Directive Blogs

It’s a symbol that we’ve all become familiar with in recent years: three horizontal lines, representing the menu of whatever application or website is currently in use. Sometimes appearing as three dots, this little icon can be surprisingly important for both the end user and the business using it… especially now that mobile devices are so commonly used for browsing (early this year, 64% of all website traffic was observed to come from these devices).

Nowadays, software is super important for running a business. It helps with everything from managing schedules and paying employees to making and selling products. Basically, businesses need software to run smoothly.

Some websites have an orange icon with waves coming from a dot in the bottom-left corner. This icon is for an RSS feed. RSS feeds are great for users who want to add the website’s content to an RSS reader—but what does this even mean? Let’s find out.

A compressed file (also known as a zip file) is a handy way to accomplish various tasks, although many people may not know what they are or do. We want to fix that, so we’re going over what a compressed file is and how to make one.

So, what is digital waste?

Digital waste is all the useless data in our data storage that lingers until we do something with it. Extra files no longer needed, old emails and chats, and old, blurry pictures you never have and will never use… all qualify as digital waste. While it’s easy to discount digital waste as an annoyance (which it certainly can be), it creates a much bigger and more serious problem.

When you go to a website you have never been to before, there is often a splash page that asks if you would like to accept cookies. It doesn’t mean you are getting a care package, it just means that you accept a formal interaction with the website you’re on. Let’s take a look at browser cookies

The blockchain has made quite a splash, beginning as the technology that powers Bitcoin before branching out into different use cases that many businesses are already taking advantage of. Let’s go over the benefits—and shortcomings—of the various varieties that blockchain now comes in, and how they are commonly used.

In managing business technology, we are always talking about downtime--how expensive downtime is, how downtime hurts productivity, how there are a multitude of separate situations that can cause downtime. That kind of doom and gloom may not get you to act, but it may just put you off. Today, instead of downtime, we thought we would talk about uptime. 

As technology advances, gadgets are invented which can be beneficial to not only our social lives but in our business practices. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a relatively new technology which businesses have been progressively utilizing.

When you’re talking about something to do with a computer, you’re going to start hearing about some word that ends with “-ware.” You could probably list off a few yourself, but have you ever stopped to think about why they’re all described as “something-ware?” For this week’s Tech Term, we’ll take a peek at why we refer to things that way.

During your time around computers, chances are high that you’ve heard the phrase “plain text” and the acronym “HTML” tossed around when it comes to your email. If you aren’t sure what these statements refer to, we’re here to help. Today, we’ll examine both HTML and plain text to produce a better understanding of these tech terms.

There are plenty of technical terms and solutions that, while heard of frequently enough, it may not be completely clear what they mean or refer to. A proxy server is an excellent example of such a solution. This week, we’ll examine this tech term and review how utilizing proxy servers can help your business.

Spam is a tricky subject to talk about, as it seems everyone has a different definition for it. Yet, most have come to the conclusion that spam is a bad thing. For today’s Tech Term, we want to delve deep into the different kinds of spam out there, as well as theorize where the term even came from.

While proxy server is a tech term that is frequently cited, it is not understood by a vast majority of people. Today we will describe what a proxy server is, and why organizations like yours use them.

There are plenty of topics we reference frequently that may seem a little advanced or complicated at first but are actually pretty simple concepts. Take, for example, virtualization. For today’s tech term, we’ll take a clearer look at this method of computing.

The Internet is a valuable tool that can be accessed through a wired connection and wirelessly via Wi-Fi, but the devices that offer these connections can be somewhat complicated and difficult to understand. If you don’t know which device does what, you’re in for a treat--today’s tech term will examine the differences between the modem and the router.

The more that people depend on mobile devices and portable computers to get work done, the more businesses have to consider how to manage their organization’s wireless network. The router is the piece of hardware that makes the wireless network possible. Today, we will talk a little bit about the router and how its configuration can dictate the strength, reliability, and security of your business’ wireless network.

Most computer users know of the hard drive, but how many actually know what it does? Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different degrees of answers. It’s rare that you’ll encounter the ordinary person who knows what the hard drive is, as well as how it works or what it does. This week’s tech term is the hard drive, so let’s dig in.

The Internet has become an irreplaceable part of many business’ operations, which brings the thought into question of how much you rely on it for your daily duties. Technology has changed the way that the Internet works for the better, but there is one part of its operations that still lies at the heart of it: bandwidth.

It seems like everywhere you go, you can see a Chromebook. These specialty laptops have a few features that make them highly desirable in some circumstances, and poorly suited to others. Seeing as ‘Chromebook’ is our Tech Term for this week, why not take a few moments and examine them a little closer?