If you own or work-in a small business of less than five people, chances are you’re still running a “file server” of some sort – maybe several – and if you’re more than five people, I don’t know how you work together without centralizing your data and information in some way.

At dinner a few nights ago I was asking my friend, a psychologist in his mid-70s, about his own methods of protecting his business data; mainly patient records, documents and financial information. We talked about HIPAA and the changes he’s seen in the industry over the past few decades. He’s been practicing a while now, attends many conferences with his peers, and it seemed pretty clear to me that a vast swath of healthcare practitioners don’t digitize their work in any way as a means to avoid the entire “hassle,” as my friend put it, of being compliant with privacy regulations.

I asked him, “If you don’t keep everything on computers, how do you run your business?”

It turns out he runs his practice via a meticulously maintained system of chronological, alphabetized and color-coded paper files distributed between myriad cabinets, each of those classified as this-or-that or even something like “cabinet one-of-three.” Seriously. That’s what he said. “How do you back all that stuff up?” I asked.

I stopped there.

So, indeed he is running a “file server” at his office – except in my friend’s case he burns a lot of calories doing so because he actually has to go from cabinet to cabinet. In data-center land a.k.a. the future, Ethernet cables link cabinets to cabinets and a billion other lines connect the servers in those cabinets to us out in the world so we can do things like share pictures of a cat wearing a unicorn outfit.

More importantly however, my friend’s data, the history of all of his business, is at a substantial risk of being lost completely because he doesn’t maintain an updated, off-site copy of anything.

I also asked him about how he sends files to other doctors when necessary. Since he doesn’t use email for his business, it’s all faxes, photo-copies and certified packages.

David Girouard, founder and CEO of UpStart and the former President of Enterprise at ye ‘ol Google, posted a great article today about how companies aren’t embracing the cloud the way they should. He makes some striking points, like:

If you believe you can match the capabilities and rigor of Google’s Security Operations team, I wish you well.

Amazon targets 99.95 percent [uptime] for AWS. So, can your team beat that?

The file server is the center of data for most companies, whether it’s an old-fashioned paper system or a newfangled computerized one. As we globalize further each day and with the ever-maturing SaaS services now available, this vital resource is moving to the cloud to enable truly centralized file serving to their teams anywhere they are.

In the cloud, the file server is becoming so much more than just a file server.

In an office, a file server is a repository for data that everyone accesses on their own computers, which they then edit with their own applications. This means you’ve got some people using Microsoft Word, some using Open Office and if you have three people on three computers who need to work on Photoshop files, that’s three licenses of Creative Suite.

In the cloud, a file server not only serves its basic function, it becomes a full-fledged business-operations tool. FSaaS services combine cloud storage and file syncing, secured sharing, web browser-based file viewing and editing into an environment that’s completely controllable by the business-owner but provides a one-stop-shop for team members. Even though data might physically reside in an unknown location, as Girouard points out, you likely wouldn’t be able to expect the same level of reliability or security out of your own IT department that you would get from a professional FSaaS vendor.

For healthcare providers, FSaaS services often fill the needs of regulation compliance, like HIPAA, by providing the types of encryption, retention, version history and IT admin control necessary.

The most significant impact a FSaaS can have on your company:

1. Save massive amounts of IT management time. No local file server to keep online.
2. Cut down on amount spent on software licenses. In cloud file-editing means you don’t need to pay for software for each computer.
3. Protect your data. In the cloud, your files are much more likely to survive a disaster.
4. Increase productivity! Using one service to rule them all means your teams don’t have to fumble from application to application. They spend more time working on their projects!

If you want to talk about FSaaS, come join me in the LinkedIn group!

On Nov. 13, the brains behind SOS Online Backup launched a new product called FileLocker.

FileLocker combines cloud storage, online document editing, file syncing and sharing in an end-to-end encrypted environment. Further, the first of two encryption keys used to protect data is known only by the account-owner. A second layer of encryption is applied once files reach the FileLocker cloud that is managed by the company, greatly reducing security risk. [infographic]

Any company using or considering Box, Dropbox, Huddle or other similar services for their workforce would do themselves themselves a HUGE favor by checking out FileLocker. A few reasons why (beyond the end-to-end encryption already mentioned, which is a big plus):

1. First 25GB are free (5GB for 5 people)
2. Unlimited storage is $5/person/month
3. Share files publicly or with a password
4. Collaborate on files within FileLocker, there’s a chat stream for each file
5. Online document editing of 100s of common file-types (Office, HTML, etc.)
6. Online previewing of 1000s of complex files-types (Photoshop, PDF, CAD, etc.)
7. Sync any computers/mobiles devices
8. Every past version of each file is kept (Forever. Seriously.)
9. A bunch of enterprise admin tools & reporting capabilities for audits

Wait! There’s more!

For big companies that have really strict security and their own servers to run the FileLocker application, it can be deployed in their own network, behind their own firewall. This is a method that Box, Dropbox and others have not enabled IT departments to implement.

FileLocker has more details on private deployment on their website as well as technical requirements in order to do so.

Hello world!

Gmail has an “attachment warning” feature that warns the user they are sending in email without an attachment that probably should i.e. the user forgot to attach the file.

It does this by simply searching for the word “attach” in the body (includes “attachment” or “attached”) and gives you a pop-up allowing you to decide to continue sending or not. Basically, if you wrote “see the attached document” or something similar in the body of the email and forgot to attach the file, you get a second chance.

Now I’m using Outlook a lot and was missing that feature. A bit ‘o Googling and I found some great instructions on adding a Macro to Outlook that does exactly this, and it works fantastically, I’ll summarize here:

1. In Outlook open the Options and select Customize Ribbon. Under Main Tabs place a check next to Developer. This should add the Developer tab to the Ribbon. Close the Options window.
2. Click the new Developer tab and click Visual Basic. Click the + plus sign next to Project1, click the + sign next to Microsoft Office Objects then double-click ThisOutlookSession.
3. In the blank window that opens copy-and-paste the following (through ‘End Sub’):
   

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim m As Variant
Dim strBody As String
Dim intIn As Long
Dim intAttachCount As Integer, intStandardAttachCount As Integer

On Error GoTo handleError

'Edit the following line if you have a signature on your email that includes images or other files. Make intStandardAttachCount equal the number of files in your signature.
intStandardAttachCount = 0

strBody = LCase(Item.Body)

intIn = InStr(1, strBody, "original message")

If intIn = 0 Then intIn = Len(strBody)

intIn = InStr(1, Left(strBody, intIn), "attach")

intAttachCount = Item.Attachments.Count

If intIn > 0 And intAttachCount <= intStandardAttachCount Then
 
 m = MsgBox("It appears that you mean to send an attachment," & vbCrLf & "but there is no attachment to this message." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "Do you still want to send?", vbQuestion + vbYesNo + vbMsgBoxSetForeground)

If m = vbNo Then Cancel = True
 
End If

handleError:

If Err.Number <> 0 Then
 MsgBox "Outlook Attachment Reminder Error: " & Err.Description, vbExclamation, "Outlook Attachment Reminder Error"
End If

End Sub

Instagram is one of the best apps for easily sharing photos across multiple social networks – if  you have a 3.5″ iOS device i.e. an iPhone or iPod touch.

Today the App Store approved 2.1 of the application bringing a new UI – I like it when companies stray from standard Apple design schemes – an auto-fix feature called Lux, a new filter and few smaller updates.

Burbn, the developer behind Instagram, has indicated indicates it wants to concentrate all of its development efforts on iPhone, from their website:

“We are currently working on making the iPhone experience as solid as possible. Only then will we consider other platforms, but currently we have nothing to announce.” (source)

There is an open API platform for Instagram which has allowed third-parties to create applications for other devices, such as Instacam on Windows Phone, but the results are definitely nothing like Instagram’s native app.

Any good apps out there for Android that you use?

Follow my Instagram @goldbytes

Sure. I’m listening to Pandora Radio for free through my iPhone app – I thank them from the bottom of my heart for the service and happily listen to the ads they throw in every so often. Again, and this is important – I’m listening – to Pandora Radio. Why then send me a video trailer for Crazy, Stupid, Love? I’m not even looking at the screen.

Using iFile on my jail-broken iPhone I was able to find the file in Pandora’s cache – the file was 2.4MBs!

If you have a 5GB AT&T data plan costing $60/month and have seen this ad you paid around $0.028 for it – just shy of 3¢. If all of Pandora’s 80 million users incurred that same cost (obviously they didn’t because we all live in different countries, with different currencies and different carriers, but what if?) that means Pandora would have been responsible for $2,240,000 in – in my opinion – stolen bandwidth each month.

Unlimited plans are going out of fashion quickly with carriers which means our bandwidth becomes more precious. If you’re going to play ads on my radio app, let’s stick with small images and small audio files. Be kind to us consumers – the carriers get enough of our money each month.