- luck. The same is true for acquiring new computer network consulting customers. Many of our long term clients came to us by strokes of luck rather than carefully planned and orchestrated activities.

If you're looking for IT support services in central Indiana, maybe this is your lucky day!

Among the many Indianapolis computer outsourcing customers that Port-to-Port Consulting supports are some Indiana Charter Schools. I also do a bit of volunteer work with community organizations that work with children. A common refrain in educational circles is the need for Lifelong Learning. Today's students need to understand that their education never ends. They must learn how to enhance their skills and build new ones in order to keep up with the expanding knowledge in the world. It strikes me that nowhere is this more true than in our small business computer consulting business. Everything that my computer network services staff knows today will be all but useless in a matter of months.

It's interesting also that none of our network support technicians see much benefit in the traditional classroom setting -- you know, the setup of most of our schools. Apparently the linear lecture based approach to teaching is one of the last choices when learning is important to you. We tackle learning in a variety of ways. Some of us need to have solitary time to read, experiment, and absorb new information. Others want to work thru it with a group and talk about it as we go. Still others prefer to dive in until they hit a roadblock, then go back for instructions. In the end, we all come together to share what we think we know until we either figure out that we've got it or someone heads back to study it some more.

Now I understand that this approach to learning may be a bit messy and hard to give a letter grade, but it sure does create knowledge that we can use. Information Technology in small businesses is critical to their success, perhaps more so than in larger organizations. We understand that, and we do all we can, in our various ways, to keep learning new things everyday that will help our computer network consulting customers be better at what they do.

I do a lot of reading. Most of my reading is in the nonfiction categories (my wife calls them textbooks) of business, psychology, or science. Lately, I've read several books that talk about the chasm between scientific knowledge and business practices, especially in the area of psychology. The books from Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink come to mind. A more recent trend has been the large number of books about networking. It seems that someone realized that no one is reading Dale Carnegie any more so they rehashed his advice and put a new media spin on it. Here's the thing: I thought everybody did this stuff.

It's just natural for me, and most of the people around me, to do what we can to promote others. I'm always suggesting the products or services of one of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers to people that I meet. If you have a problem, I probably know someone who can help. I surely know someone who knows someone. Despite our Super Bowl hosting success, Indianapolis is still a big small town. The connections are complex.

Now I find out from book excerpts and reviews that what I do naturally is supposed to be the secret sauce in the recipe for business success. I can't say that I ever looked at it that way before. I just considered it to be good service. But I see the self-interested motive. If my computer network support customers get more business thru my efforts, their companies will grow, inevitably leading to more business for me.

Whatever the motivation, it makes good common sense to promote the people and businesses in your circle. If they aren't worth bragging about, you should find a new circle.

We recently parted ways with a central Indiana small business computer outsourcing customer. We had provide their IT support services for several years. During that time they moved into larger space, completed the buy-out of another business, and expanded their reach to include an international presence. Throughout the entire time we provided their computer tech support, but the relationship never solidifed between our companies. At different times different people here at Port-to-Port Consulting would voice concerns about the way we worked with this organization. On each occasion, someone else would point out where there was something we could have said or done differently that might have prevented this strain in the relationship. We'd hash it out and decide that we should try harder to make this network support customer happier.

Finally, we realized during one of these hash sessions that the problem wasn't one of people or personalities, or even communication styles or knowledge: the problem was one of culture. You see our IT support services customer had a culture built around mistrust. In their industry, everyone was out to gouge you if they could. They didn't trust anyone to tell them the truth, and they rarely told the whole truth to anyone either, so we kept looking like patsies to them when we walked in and gave them the full story.

Their culture was so unaccustomed to our straightforward approach that they never believed we were telling them the truth. I tell people all the time that if you don't trust your advisor you should stop paying him and get one that you do trust. That's the message we finally had to give to this now-former client. It took us a long time to figure out why the relationship wasn't working because we looked for a person problem. In the end, the problem was compatibility.

A federal judge in Colorado recently ruled that a woman charged in a mortgage scam must give up the password to her encrypted hard drive or face contempt charges. While the woman, Ramona Fricosu, claims that handing over the password violates her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the judge doesn't believe it applies. I assume this is because the judge has been living in a cave for the past decade! I can't think of another reason why a decision like this can be justified. Ms Fricosu wouldn't be compelled to present the password if she'd kept these records in a diary in an encrypted form so why is the decision different because her diary of choice was a Toshiba laptop?

While I have to believe that sharper minds will prevail in the end, this ruling illustrates a point that I often make with my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers about technology and the law: It is difficult to determine how laws written years ago will be applied to technology developed only months ago. Already cloud storage is leading to different interpretations of search and seizure than would be considered reasonable by most of us. And don't get me started on texting and calling while driving. The whole thing riles me up.

The hardcore SEO junkies got excited a few weeks ago when the announcment came out that Microsof's Bing had surpassed Yahoo and is now the second most popular search engine behind Google. The rest of us thought, Big Deal! For one thing, Bing has been powering Yahoo searches for some time now, meaning you got the same results whether you searched Yahoo or Bing, just different ads. For another, more important thing, Google is still nearly two-thirds of all search traffic (and their share grew in the period measured).

The more important question for my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers is what can they do with this information to enhance their business. As much as we like to include results from Yahoo and Bing when working with Online Presence Management customers, the reality is that winning Google is more important and should represent the majority of the effort. This information is only of interest to those of us who are more academic about Online Presence Management. My regular computer tech support customer needn't worry about any of this juggling.

This week, Symantec acknowledged that a hacker had stolen a portion of the source code to their flagship Norton Anti-Virus. The announcement downplayed the danger associated with the theft while offering tips to stay protected while using Symantec products. The whole thing brought to mind one of the questions most often posed to me by my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers. They want to know how to be sure that their computers are safe from viruses, trojans, worms, and other malicious software.

My short answer is that you don't know. The people who write malware are some of the most intelligent programmers in the world. They spend long hours working thru software applications to find odd behaviors that they then try to exploit to their advantage. This group used to consist primarily of young boys with little better to do. Today, hacking is big business and getting bigger. A talented programer with a tiny conscience can make a lot of money on the wrong side of the law. So the long answer isn't much more enlightening, but it is a little more hopeful.

Another change in the professionalization of hacking is that hackers, for the most part, aren't interested in the data on your computer. They want to use the storage, processing, and bandwidth of your computer to go after more lucrative targets. That's the good news. If your computer has been hacked, you probably don't have to be overly concerned with your personal data. The bad news is that so much bad software is out there, not to mention infected websites and emails, that you will become infected sooner or later. A good anti-virus program helps a lot. Sound computing practices - not clicking OK just because OK is there - help even more.

Good computer network services companies use professional anti-virus software that is centrally monitored and managed to help minimize network infections. They also work with their computer help desk customers to provide information on good computing habits. These two steps reduce your chances of infection greatly because there are so many computer owners who don't take these steps. It's like the old saying, "A locked door is to keep honest people out, but an unlocked one is inviting to the crooked."

Last February, I met with an Indianapolis area Not For Profit organization to discuss their computer network services needs. The organization was typical of many small nonprofits in that their computer network had been designed by one volunteer, built by a procession of other volunteers, and supported by no one really. They had reached a point where they realized the process of Information Technology management they were using was inadequate and wanted to discuss hiring professional computer network consultants.

Port-to-Port Consulting has a history of working with Not For Profits, and we usually try to provide a little extra when we work with them so I spent time with the staff and helped them develop a stopgap plan that would hold until they could develop a budget and plan for IT support services. Our conversations continued, on and off, for the rest of the year.

How surprising it was for me to receive an RFP for Computer Outsourcing Services from this very same agency a week or so ago. Small organizations should not use the RFP process for choosing an IT services provider.

1. They can't write one that will allow them to distinguish the differences between prospective bidders.
2. Most competent computer tech support providers will not go to the effort to respond for a small amount of work.
3. The relationship between the organization and the network services provider is far more important than most other elements, assuming all offerors are moderately competent.

There, I said it. If you're a small business looking for computer network consulting you need to face up to the fact that you don't need the smartest guy in the industry. Your network is actually pretty simple. In fact, its simplicity is what allows so many nearly-incompetent people to compete with good IT outsourcing companies. They only have to make it appear that your network is working and you'll never know the difference -- at least not for a long time.

Now I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't do your homework. Talk to several providers and their current clients. Make sure you feel a connection with the company. Evaluate the fit between your culture and theirs. But don't write an RFP. The same volunteers who created your scary network are going to evaluate the responses. If they were as good as that, you wouldn't be looking for better help.

Pick your guy and then negotiate an agreement, or ask everyone you liked to provide a proposal.

My friend Robert Kyslinger runs a good computer network services company in Houston called Omnipotech. He is fond of branding his products and services by using the prefix "omni" in front of it. While I enjoy making fun of the consistent way in which he does this, I realize that he's onto something. Having a consistent name can help people remember your company. However, it is possible to over do that -- hence our teasing of Robert.

One of the problems that the many different Android tablet devices face is the wide variety of names for them. In a sense, the tablet world is divided into 3 camps: iPads, Android devices, and the hopefully-coming-soon Windows 8 devices. While Apple is busy readying for the release of the 3rd version of the iPad, the Android world is chasing a way to get their devices recognized by name. I've played with dozens of them and I can only name a handful. The problem is so bad that Amazon seemed to go to extra effort to avoid calling their device an Android tablet. In the process they have done what I believe is significant damage to their Kindle brand by prepending it to the Fire, but that's how bad they didn't want to be lumped into the other Android tablets. More than 100 tablets have been introduced since the arrival of the iPad.

So when my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers ask me about the potential for tablets in their organizations, I tell them it is inevitable that they will be using tablets at some point because their people will start bringing their devices to work (BYOT). I also tell these IT support services customers that the only platform that has enough history to consider right now is the iPad. Any of the dozens of Android tablets could be gone in a matter of weeks.

2012 will be the year that tablets come into popular use in small businesses around central Indiana. The Pertingo computer support services customers that Port-to-Port Consulting works with will be ready.

When I attended the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology back in the 80s, we were required to learn three programming languages: BASIC, Fortran, and Assembly. The truth is we were required to write some fairly simple programs in each of these languages to prove that we could figure out how to look up the command syntax. Later I learned C and a little bit of Pascal. Shortly after that, the mouse became relevant and event-driven programming became important. I discovered that I tend to think in straight lines and I abandoned all hope of writing software.

Boy am I happy now. New programming languages appear and disappear at such a rapid rate these days that a good programmer's skills may be obsolete before he finishes his first project. The growth is driven by advances in processor technology and, of course, advances in the web.

As we work with our central Indiana small business computer outsourcing customers on the strategic level of their IT systems, we often have discussions about writing custom software. In the past, it wasn't necessary to obsess about the development language. Today, a bad choice of language could mean an orphaned application in just a few short years. New programmers don't want to learn the dying languages. They want to be on the front edge of the new ones.

Most small businesses shouldn't be writing custom software anyway. Someone out there has already taken a stab at the problem facing you right now. Find them and use what they did if at all possible. Now even this advice is suspect. My IT support services customers need to know that the specialty software they use to run their business will continue to be supportable as time goes on. The same holds true of cloud based services. The original version of Facebook was written in Cold Fusion. Without the influx of venture capital, it's unlikely that their transition to the many languages used today could have been done.

If you're considering new specialty software or cloud based services, be sure to have your IT support services provider check into the viability of the programming language used to develop your software.

Now that the NFL season is in Playoffs, everyone in central Indiana is thinking about the hoards of people who will descend on us in early February to watch the Super Bowl. Our host committee has done a fabulous job of preparing for the onslaught of people who will spend that week here in Indianapolis. We here at Port-to-Port Consulting have started thinking about the impact of all of these visitors on our routine that week. Many of our small business computer outsourcing customers are also starting to wonder. One of my downtown Indianapolis clients told me that their parking garage has informed them that their monthly passes will be no good during the Super Bowl week. They don't know where they'll park, or what it will cost them.

For all of the companies to which we provide IT support services, there are some remote access capabilities. At least enough for our computer help desk staff to connect for maintenance and troubleshooting. For many, the remote access capability is more robust. We're talking to others about enhancing their remote access in advance of the Super Bowl. For the average office worker these days, the ability to work remotely is relatively inexpensive to provide. We add this capability to many of our computer network services customers after the first big snow storm each winter.

Because we know the date for the big game, we can get ahead of the traffic bottlenecks it will cause by making sure that our customers in downtown Indianapolis have a way to work without leaving home. Thank goodness getting them to come back afterwards is not our problem.

Last month, I was one of the computer tech support specialists who were guests on WFYI's No Limits radio show. Along with Regina Miller and Chris Flood, we answered questions about computers for callers during the one hour show. While No Limits is a fairly new show, the station reported that the response to the computer technology show was high. In fact, later in the month, the station re-aired that episode during their holiday hiatus.

The experience was a lot of fun for me. It made me start to think that Indianapolis could use a computer network services call-in show. It would be a neat way to provide useful information to the community about issues that we all have to fight with our home and small business computer networks.

I would have altered the format just a bit for this topic. John Krull, the show's host, generally takes calls, or emails, or tweets from the audience and then presents them to his guests to discuss. In the world of computer help desk work, it is imperative to talk thru the problem with the person. Troubleshooting a problem that gets described as a printing problem but turns out to be a keyboard problem is hard to do without the involvement of the person with the problem.

That's what made me think of the Car Talk format. Tom and Ray spend a good deal of their show querrying the callers to be sure the problem they have is the same as the one they described. They have a little fun with it as well. Both of these elements would make a computer call-in show less frightening to callers.

What do you think?

A frequent comment lately about Facebook is that if the government had built a site and asked us to enter so much of our personal information, we'd be rioting in the streets. It's an interesting phenomenon that many (most) of us are willing to share some pretty intimate details about our lives with the general public. This isn't new because of Facebook. I can't tell you the number of people who have given me their life stories while sitting in waiting rooms or standing in lines. It's just easier to tell your story to uninvolved strangers.

So why is it a big deal for my central Indiana small business computer outsourcing customers?

When we tell the guy standing next to us at the hot dog stand about our troubles, we realize that he is going to quickly forget as he moves on with his life. But when we put it on the Internet, it's there forever. People who do know something about us are going to see that stuff. Yet it doesn't feel that way when we do it. It feels the same as the conversation in the Elephant Ear line at the fair, because the people we wouldn't share this with aren't there with us when we put it online. The pseudo-sense of animosity leads us to overshare.

With the possible competition of Social Media, Cloud Computing has been the question on the minds of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers in 2011. How can you not think about it when you're being bombarded by "to the Cloud!" commercials during prime time television? I've told many of my Pertingo IT support services clients that even though the name is cooler, cloud computing is just a re-branding of things that didn't have great names before: client-server, ASP, SaaS, and others.

The reality is that anything you do where the processing (or the bulk of it) is happening on a machine other than the one you're sitting in front of can be considered Cloud computing. A phrase my computer support technicians have used is "Cloud in the Closet" to explain to some of our network support customers that they already have some of their computing in the cloud because their server in the closet is doing the processing for them.

The reality is that cloud computing is a way to trade one set of limiting factors for another. Smart small business owners will work with their computer network consulting provider to develop a plan for testing parts of their system against cloud alternatives. The best time to consider this is when critical IT infrastructure nears its replacement date. It's easier to make the switch to avoid a big capital expense than to switch and be left with a piece of equipment that has no purpose.

We have yet to find one of our computer outsourcing customers that can go completely to the cloud, but every one of them has something worth considering for moving out. You probably have something too.