Troy Hunt on security–again!

Troy Hunt has featured on a recent Four Corners episode – In Google We Trust.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/09/09/3842009.htm
For those that may not know Troy has also done a podcast with me as well as been part of the CIAOPS Virtual Technology Group where he did a presentation on web security that is available on my YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxu5qYCtv1s
This Four Corners episode is a good watch and reveals how widespread tracking is now becoming. From traffic lights and garbage bins to shopping centres, if you carry you mobile phone with you MUST assume you are being tracked constantly.
Whether tracking is a good or a bad thing is up to you. It can certainly provide you with more targeting offerings but the big question is what happens to that data and what would happen if it is abused?
Clearly the biggest consideration is that people need to far more aware of the how they are being tracked and be far more proactive in asking questions about how their data is being used.
Again, a great program and I commend it to everyone.

Shared not siloed

In my experience most businesses have more than enough technology. The biggest failure is that they are not using the technology to be more productive. What I see as the biggest inhibiter to improved productivity is ‘old world’ thinking around siloing information rather than sharing it.
Take a look at all the correspondence you made today, emails, phone calls, faxes, the lot. Now most of these are siloed conversations between two people. However, if you closely examine these conversations I would suggest to you that at least one other party, not in the conversation, would have benefited from the information in that siloed conversation.
As an example, let me take just one email I sent today. In that email I shared some links about working with external users in Office 365. Such information would have certainly helped many others looking to answer the same question. However, that information is now only accessible by myself (in my sent items) and by the recipient (in their inbox). That means if someone else asks me the same question I have to forward the email. Luckily, I write this blog and share such information with everyone.
Now wouldn’t it make much more sense if I had posted that information publically and then told people to look there? Doing so also allows people to discover it via search. Best part about it? I don’t have to recreate the information because it is now available for all to see and use. Even better, they can add to and build on what I initially created to make it even better. Inside email the information simply dies a digital death.
Yes, email is a handy business tool but it has its limits. The overuse of email has effectively trapped much of the information within a business, much of which could and should be public. Don’t believe me? Take a look inside your own business, inside your own inbox. How of what you see there should be available publically and could help others? Lots, I’ll bet.
I can’t tell you the number of businesses I see where you hear people asking the same questions al the time. “Where is this?”, “How do we do that?”, “Why is it done this way?”. If you hear such questions more than once inside a business you know that not enough information is being made available publically.
There are so many tools available to businesses today to make information public. Social media, blogs, Twitter, Wikis, FAQs, etc, etc. Yet very few I see actually make it a point of their business to SHARE. Most business people seem intoxicated with accumulating as many unread emails as possible, viewing that as some badge of honour.
Welcome to the new world of ‘sharing’ people. Successful businesses share information within and outside their business. With their customers, employees, the public and even their competitors and you know what? Doing so gives them a competitive advantage. Why? Because they are more productive and more trusted. Ask yourself, why do you do business with certain companies? Typically because you trust them in some way shape or form.
Take an honest look at your business and ask yourself if it is being a productive as it could be? I’ll bet the answer is not it isn’t. Now ask yourself whether your business is sharing or siloing its information. Again, I’ll put my money on siloing.
Want your business to be more successful? In a word, SHARE!

Key to success is networking

I have just returned from TechEd Australia and I get plenty of questions about whether it was worthwhile. The problem is that most of these questions are only concerned about the content of the presentations. To my mind the most important things about these sort of events is networking.

It amazes me at how ‘old world’ many business still approach marketing. They waste all their time doing things like flyers, attempting to optimize SEO and so on. If you really reckon flyers work then can I ask you how many YOU read and act on? None, I’ll bet. As for SEO, do you really want random people typically shopping around for the cheapest price as a customer? Not me.

If it is one thing that I have learnt over my time in business, and something that I should have a adopted much sooner, it is business networking. These days that typically also means engagement with social media.

The first place you should be starting is Linkedin, which you can probably best consider as business to business social media. Make sure that your profile there is complete and contains as much detail about yourself. Next, start connecting with people you know. Then start asking for testimonial and endorsements.

If you look at my profile you’ll see that I have over 500 connections (actually well over 700 actually). How would you ever achieve that without social media?

Apart from written testimonials you’ll find others endorsing your skills. As you can see from my current list above over 99 people have endorsed me for SharePoint and Cloud Computing. These endorsement have been made by my contacts without solicitation by me. Those numbers are pretty powerful when a prospect starting looking you up and see’s how well you are endorse by others! Speaks much greater volumes about your skills than a flyer you put together I reckon.

The real secret to being a business success I believe is attracting people to you. As I have said before, you want to be the moth not the flame. You cannot of course be the flame if you simply sit there and do nothing. You have to work out a strategy that will attract people. How do you do that? Simple. Work out what they want and give it to them.

You can’t be everything to everyone so pick a niche and then niche that niche and niche it some more. You want to aim to be an inch wide and a mile deep rather than the other way around. The only way generalists success is by selling HUGE volumes.

So:

1. Work out your target audience

2. Work out what you target audience needs

3. Create offerings for the needs of this audience

4. Starting networking and attracting this audience to you

The tools for successful networking are now so cheap. Social media is typically free and probably the most expensive outlay when it comes to networking would be shouting someone a cup of coffee when you meet face to face.

And you really want to spend thousands on SEO optimization? REALLY?

If the secret to successful business is networking then the secret to successful networking is helping people. If you help people, they will continue to seek you out. In most cases they’ll be happy to pay you for this help. Simple eh? Why does it have to be any more difficult than that?

Exchange Online mailboxes double

Hot on the heels of the increased capacity with SkyDrive Pro Online Microsoft has just announced that Exchange Online Mailboxes will double in size. Here’s the announcement:
http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/29/exchange-online-mailbox-sizes-are-doubling.aspx

You’ll see that it is basically across all plans and all mailboxes, including shared mailboxes.
Existing users won’t need to do anything, their mailbox will automatically increase sometime between now and November.
This is yet further evidence to my mind of how fast Microsoft is bringing improvements to Office 365 so expect to see further updates coming thick and fast.

SkyDrive Pro online storage gets better

Microsoft has just announce 3 improvements to SkyDrive Pro Online:

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/27/skydrive-pro-increases-storage-and-ease-of-sharing.aspx

1. SkyDrive Storage for all users will be increased from the current 7GB standard to 25GB.

2. You can purchase additional storage for SkyDrive Pro beyond the new 25GB limit up to 100GB.

3. New Shared with Me view to located documents shared with you.

This is great news and another indication of how cheap online storage has become. I would expect to see this limit continue to increase over time.

The ability to add more storage to SkyDrive Pro was a limit for some users but now no more. 100GB of personal space is a HUGE amount of data for one person!

As I have mentioned many time here in this blog, the future of collaboration is all about sharing and anything that makes that easier is good.

Review–Otterbox Defender Series for Lumia 920

Full disclosure – the review unit was supplied by Mobilezap. You can find this device and others at the Mobilezap category page at:

http://www.mobilezap.com.au/31817/nokia/lumia-920/cases.htm

One of the downsides to mobile devices these days is that they are generally pretty fragile. If they get dropped from typically waist height they seem to have an alarming ability to twist in the air and fall on their screens or a corner. In the worst case this results in a unusable device, in other cases a fairly damaged unit.

Now many people need to use their phones in hostile environments where they really need more protection than a standard case or ‘bump’ can provide. This is where the Otterbox comes in.

It is basically an enclosed shell that you insert your phone into and then you encapsulate that in a neoprene like skin. The result is a very protected device.

Initially when I opened the Otterbox I couldn’t work out how to get it open to insert the phone. Turns out that you need to remove the neoprene like skin from the Otterbox and then you can open the case to insert the phone.

It fits snuggly and everything clips together with a resounding ‘click’. Once you place the neoprene-like skin back around the box holding the phone you need to ensure that it mated all the way up to the lip of the box.

With all the done your phone is now pretty much indestructible. You can them clip the phone into the holder which you can attach to your belt. Again, there is a resounding ‘click’ when you mate the Otterbox to the holder. That says ‘it ain’t going nowhere’.

Now there are some minor issues with the unit. Firstly, the hole for the external headphone jack doesn’t line up with the phone jack. You can of course still open the flap and still use any headset but seems strange that it doesn’t line up. The unit does have a number of locations where the elements could gain access to your phone, so don’t go thinking this is a waterproof container.

Here’s a quick video demonstration of the unit I did so you can get a better idea:

Having all this protection does make the phone that much bulkier and you really need two hands to get it on and off the belt holder which may prove a little tricky at times, however as something that will provide almost 100% protection for your Lumina 920 then this is the protective case for you.

In summary, if you really need high end protection for your Lumia 920 so it will survive incidents that would render a other phones inoperative then this is the protective case for you.

Great Windows Phone ad

If you haven’t already seen it, here’s a great add for the new Nokia 1020 Windows Phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vR4LeL0yzE

It is getting plenty of acclaim out there and I still believe the Windows Phone platform to be superior to everything that is currently out there. If you haven’t looked at a Nokia Windows Phone then I’d suggest you go and have a look at how good these things are.