E-mail: Gmail. Not exactly a software since it’s web mail, but its hands down the best email managing system IMO. (and I’ve used other email clients before like Outlook, Lotus, Yahoo).

Browser: Google Chrome. I switched from Firefox last year. It took some getting used to in the first week. But after that, I started loving Chrome. I love that it lets you shift your tabs around, unlike Firefox. It also lets you “pin” your frequently accessed pages so it becomes a small icon on the navigation. It’s fast, minimalistic in interface, and very reliable as a browser.

Calendar: GCal. Keeps all my schedules in check, and it’s web-based so you can access it anywhere – even your phone if it has the web-surfing function

Task Shuffler: Ever felt the need to move the programs around in your task bar? I know I do. This is an extremely handy program that allows you to do just that, simply via clicking/dragging/dropping. For Windows only.

Screen Capture: Snipping Tool if you are using Windows Vista (in built), Zap Grab if you are using other platforms. Just click and grab any part of the screen, and you have your image. Extremely useful.

Automated Computer Shut Down: Switch Off. Automatically Shuts down/ Hibernates/ Restarts/ Logs Off your computer at a time you input. Great if you are downloading something which is taking a while but you need to leave your computer before it finishes.

Audio: Audacity. Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

Document Processor: Libre Office. This is almost a direct clone of MS Office set (Powerpoint, Word, Excel) – about 99.9% similar. I find it hard to believe that this is free! The only issue I’ve experienced so far is the slight change in formatting when you convert to MS office extensions (.doc, .xls) – but it’s manageable.

PDF: PDF Creator. Libre Office already comes with an inbuilt pdf creator. But if you want to create PDFs from other applications, PDF creator is for you. As long as there’s a “Print” option, you can generate a pdf from there.

Graphics Editing: GIMP. Very similar to Adobe Photoshop. Some functions are named and organized differently than Photoshop, so if you are a Photoshop user you can download GIMP Shop to change GIMP’s interface similar to Photoshop. The amazing thing is how GIMP packs with so much graphic editing prowess in such a small program (installer is 15.2meg, while Photoshop is over 700meg).

FTP: Filezilla. Excellent FTP program that does its job well. You got to love open source projects.

Chat: GTalk. Extremely low-resource and fast chat application with functions that supersede MSN (example: logging of chat history which is integrated with and automatically saved in Gmail Chat folder). For even more functions (emoticons, group chat, etc), check out Gtalk Labs Edition.

Blogging: WordPress.org if you are looking to host your own blog and WordPress.com for the free hosted version. Personal Excellence is using WordPress.

Journal: Daily Diary. A very simple yet effective free journaling application that lets you type and store your entries on your computer. Comes with password protection and multiple journal creation for different purposes (e.g., record of different goals, areas of your life, etc)

Video player: VLC Media Player. The best multi-format media player. With so many different media formats out there, this one is a catch-all player that plays almost anything. And it’s resource light too.

Information Storage: Ever Note. Storage central for information captured across any environment – Computer, Web, Phone.

To-Do Lists: Remember The Milk. Very effective for getting your tasks in check. It’s web-based, which means you can access it anywhere.

Post-It Notes: Morun Sticky Notes. Minimalistic post-it notes on your desktop. Convenient placeholder for storing commonly-accessed or used information.

Mind Mapping: Free Mind. It’s a great open-source mindmapping software. Great tool and very user-friendly.

Timer: E.gg Timer. This is a web-based app and not an actual software. It’s an online stopwatch you can time yourself and it’ll beep at the end. Very useful if you want to timebox when doing a task, exercising, etc.

Internet Calls: Skype. Gtalk works great too as a backup. Both support video conferencing.

HTML Editor: NVU is a free, open source web editor, which you can use to build your website via a WYSIWYG editor (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). According to the website, it rivals programs as Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s Expression Web even, in functionality. Usually I use notepad for webpage edits outside of the WordPress platform, but when there’s heavy coding involved, NVU is a great time saver. I used it to build the PEBook and 30DLBL

System Center Operations Manager 2012
For quite a while, SCOM has had availability monitoring for network devices, and there have been third-party tools that could get more detailed information from network devices. However, SCOM 2012 provides support for much more in the way of native device monitoring. SCOM 2012 offers the ability to discover and monitor network devices, including the various interfaces and ports on those devices. With SCOM 2012, you can go far beyond simple up/down monitoring in SCOM.
The big deal: Microsoft offers various System Center bundles that make the products available in affordable ways. Now, SCOM can be used for much more than it could before. SCOM has always been an outstanding monitoring tool for Microsoft environments. SCOM 2007 added support for some third-party platforms, and SCOM 2012 extends the infrastructure monitoring capabilities of the product.

Windows 8 client
Much has been written about Windows 8, and Microsoft is certainly making the product an emphasis in the coming form factor war. If Windows 8 works the way that Microsoft seems to want it to work — and the market accepts it as a viable option outside the confines of the traditional computing space — the product could revolutionize computing by allowing the same operating system and applications to run seamlessly across a wide variety of devices, including PCs, laptops, tablets, phones, and even gaming consoles. Obviously, Microsoft has Windows Phone 7 as another mobile option for mobile devices, but the interface similarities may help when it comes to widespread adoption.
The big deal: It’s clear that Microsoft has an uphill battle ahead of it when it comes to the mobile space. If the company can get Windows 8 right, it could create massive opportunities for developers to get their applications in front of audiences on any device form factor they use.

Lync
I like Lync. The product has the potential to seriously disrupt the telephony space, and it adds serious unified communications capabilities to organizations that deploy it. Lync 2010 added a number of user-centric features, including the “me” area, which allows users to set their own status and track their own visibility. Lync also enables users to share individual desktops and to collaborate with other users. In addition, Lync includes audio and video conferencing capabilities and much more.
The big deal: Between Lync and Microsoft’s Skype acquisition, the company is well positioned to own the voice and video space if it can execute well. Lync can be a full-fledged replacement for an existing PBX and makes person-to-person communication very easy via a number of different channels.

Hyper-V 3.0
Microsoft has gone on record to say that Hyper-V 3.0 will catapult the company’s virtualization efforts and move it, in some ways, beyond what even VMware is offering. Hyper-V 3.0 will add the ability to perform multiple concurrent live migrations and introduces the new VHDX virtual disk format, a virtual fibre channel adapter and boot from SAN capabilities.
From a scalability perspective, Hyper-V 3.0 supports up to 160 logical processors on a host, as well as up to 2 TB of RAM. Guests will be able to support 32 vCPUs and up to 512 GB of RAM.
The big deal: Again, this is not intended to be a complete Hyper-V 3.0 primer. However, this is another instance where a combination of circumstance and feature gap closing may help Microsoft. VMware has, in the opinion of many, made some serious errors in its new licensing schemes. This may provide an outstanding opportunity for Hyper-V 3.0 to begin to supplant VMware in some environments. Hyper-V 3.0 will begin to erase some of VMware’s feature lead, which may help this process along.

Microsoft’s “re-imagining” of Windows 8 is focused very heavily on a new, Metro-style touch-based interface. However, they make a big deal of saying that it’s just as usable with a mouse and keyboard—and no matter what device you’re on, you can switch between the simple Metro interface and the traditional Windows desktop to fit whatever your needs are at that given moment.

Performance Increases

One of the issues that’s been on our minds since they previewed this new interface was whether this will keep bogging Windows down with more running processes, and whether running a full Windows desktop on a low-powered tablet was really a good idea.

Performance was the first thing they addressed today: Windows 8 actually has better performance than Windows 7, even with this metro interface running on top of a desktop. Tablet users and netbook users should notice a fairly significant performance increase with Windows 8. What it really “feels” like in real-world usage remains to be seen, but you can see a comparison between a task manager running on both operating systems above—which makes us pretty hopeful. Furthermore, any of your tablet-based apps will suspend themselves when you jump into the traditional desktop, so they don’t take up any of your resources.

The Lock Screen

Windows 8′s lock screen is pretty much what you’d expect: it’s got a beautiful picture along with a few little widgets full of information, like the time, how many emails you have, and so on. However, after swiping to unlock, Windows 8 shows off some pretty neat touch-based features, particularly a “picture password” feature. Instead of using a PIN or a lock pattern to get into your system, you swipe invisible gestures using a picture to orient yourself (in the example they showed, the password was to tap on a person’s nose and swipe left across their arm). Android modders might find this similar to CyanogenMod’s lock screen gestures.

The Home Screen

The home screen is very familiar to anyone who’s used Windows Phone 7. You’ve got a set of tiles, each of which represents an application, and many of which show information and notifications that correspond to the app. For example, your email tile will tell you how many unread emails you have (and who they’re from), your calendar tile will show upcoming events, your music tile will show you what’s playing, and so on. You can also create tiles for games, contacts, and even traditional Windows apps that will pull you into the Windows desktop. The tablet-optimized apps are all full screen and “immersive”, though, and you can rearrange their icons on the home screen easily (just as you would on any other tablet platform).

Running Apps

Running a basic app works as you expect—you tap on its home screen icon and it goes full screen. The browser has lots of touch-based controls, like pinch to zoom and copy and paste, and apps can also share information one another easily. To do so, you just need to select text in the browser or choose a photo in their cloud-based photo app and hit the “Share” button—you’ll then be able to pick an app to which you want to send that text or picture, and work with it from there. For example, you can share photos to Facebook, send text from a web page in an email, and so on.

None of this is brand new to touch-based platforms, but what is new is the ability to not only multitask, but run these apps side by side. Say you want to watch a video and keep an eye on your news feed at the same time. Just like in Windows 7 for the desktop, you can dock an app to one side of the screen while docking another app at the opposite side, which is a seriously cool feature. Imagine being able to IM and play a game at the same time, or browse the web while writing an email. It’s a fantastic way to fix one of the big shortcomings of mobile OSes, thus allowing you to ignore the full desktop interface more often and stay in the touch-friendly, tablet view.

The App Store

The Windows App Store looks much like the home screen, with tiles that correspond to different categories and featured apps. From there, you can look at a more detailed list of the available apps in a given section. And, the store contains not only touch-based apps for the tablet interface, but some of the more traditional desktop Windows apps you’re used to, so you have one portal to discover all your Windows apps no matter what interface you’re using.

Windows Live’s Cloud Syncing

Windows Live is taking center stage as the backend for all of Windows 8′s cloud syncing abilities. Your address book, photos, SkyDrive data, and even data within third-party apps can sync up to the cloud with Windows Live. The address book also syncs with other services like Facebook and Twitter as well. You can even sync all of your settings from one Windows 8 PC to another. Just sign onto your Windows 8 with a Windows Live ID and you’ll get all your themes, languages, app settings, taskbar, and other preferences will show right up. It’s a pretty neat feature if you have multiple Windows 8 PCs and don’t want to set them all up separately—just a few taps and you’ve got all your preferences ready to go.

A New Task Manager

Microsoft’s finally redesigned the task manager, and it looks pretty great. You have a very simple task manager for basic task killing, but if you’re a more advanced user, you can bring up the detailed task manager filled with information on CPU and RAM usage, Metro app history, and even startup tweaking—so you can get rid of apps that launch on startup without going all the way into msconfig.

Windows Explorer

You will have native ISO mounting in Windows Explorer, a new Office-style ribbon, and a one folder up button like the old days of XP. It also has a really cool “quick access” toolbar in the left-hand corner of the title bar that gives you super quick access to your favorite buttons from the ribbon.

Other Features

Along with these cool features, Windows 8 also comes with other features. It’s got system-wide spellchecking, so you don’t have to rely on a specific app to keep your writing top-notch, as well as a system-wide search feature, that lets you search anything from your music library to your contacts to the web itself. It also has a really cool feature for desktop users that lets your run the Metro UI on one monitor while running the traditional desktop on the other.

It also has a really cool feature called “refresh your PC”, where you can do a clean install with the tap of a button. Whether you’re selling your machine or just want a cleaner, faster installation of Windows, you can do it all in one click. You can even set refresh points, similar to restore points, so you can refresh your PC to the way it was at a certain point in time.

It is important for every consumer-facing enterprise to seek out new prospects and drive additional traffic via all available social media channels. Yet too many companies still neglect some basic strategies that could maximize conversion rates for the traffic they already have. The following strategies — when implemented correctly — will not only lead to an increase in conversion rates and revenue from mobile and social media channels but will also help drive companies toward an important cultural transformation, one that can elevate them above competitors and help them stay there.

Some Perspective

Commerce is becoming less about channels and more about touch points. Marketing is moving beyond multichannel to become “multipoint,” and coping with this shift is a serious challenge for businesses of all kinds.

Fortunately, the website remains a place where many customer conversations are initiated, and a growing percentage of transactions are completed, even if they begin elsewhere. A strong yet nimble website — one that can efficiently leverage customer data — will put brands in a better position to effectively respond to the emerging demands of multipoint marketing. Without such a site, they will continue to lose out on potential revenue and lose ground to more agile competitors.

1. Understand Your Customer

By tracking anonymous consumer behavior on the website, companies can display campaigns, content, offers and experiences tailored to an individual’s browsing habits. Watch what they search for and what they look at, not just what they buy.

For example, you might display the latest Air Jordans to consumers who have a history of browsing Nike sneakers. In my experience, retailers who target promotions based on brand preferences see a double digit increase in average order value.

2. Make Webpages Relevant

Websites should adjust marketing content in real time to reflect current events or other sales-related factors, such as customer location. Content that is tailored to different key segments (for example, notifying overseas consumers of discounted international shipping or letting customers from Florida know there’s no sales tax) can help persuade them to purchase.

Relevance includes adjusting site content to reflect where a consumer comes from. For example, were they directed from Facebook or an email newsletter? Make sure the messaging that brought them to the site is reflected in the site experience and inform that site experience with what analytics show about that traffic segment. For example, data may indicate that the buying habits of customers from Facebook are different from those who land on your site via email.

3. Use Offline Learning to Inform Online Action

Many multichannel retailers have accumulated a lot of knowledge about their customers. For example, managers of brick and mortar stores know that there are local brand preferences. Headquarters may track brand preference by region or state. So use that data to geo-target online traffic.

If Texas shoppers prefer Wranglers to Levis, highlight Wranglers to online traffic from Texas. The results will be improved conversion rates and higher average order values.

4. Consistency Is Key

Traffic that comes from outside channels like social media will convert better if consistent messaging is maintained throughout the sales cycle. A promotion that initially drives traffic to a website (such as “Twitter followers receive 20% off”) should be reflected not just on the landing page but also on each page that the visitor sees until they check out.

This doesn’t mean a site makeover. Instead, the message simply needs to echo the messaging that caught the consumer’s attention in the first place.

5. Test, Test, Test

To know if a site is truly compelling, brands must constantly test it to ensure that content is presented in a manner that resonates with consumers to produce optimum results. Businesses should test for sticking points and optimize the choice of messaging, design of buttons, layout of forms and display of positive reinforcements like trust seals and privacy assurances. Even a small improvement at each stage of the process will pay big dividends.

Smart marketers will establish a culture of testing. By making the use of A/B and multivariate testing tools, brands can increase creativity, experimentation and revenue. A culture of testing in which decisions are data-driven is the best posture from which to meet marketing challenges.

Looking Forward

I would love to be able to wrap up by saying “do the above and you’re done.” But that’s not how commerce works today. The rapidly evolving world of multipoint marketing means that brands must constantly tweak the experience that their website delivers to each visitor segment based on everything they know about that segment. That knowledge includes data drawn from all channels — something a website can provide if the proper technology is in place to tap it.

There are five kinds of computer backup storage each with its own advantages and disadvantages you should consider. We’ll briefly describe each type of computer backup storage in this article so you can choose the best option for you. I have definitely learned the hard way, over the years, about the importance of backing up files. Many times I thought my files were safe and secure when they actually were not! I also sometimes just simply forgot to backup all the files and now have a list of the most important computer files to backup.

No Backups

Even a few years ago, it would be crazy to suggest to people that they use computers without making regular backups, but today it’s a very real and very legitimate option. Thanks to the prevalence of “cloud” applications from Google and other companies, many users today store all of their files and applications entirely on the Web.

If you use hosted applications for everything, then you have nothing to worry about when your computer fails. You just need to stand up, walk to another computer, and log in to start working where you left off.

This option isn’t for everyone. Anyone who still needs an offline application or wants to keep their files private from Google still needs to store files locally and should make Easy Secure Backups using the methods described later in this article.

We expect a significant rise in the number of users who store all of their data in the cloud when Google releases its upcoming Chrome operating system for computers.

Same Disk Backups

At first, making a backup to the same disk doesn’t make any sense. If the disk fails, you lose both the original and the backup copies. Plus, making a same disk backup will run slowly—hard drives aren’t designed to quickly copy data from one part of the disk to another part of the same disk.

But a same disk backup can give you access to an important computer backup storage feature: the ability to save multiple versions of the same file. For example, you can make a new copy of your accounting Excel worksheet every time you save so that you can always restore an older version if you make a mistake. You probably also want to do this with important Word documents in case you accidentally delete a few paragraphs or pages, your Outlook email files in case you delete an important email, and many other applications.

Although a same disk can be useful, you should always remember that a disk failure will wipe out both original and backup copies, so this method is best used in combination with computer backup storage methods described later in this article.

External Backup Disks

External backup disks is one of the cheapest methods of computer backup storage and probably also the method that offers the best privacy for your files. Best of all, external backup disks are easy to use with Windows.

Most external disks these days use USB 2.0, although a few disks use Firewire or eSATA. In any case, all you need to do is plug in your external disk and wait for Windows to load it (also called mounting). After you disk mounts, go to the Windows Backup Wizard located in the System and Maintenance menu of the Control Panel. Set up a backup and start it right away.

You have so many choices when buying an external hard drive to use for computer backup storage. You can now get a 2 TB External Hard Drive.

Your first backup to an external drive will take a while, but your second and subsequent backups will go much faster because Windows transfers only the files that have changed.

After you make your backup, you need to safely remove your disk and then store it somewhere safe. It’s no use to you if the same natural disaster that destroys your computer also destroys your backup. You also need to keep the disk safe from attackers or your private files could fall into the wrong hands. For both purposes, we recommend storing your backup disk in a sturdy fire-proof safe.

Network Storage

At businesses and even in homes, more and more people are using Network-Attached Storage (NAS), which is simply disk drives accessible over your local network. NAS offers almost all of the benefits of external backup disks and also Internet-based backups for computer backup storage. Many devices made for small and home offices are also very easy to use.

Similar to external disks, a NAS plugs into your computer—but instead of plugging into your computer directly, in plugs into your network router. You can then create a folder on your computer that stores all the files on your NAS. You can backup files to this folder like normal and you can also share files with other people on your same local network.

Because the NAS is separate from your computer, there’s much less chance it will be destroyed by any calamity that strikes your computer. You can even store NASes in a safe place where they’re resist fire damage and thieves while still connected to the network, providing the ultimate in safety and convince.

Computer Backup Storage With RAID

Another great feature available in higher-end NASes is the ability to use a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) for extra safe backups. If you use your computer for business and worry about losing thousands of dollars of data to a disk drive crash, a NAS with RAID should be an important part of your computer backup storage plan.

RAID is also available for all full-sized PC computers using a special card called a RAID controller, but this method can require a lot of hassle and unskilled users can easily wipe out all their data by choosing the wrong option. With a RAID-enabled NAS, all you usually need to do put a second disk drive in your NAS, browse to a Web interface, and click a button to enable RAID computer backup storage protection.

Internet-Based Backup

The sudden popularity of Dropbox has brought increased attention to the already-established industry of Internet-based backups. Non-geeks will probably appreciate Internet-based backups the most, as very little setup is required. For example, to use Dropbox, all you need to do is install the Dropbox application, create a Dropbox account, and copy your files to a Dropbox folder. Dropbox will do all of the rest.

Dropbox and promise better security, but you’re still trusting someone else with all of your most important files. You can get online easy secure backup that is guaranteed against data loss, however it costs an absolute fortune. Livedrive offer unlimited online storage.

The main disadvantage of Dropbox is that you trust the security of your data to Dropbox. Although Dropbox uses high-security technology, any hacker who ever figures out how to get around it will have access to the private files of millions of customers—and that’s an awfully tempting target. In contrast, if you keep your own computer backup storage, you only need to worry about direct threats against your computer.

Conclusion: You Can’t Avoid Computer Backup Storage

Whether you choose to keep your data in the cloud or store it on a high-end NAS, you should still make a clear choice about how you want to keep your computer backup storage before something goes wrong and your data is suddenly gone. If you organize your computer files neatly you will find that any kind of backup is a whole lot easier!

There are free desktop alternatives (OpenOffice) and online alternatives (Google Docs), but Microsoft Word remains the king of the word-processing pack. Here’s few tricks for working with text in Word that you may not know about but that can help make your life simpler.Like most apps in the Office suite, Word boasts a huge amount of functionality: indeed, the biggest commercial challenge for Microsoft is convincing people that they need to upgrade, given that the basics of formatting, spell-checking and printing have been the same for almost two decades. While most people know how to set up a basic document, format it and save it, there’s a lot more that can be done inside Word if you know where to look. Here’s some features you can use but which aren’t necessarily obvious. The tips below are based on Word 2010, the most recent version, but will work in pretty much the same fashion for Word 2007 as well. The same principles will also apply in earlier versions.
Use the Styles Pane for format fixing If you get sent a document that’s had multiple editors, the formatting styles can often be an ugly mish-mash. The Styles Pane feature lets you see which styles have been applied, and change all those instances simultaneously — but it’s not the most obvious feature in Word.To access it, click the tiny arrow under the Change Styles button. To make it even more useful, click on Options and change the view from ‘Recommended’ styles to ‘In current document’. Now every style in use is visible in the pane, making editing much simpler (you can right-click on a style to select every instance in a document).
Use the Spike to collect text

The first stage of creating a document often involves copying in text from other documents. You can speed this process up by using the ‘Spike’ feature, which lets you collate material on the clipboard and then paste it in one fell swoop.Just select the text you want, type Ctrl+F3 to cut it to the clipboard, and repeat for each stage. To paste the collection, type Ctrl+Shift+F3. If you don’t want to cut from your original documents, type Ctrl-Z after each Ctrl+F3 to restore moved text.
Make Find and Replace easier

The Find and Replace feature offers a lot of special character options. One of the more useful but less known is the ^& shortcut, which tells the Replace field to reproduce the text in the find field. So if you want to change ‘John Smith’ to ‘Mr John Smith’, just type Mr ^& in the Replace field.
Easily add tabs to table cells It’s a simple tip, but a useful one. To add a tab character to a table cell (hitting Tab in a table normally jumps to the next cell), just type Control-Tab. Done!
Make sure the Developer tab is enabled on the Ribbon
Macros make it easy to type repetitive text in Word (as well as helping automate tasks like pasting plain text), and setting up a basic one doesn’t require any more skill than clicking on the Record Macro button in Word. But the chances are you haven’t seen that button, because it’s on the Developer tab, which is switched off in Ribbon-enabled versions of Word by default.To ensure you can see that tab, select File, click on Options and select Customize Ribbon. Make sure that Main Tabs is selected, and that the Developer tab is ticked. With that done, setting up simple macros is much easier.

Restore your preferred software

Click on the Start button, and type the word ‘Specific’. The option ‘Make a file type always open in a specific program’ should appear under Control Panel in the results. Double-click on it. This will open the Set Associations window.
Scroll down the list of files to find the type you want to change. (If you’re not sure of the file type, see the section on extension views below.) Click on that type, then click ‘Change program’.
Choose the alternate program you want to use. If it isn’t already displayed, click ‘Browse’ and locate it on your hard drive.
When you’ve chosen the program, click OK.
Repeat the process for any other file types that have switched away from your preferences.

Switch extension views back on

By default, Windows hides the file extension (such as .jpg or .doc) for common file types when you use Explorer. That can make for a less cluttered screen, but it can also make it trickier to work out which file types have been changed by other software. I recommend switching the option to view extensions back on, which you can do by following these steps.
Open the Documents window (or any other explorer window) from the Start menu.
Tap the Alt key to make menus appear, and then select Tools — Folder options.
Go to the View tab, and make sure that ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ is deselected (no tick).
Click OK.
While Windows actually uses file type properties rather than the extension to work out which application to launch when you double-click a file, for humans it’s easier to use the extension as an identifier.