ATECH MSP Blog

Each year we try to come up with a creative Christmas article that ties IT into one of the many holiday fables, but this year we thought we would just forgo the pageantry and talk a little bit about how important our client’s are and what we can do to help take them where they want to go.

As cliche as it sounds, one of the best ways to create a more positive workplace is to simply put more positivity into it. Let’s exercise this for a moment by setting the often-talked-about worst-case scenario to the side, and focus on what the optimal experience could be with the right technology management in place.

Have you ever wondered how it is that people can build up bad habits over time, yet break them and establish better ones? Have you also noticed how difficult it can be to break habits that have been ingrained into the very fibers of our being over an extended period of time? Believe it or not, people can change, and the science behind it—neuroplasticity—can provide some valuable insights into how to make it happen.

Those born in the 80s (as well as some others) will likely recognize
“Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Select-Start” as the Konami Code, a famous cheat code that first appeared in 1986. Since then, the Konami Code has spread, now being featured in software titles and websites. Let’s consider the origins of the Konami Code, and how it has been featured in the zeitgeist.

Generally speaking, we all get way too much screen time nowadays, between the workstations we all spend our days in front of to the televisions we watch in the evening to the mobile devices that are never far out of reach. While plenty of people have weighed in on the subject, some of the most interesting insights come from scholarly research: the more notifications a person gets, the more their productivity suffers.

While we would never suggest that remote work is a bad thing, it wouldn’t be right for us to pretend that it is a perfect solution. It just isn’t. For a few glaring examples, let’s turn to the complicated impact that remote work can have on the environment. While we’ll still acknowledge the benefits of remote solutions, this kind of reflection may just help you to determine how to shape your business’ future: namely, how much of that future will be based on remote operations.

In the United States, the political atmosphere in 2020 was extremely testy and one element that we typically keep our eyes on is the net neutrality rules that seem to change every few years or so. Today, we thought we’d revisit the issue and tell you what to expect over the first few months of the new administration. 

While some places get to take the holiday season off to some extent, other establishments are at their busiest—and as such, don’t have time for any inefficiencies. Let’s meet an employee from such an establishment, located far up north, to learn about how any workplace might benefit operationally from managed IT services.

There is no denying that gifts are a major part of the typical festivities around this time of year, so it only seems that having some ideas as to what you’d like to receive to share with others is a helpful contribution. As our way of helping, we’ve decided to share a few tech-based suggestions that would find a welcome home in any home office or remote workspace.

It’s probably fair to label social media as one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. Nearly half of the world’s population are active users of social media; and, that number would almost certainly be higher if more people had access to unencumbered broadband. Over the past few weeks, however, one of the most utilized social media services, the microblogging website Twitter, has sparked some controversy after they added an amendment to a tweet sent by the U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting it contained “potentially misleading information”. Today, we’ll briefly discuss what this showdown with the White House means for social media companies. 

“Memes” have entered the common language in a very real way, as everyone - from politicians to people on Facebook to yes, businesses - use them to communicate their messages… but why? Today, we’ll go over why the Internet meme has become so common, as well as share some of our favorite IT memes.

In recognition of the holiday this year, we’ve decided to adapt a famous tale to a more contemporary setting, and create a parody of the holiday classic, A Christmas Story. We hope you enjoy this retelling, as much as we enjoyed writing it!

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with social media. A particularly controversial platform we discuss quite a bit on our blog is Facebook. Privacy is a monumental concern in the digital age, so today we thought we would go over settings you might not even realize are enabled on your Facebook profile. 

If you haven’t read part one of our Facebook privacy blog, it wouldn’t hurt for you to go back and read that one first. Today, we will be building off of that blog, teaching people how to properly configure their accounts to give them the best chance to lock down their private information.

Of course, Facebook, being one of the predominant web-based services in the world, has a checkered history when it pertains to individual’s privacy. In fact, I think a fair share of its ongoing troubles when it comes to individual privacy have a lot to do with their overwhelming success.

Would you consider Facebook to be popular? It’s an interesting question. It’s like asking people if they think McDonalds is popular. These days Facebook is used by one in every four people in the world, yet there are very few people that will actively come to the social media giant’s defense, let alone admit to spending nearly half of their time online on the site (either via an Internet browser or via an app).

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have enabled us to accomplish great things with the computers we have access to today. However, it is equally true that these same innovations have also produced a great number of threats. One threat that is particularly dangerous in today’s day and age is the presence, and growing prevalence, of “deepfakes” in the media.

The past few years certainly haven’t been very good for Facebook. After going public in 2012, Facebook acquired several organizations and applications to make waves in the market. The company is now responsible for a considerable amount of data, which has led to several data breaches, exacerbating the media and creating skepticism toward the social media giant.

Regardless of whether or not you handle this facet of your business for yourself, the knowledge of how to code is becoming increasingly useful - and there are more and more resources available to help you gain this knowledge. Below, we review some that you may consider leveraging to improve some of your skills.