Every February we celebrate Valentine's Day by giving flowers, candy and cards to those we love. We do this in honor of Saint Valentine. You may be wondering, "Who is St. Valentine"? Time to brush up on your Valentine's history!

Legend has it that Valentine was a priest who served during third century Rome. There was an Emperor at that time by the name of Claudius II. Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those that were married. With this thought in mind he outlawed marriage for young men in hopes of building a stronger military base. Supposedly, Valentine decided this decree just wasn't fair and chose to marry young couples secretly. When Emperor Claudius II found out about Valentine's actions he had him put to death.

Another legend has it that Valentine was an imprisoned man who fell in love with his jailor's daughter. Before he was put to death he sent the first 'valentine' himself when he wrote her a letter and signed it 'Your Valentine', words still used on cards today.

Perhaps we'll never know the true identity and story behind the man named St. Valentine, but this much is for sure...February has been the month to celebrate love for a long time, dating clear back to the Middle Ages. In fact, Valentines ranks second only to Christmas in number of greeting cards sent.

Another valentine gentleman you may be wondering about is Cupid (Latin cupido, "desire"). In Roman mythology Cupid is the son of Venus, goddess of love. His counterpart in Greek mythology is Eros, god of love. Cupid is often said to be a mischievous boy who goes around wounding both gods and humans with his arrows, causing them to fall in love.

Many jobs require at least some typing. Single-finger pecking on the keyboard cost time and money. You can help to speed up your typing skills using these three steps.

THREE WAYS TO TYPE FASTER
Developing your skill for touch typing requires at least three steps for improvement. These steps are position, practice, and no peeking. Before you begin trying out the steps below, it is important to have a base line of your current typing speed. There are many free typing tests online. Open your search engine and type, "free typing test" many search results will appear. Numerous typing tests also come with free online games and tutorials.

POSITION
It is impossible to learn how to type well without first learning the basics of typing. Your fingers must learn to navigate the keyboard. Each finger is responsible for touching certain keys. In order for your fingers to become familiar with these keys, it is essential to learn good techniques. A typing tutorial will be helpful in learning good technique. Use a free online tutorial to learn the basics of where your fingers should rest at in home row. Home row uses the keys a, s, d, f, j, k, l, and “;”. Here is one good tip for learning to type: learn to identify words letter by letter instead of word by word.

PRACTICE
The old cliché, practice makes perfect couldn't be truer in this case. Typing takes practice, practice, and even more practice. Using your typing skill on a daily basis helps you retain your speed and accuracy. An easy way to practice your typing is by playing an online typing game. There are plenty free ones online to choose from. Many of them are entertaining as well. Keeping your fingers moving in a repetitive motion on the keyboard will sharpen your touch typing skill.

NO PEEKING
Probably one of the hardest tasks in learning how to improve your typing skills is to not look at your hands. Trusting your fingers to move the way you've taught them is difficult. Force yourself to focus on the words in front of you and not of the keys of the keyboard. Your fingers know where the keys are now it is time to let them fly. The more you practice without looking, the more your typing speed will improve. One tip you might try if you're having trouble peeking, is to drape a hand towel over your hands while you type.

CONCLUSION
Typing is a learned skill, which takes time to learn the technique, practice the technique, and then trusting your fingers. Now you know how to improve your typing speed, you can make your day's work more productive. Hen pecking the keys on the keyboard might be easy, but it costs you time in the long run. Learning how to increase your typing speed will save you time and money. The free online tests, tutorials, and games eliminate any reason for not learning this useful skill. Start your search engines and type faster.

While it's still too soon to tell if it can live up to the insane amount of hype that preceded its introduction, the iPad is more than any other product the company has made the quintessential Apple device.

From the almost entirely homegrown technology, to the addition of the books counterpart to its iTunes media hub, to taking a risk on the middle category between smartphones and laptops, the iPad completes the picture for Apple in a lot of ways.

Steve Jobs used "revolutionary" to describe his company's newest device Wednesday, and while that's more than a bit over-the-top, the iPad does epitomize Apple's evolution. Before he even introduced the tablet Wednesday, Jobs brought up Apple's three main sources of revenue: the iPod, iPhone, and Mac have made Apple a $50 billion company. By basically discounting the iMac and other desktops (which makes sense, desktops have been headed downhill for a while), he pressed the point about what Apple has become: It's "a mobile device company," he said. "That's what we do."

Though he didn't say it specifically, he meant it as opposed to a computer company -- a name they dropped in 2007 -- and as opposed to just a hardware and software maker. With few exceptions, Apple makes portable media-centric devices, and of those, the iPad is the one that brings all of Apple's businesses together.

With the iPad, Apple has a device that rounds out the company's product line and also moves the company forward toward being the spoke in the wheel that is the world or media and technology. Making something that fits between a smartphone and a laptop has been a goal for the consumer technology industry for more than a decade. The most recent attempt has been the Netbook. The iPad easily makes Netbooks seem boring and staid, and too close to the same old form factor, the computer. The iPad is taking a different tack: taking tasks that were too big for an iPhone and puts them on a device that isn't pocket-sized, but is more convenient to carry around than a 13- or 15-inch laptop.

It's risky, of course, to try to jump start a category that has never been proven. But it's also part of Apple's M.O.: the company has a vision for the mobile computer and media industries, and a lot of confidence in its abilities.

One-Stop Shop

That extends to the company's manufacturing and design. Apple has positioned itself so that it has to rely on very few outside sources to create the device. Plus, any sort of content you want on the iPad has to be, with few exceptions, bought through Apple as the middleman.

Looking back now, we should have seen this coming over the past few years: Apple wanted a new way of building their MacBooks, so they came up with the manufacture process where it's cut from a single block of aluminum. They wanted to make their own chip, so they bought PA Semi and created the "A4," which notably cuts Intel out of the equation. They also have their own battery technology and are using IPS, or in-plane-switching LCD technology, for the screen that allows quicker response times for viewing video and wider viewing angles. And all of the content for the device must pass through one of Apple's own online retail stores: iBooks, iTunes, or the App Store. Plus, if you consider the sweet deal on the 3G wireless plans (AT&T, no contract, month-to-month), Apple clearly dictated the terms with AT&T.

The introduction of the iBooks store also snaps into place the final piece of the iTunes puzzle. Beyond music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, podcasts, games, apps, and iTunes U educational material, books was the only thing missing. Yes, newspapers and magazine content did go mostly unmentioned during Wednesday's presentation, but it's conceivable those deals are still getting worked out behind the scenes and could be added later to the iBooks site.

Photos: The New iPad Up Close

Also worth noting: Apple didn't have to do the iBooks site itself. There are a variety of e-book apps that already exist and could have easily delivered books to the iPad. But again, Apple does things its own way, and books are very much a part of what appears to be a plan to be the gatekeeper of all media.

Secret Guinea Pigs

In terms of the ways users interact with the iPad, this is a culmination of stuff Apple has been working on for years. Anyone who's ever bought from iTunes, played a game from the App Store, or gotten used to a virtual keyboard was being secretly trained for the iPad.

With the iPod, Apple got us used to purchasing media without a physical copy--no CDs, no DVDs. With the iPhone, they taught us to think in terms of touch screen interaction -- pinching and zooming, swiping, and a virtual keyboard, the utility of third-party applications, and having the Web in your pocket. All of those things are the main features of the iPad. And as Jobs said Wednesday, 75 million people that own an iPod Touch or iPhone "already know how to use the iPad."

And that's Apple's philosophy for all of its products, you're supposed to "get" it, or intuitively know how to use a device the first time you pick it up. As opposed to the first iPod though or the first iPhone, the iPad is so similar to other devices we already have experience with that this really can be said to be for the average consumer with perhaps a casual interest in technology.

On that note, there's also some subtext in the initial reactions to the iPad by the tech-savvy set, e.g. most of the people in the room Wednesday when Jobs unveiled it and the same people who thought this would be the magical device that changed everything. You may have seen the flood of negative responses on Twitter, Facebook, and at various blogs to what the device can't do. There's a whole separate story to be written about the hype and letdown cycle that comes from these Apple events, but more important is what the iPad's capabilities and technical specifications illustrate: Apple is going to do what it wants.

The company likely doesn't care that some very vocal people want it to have an HDMI out port, or support Flash, or allow multiple apps to run at the same time. Just like it's going to go its own way on having a removable battery in the iPhone, removing FireWire from MacBooks, and making glossy screens standard. Apple's target is not the geek set who care about browser standards; with this iPad, the target is your mom, who probably just wants to read e-books in color, check her e-mail, and watch some episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" next time she's on an airplane.

While we can leave it to the hardware experts at CNET Reviews to tell us whether this device is worth buying, it's clear in any case that this device is both a beginning and an end for Apple. With a new product category and a new part of the business, it's also closed the circle on its media ambitions.

See original article at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/28/tech/main6150487.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Is your business one that is highly dependent on a completely effective computer that is thoroughly operational? If so then you do not want to see your computer breakdown in any way, shape, or form. Sadly, computers are prone to problems and errors. In some cases, the problems are minor. Then there are other instances when the problems with the computer are so severe the problems lead to crashes and other serious faults.
When such an incident occurs, it may not even be possible to restore the computer to its original effective operational capability. That is why computer network auditing is so extremely helpful. It can find problems and flaws well in advance of a crash or serious security breach.

In some ways, you could consider having a network audit as a form of insurance. By enacting an audit long in advance of the problem, the situation that escalates into the unforeseen problem is completely eliminated. Needless to say, that can save your business a lot of time, effort, and expense.
So, what will be performed during the performance of a network audit? There are many part to the audit and they can include the following:
A clear diagnosis of the operating system and the registry can be effectively run. This way, the severity of current problems can be determined while problems that exist below the surface can be detected. When an operating system is faltering, the computer's lifespan is on borrowed time. Because of this, it is necessary to detect and fix these problems across a network early in the beginning of the issue.

How is the operation of the software and hardware of these computers performing? For those that notice problems with operation, the need then becomes knowing exactly what the problem is so as to effectively fix the problem with little or no effort. Well, you will need some effort - specifically, you will need to call in a professional that can perform the diagnostic audit required to address the problem.

Are you employing backups in the network to capture data prior to a crash? If so, you will need these backups to be as functionally reliable as possible. A network audit can inform whether or not this is the case. Consider that another vital component of performing an audit.
The way in which the computer and the network are incorporated with the servers needs to be strong as well. A network audio can ensure this is the case, and remains the case.

Among the most vital of areas in which a network audit can be employed is in the security of the computer. When you have security problems you are open to all sorts of security troubles and violations and breaches. Such a scenario cannot be maintained while allowing the company to remain healthy. A network audit can be used to pick up on the security flaws. From this, effective repairs can be employed.

There is a lot of value to network auditing and those that want their computer system to remain healthy and effective should definitely look into it.
Kotori Technologies is offering free network audits to all current and potential clients. Please call our office today to schedule your appointment.

 Today in many small businesses they depend on Remote Backup for their backup solution.  However, most remote backup solutions only back up the data.  They don’t backup the critical network information that is needed to restore a server back to the way it was before the disaster.  This means that many companies would have to start from scratch to recover the network infrastructure.

Well this happened to one of our clients last week.  Their server crashed and we had to recover their data.  Where the client was worried about the data loss we were worried about how long it would take to recover the network.  Once we got on-site and got the server back online we had to start the recovery of the data.  We started the recovery around eight thirty in the morning and we did not finish the recovery of all of their data until 48 hours later.  We had to recover over 100GB of data from the internet.  It was not until three o’clock that afternoon that the staff could get back to work.  Imagine if your business was down and did not have access to your data for over 48 hours.  How many people work for you that either you had to pay or send home?

Now don’t get me wrong, remote backup is a good solution. But for many companies 48 hours is too long to be down.  A good disaster recovery solution offers both an on-site recovery and an off-site recovery.   If you are concerned about your existing backup and disaster recovery strategy please feel free to check out our Optix DataVault service or call us at (843) 553-8800.