Saving Google Maps destinations for easy navigation

Saturday, June 29, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Saving a destination in Google Maps makes it easier to navigate to and also lessens the chance for error when entering or trying to remember an address.

To see a step-by-step guide of this Tech Tip, watch a video on YouTube.

Destinations can be starred from a mobile device running Google Maps or from the Web. After searching for an address or location, click on the pin for the destination and switch on the star icon. Starred destinations will be synched across all Google accounts and devices. Starred destinations are easier to find and will type ahead on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Maps. Starring locations is a good idea for local errands and for vacations and business trips to other states and countries.

When traveling to a place with unreliable mobile data reception or expensive data rates, it's also a good idea to save an offline version of Google Maps. Once in the application on a mobile device, press the options button and select "make available offline." Pan and zoom the map until the area to be downloaded is highlighted. Click "done" and the map will be downloaded to the mobile device and be able to be used when mobile data isn't available.

Nick Barber covers general technology news in both text and video for IDG News Service. E-mail him at Nick_Barber@idg.com and follow him on Twitter at @nickjb.

How to pick a CPU when buying servers

Friday, June 28, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

As 2013 rolls in and the economy stabilises, many IT organisations are looking to upgrade their computational and storage systems. Like any IT purchasing decision, there are tradeoffs to consider and choices to make regarding hardware features and the technology available. When it comes to storage servers, the first step is understanding your CPU options.

For at least this year, the two server CPU choices remain Intel and AMD. ARM might solve some of the computational parts of some of the problems, but in 2013, ARM won't have enough I/O bandwidth with 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and storage to make it a viable alternative. This might change for 2014, but it's too soon to predict as development of PCIe buses with enough performance capability is complex.

The latest AMD CPUs have 16 cores, but only if you are running integer operations. When it comes to floating-point operations, you have only eight cores. This combined with the fact that the latest Intel server processors can read and write data from memory significantly faster than AMD processors mean that AMD processors should be relegated to operations with low computational intensity that do not require high-memory bandwidth - you might think of things like VMs, but more on why this is not a good idea later.

Another place that Intel has a major advantage is communications between CPU sockets. The current crop of Intel server CPUs support 25.6 gigabits per second (Gbps) of I/O bandwidth between CPU sockets over the Quick Path Interconnect (QPI).

This performance combined with the per-socket memory bandwidth performance exceeds the current performance of AMD CPUs. On multi-socket machines, this has a dramatic impact on the performance for all of the sockets because a process might be making a request for which memory has been allocated on another socket.

PCIe is where the rubber meets the road on why the latest Intel processors are far ahead of their AMD competitors. The Intel technology on the latest server CPUs runs PCIe 3 with 40 lanes on each CPU.

That means that the PCIe bus and the CPU are capable of 40Gbps of I/O bandwidth. This is far greater than the bandwidth of available on AMD processors. So if you need to do a lot of network I/O or disk I/O, PCIe 3 is the better choice because it has far higher bandwidth than PCI 2.0 and the performance of the bus will double, but also the Intel CPU supports more PCIe lanes.

There is one problem with the new Intel CPUs that becomes more noticeable with quad-socket configurations. As mentioned earlier, the PCIe bus is on the CPU socket so with four sockets you have four PCIe buses with 40 lanes each for a total of 160 lanes of 1Gbps PCIe bandwidth. That is a lot of I/O bandwidth, but looking a bit deeper there is a problem:

The QPI connections between sockets is a dual-channel 12.8Gbps channel for a total performance of 25.6Gbps.The PCIe express bandwidth of a socket is 40x 1Gbps per lane or 40 Gbps of PCIe bandwidth to the socket.

Problems quickly arise when PCIe bandwidth exceeds 25.6Gbps and the process requesting access to the PCIe bus is not on the socket with the bus where the access is being requested. Some of the workarounds attempted would lock processes on sockets with the PCIe bus that needs to be read or written. But it did not work for all applications. For example, those with data coming in and going out of multiple locations such as a striped file system are affected because you cannot break the request and move each request to each PCIe bus.

The real-world performance for general purpose applications running on a four-socket system is likely an estimated 90 percent of the QPI bandwidth between sockets (or 23Gbps) unless the data goes out on the socket with the PCIe bus. Every fourth I/O, if they are equality distributed, will run at 40Gbps, so the average performance would be (3x23Gbps +40Gbps)/4 or an average performance of about 27.25Gbps per socket for a quad-socket system.

This is, of course, the average based on equal distribution of the processes and I/O to the PCIe bus. A process that has PCIe processor affinity will significantly improve that average, but it is often difficult to architect and meet the requirements of putting every task on a PCIe bus and ensuring that the process runs on the CPU with that bus. The probability of this limitation is higher with a quad-socket system than with a dual-socket system.

The diagram below shows an example of a dual-socket system that, though having the same issues, reduces the potential of hitting that architectural limitation.

My estimate for performance for a dual-socket system is (23Gbps +40Gbps) or average socket performance of 31.5Gbps. On a dual-socket system it is much easier to architect the system so that you can put the right I/O on the right CPU and achieve near-peak performance.

New Intel systems have far more I/O bandwidth than previous systems and they have more than anything available from AMD. ARM is not currently competitive if you need to move lots of data in and out of the system.

The current Intel line quad-socket systems will average about 27.25Gbps unless significant work is done to architect the system to connect with processors and PCIe buses. The IOPS performance of the system will, of course, be higher as IOPS is not impacted by QPI bandwidth limitation.

The dual-socket systems are easier to get higher performance, and the average system performance is over 4.25Gbps. So my conclusion is you are better off using dual-socket systems for high I/O bandwidth requirements versus a quad socket. This, of course, is clearly counterintuitive, but is the best strategy given the current Intel architecture.

You will mostly likely see Ivy Bridge server processors in 2013 and the QPI bandwidth will go way up so with Ivy Bridge quad socket systems likely make sense. More on this after the Ivy Bridge serve processor are released.

How to make your Surface RT touchscreen respond faster

Friday, June 28, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Fiddling with the Registry is old hat to anyone conversant with Windows, but Microsoft's Surface RT - well, that's a tablet with a specialised version of Windows. Surely it has no Registry to hack, right?

Wrong.

It turns out that you can indeed access the Registry of a Surface RT tablet, and one of the first discovered tweaks can greatly reduce the lag time between touching the screen and getting a response.

Let me just pause right here and note that if you've never noticed any lag on your Surface, or it doesn't bother you, it's probably not worth monkeying with the Registry. As always, any changes you make therein can have undesirable results, so I don't recommend this to anyone who's not an intermediate or advanced user.

Needless to say, you'll also want to back up any important data you may have stored on your tablet. Just in case.

Here's how to make the adjustment:

1. Open up Search, type regedit, then tap the item when it appears.

2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TouchPredict ion

3. Lower the "latency" and "sample time" entries from 8 to 2.

4. Exit the Registry, then restart the tablet.

Based on anecdotal evidence kicking around the web, this little hack can definitely help, and it doesn't appear to impact battery life.

How to replace missing Start button in Windows 8

Thursday, June 27, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Whatever you might think of Windows 8, at startup there is something missing that can vex, or at least perplex, users from the get-go.

By default, Windows 8 now boots to a "Start Screen" that displays "tiles" that link to a limited set of programs and features for various options such as mail, video, music, and somewhere among the 16-20 tiles, a desktop option. Clicking the desktop option opens a Window that contains - actually not much.

The familiar start button went missing in Windows 8 and instead users are left staring at an empty space with no apparent way to access programs and applications. Early testers considered this an alpha or beta glitch, but Microsoft has confirmed that the missing start button will not be making a re-appearance in the release version of Windows 8.

In this review, I tested three different Start button replacements (Power8, Start8 and Classic Start Menu). The tests were run on Windows Preview version build 8400. Each product produces a reasonable facsimile of the legacy Windows start button. Overall I thought Classic Start was the best of the three, as it contains many more configuration and customisation options than the other two products.

Stardock's Start8 is installed using an executable file and like the other two products I tested, it installs quickly with no options presented during the install. Once the installation is complete, the familiar round start button you remember from Windows 7 appears. Not only is the button identical, but the entire start menu looks just like Windows 7 with the same options in the same location.

As mentioned in the intro, Windows 8 boots to the new Start Menu by default. Once the Start Screen tiles are displayed the status bar we have known since Windows 95 is also hidden, but Start8 adds a panel you can use to quickly get back into familiar territory. Start8 has limited configuration options, but there are a few choices such as the ability to use a metro style start menu, which is a hybrid between the old Windows start menu and the new Start Screen with tiles. It essentially takes the tiles and organizes them into a start menu like configuration, which really is only an option with larger screens in high resolution. As to look and feel you cannot make changes to colors and themes, but the start menu automatically matches the color scheme you have selected. The documentation claims that Start8 can be configured to boot directly to the desktop. Although I selected the option to boot directly to the desktop, I was not able to make this work correctly on a virtual machine. The vendor informed me that they do not support their software in a virtualized environment, which I found to be a rather surprising limitation in a world where virtualization is now so prevalent.

Start8 has a compact footprint that uses less than 1 MB of memory.

Pricing: The Beta version is currently free to download or you can pay $4.99 and receive the full version once it becomes available after Windows 8 is released.

Pros: Nice interface with ability to switch between regular start menu and metro start menu

Cons: Limited configuration and customization options, limited documentation, lacks support for virtualized environments

I installed Power8 using the available MSI file and except for the installation path there were no other options presented during the install. Upon completed installation, a large white arrow directs you to the newly available start button. When clicked, the start menu looks very much like what you see in Windows 7 with shortcuts to recently used programs, the Control Panel, including the familiar options to lock, shutdown, hibernate and log off the computer. One of the features I found especially useful is the ability to drill-down Explorer style right from the start menu without opening Windows Explorer. On my copy the start button was a bit narrow and although I tried to modify this, I could not find any configurable options except for the option of auto-starting Power8 when the Windows starts. Even with auto-start, Windows 8 still loads the Start Screen first and you have to click the desktop panel to see access the desktop and start menu.

Of the three products, this is the one that looks the least like to the start button in Windows 7. However, the difference does not detract from the overall functionality. The transparency of the start menu made it difficult to read against a light background. However this was only an issue for the initial menu, as once you expand any of the menu items they all become opaque.

Power8 bills itself as a small footprint solution, however I found it to use quite a bit of memory, running two processes totaling over 35 MB.

Pricing: Power8 is open source and free to download.

Pros: Open source, no system file integration

Cons: Very limited documentation, no configuration options

The Classic Start Menu is part of the ClassicShell package which also includes the Classic Explorer and Classic IE9. During the install you can select which features to install and although I was only reviewing the Start button replacement in this article, I installed all three. Classic Start Menu offers three style options: Windows Classic (a la vintage Windows 95/98), Windows XP or the Windows Vista/7 look. I decided to go with the Windows 7 menu and also selected one of the seven available skins. This created a start menu that is essentially identical to the Windows 7 menu with a few variations. For instance, the Control Panel has been placed under a Settings group, which also contains printers and network settings. This is not a bad idea as most users do not necessarily need these features that often. Other features such as the My Documents, Recent items, search and help are available from the immediate start menu.

By default, once installed, the Classic Start Menu does boot to the desktop as opposed to the new Start Screen tiles. Of the three products I tested this one was the only one where this feature actually works as advertised. Another neat feature of the Classic Start Menu is the ability to save the settings to an XML file or import from an XML file. This way you move your custom start menu to a different computer.

Classic Shell was the only one of the products that installed an entire program group for its product. It also has a handy link to the configuration page from the start menu itself. Of the three products tested, this one had by far the most options; there are no less than 13 different configuration tabs on the settings page. This is probably overkill for most users, but it is nice to know you can tweak certain settings such as the style and which items to display in the start menu. Uses about 2 MB of memory.

Pricing: ClassicShell is open source and free to download, but donations are accepted through PayPal

Pros: Multiple configuration and customizations options, open source

Cons: None that we could find

Both Power8 and Classic Start Menu are open source products, which means you can download and inspect the code before installing it. The safest way to use open source is to compile the source code yourself, as this ensures nothing else can be 'injected' into the binary distribution, so long as you compile every release. If you don't have the tools, time or inclination to compile the source, at the very least use the vendor-provided hash file to verify the download.

What if your company doesn't allow third-party software?

While it's encouraging to see third parties step up to the plate to help users make the transition to Windows 8, not everyone will be able to take advantage of third-party products, no matter how useful they may be. If your organisation disallows third-party software, you could well be sitting back at the blank screen wondering how to do simple tasks that used to be at your fingertips, such as configuring your printer.

Fortunately, there is a feature built in to Windows 8 that you can use in a pinch to restore some basic functions associated with the start button in Windows 7. While not as elegant as the solutions provided in the products I reviewed, if you right click the task bar and open the Taskbar Properties you can choose to display a built-in 'Desktop Toolbar'.

This is a simplified basic start menu that allows you to access some Windows features such as the Windows Explorer, Control Panel and view other computers on the LAN. It does not, however, provide access to applications, which is a very limiting restriction. We hope Microsoft will reconsider after it encounters the inevitable push back from users who need to use their computers for more than streaming videos and listening to tunes - some of us actually have to work.

How you can stop spear-phishing

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Most of us have clicked on an email that seemed legitimate, but wasn't. I am embarrassed to say it, but I recently clicked on a malicious link myself, and I should know better considering that I preach to people every day about the importance of protecting your organisation against such tactic. But, the phishing email caught me at the wrong time when I was half paying attention to what I was doing, and it enticed me with right authentic looking message.

When we first started trying to educate employees about email security, I sent a sampling of 140 employees a fake phishing email. The results were jaw dropping; Seventy-two percent opened the email. Of those, 85 percent clicked on the "malicious" link. But the most concerning to me was that 65 percent gave their username and password - and that number would have been higher if word didnt get around about the fake email in social circles.

Each employee, who clicked on the malicious link were then trained as we explained the dangers of malicious emails and how to catch them in the future.

Ive spoken with hundreds of CIOs and CISOs worldwide, and many of them have impressive programs. In those discussions I also got to hear how the top organizations are protecting themselves from the risk of spear phishing to a very high degree of effectiveness. Below are the top 11 tips I've heard for best technology practices, employee education and social media smarts.

1. Inbound email sandboxing:

Deploy a solution that checks the safety of an emailed link when a user clicks on it. This protects against a new phishing tactic that I've seen from cybercriminals. Bad guys send a brand new URL in an email to their targets to get through the organization's email security. The other tactic is when they inject malicious code into the website right after delivery of the email URL. This URL will get past any standard spam solution.

2. Real-time analysis and inspection of your web traffic:

First, stop malicious URLs from even getting to your users' corporate inboxes at your gateway. Even if you have inbound email sandboxing for your corporate email, some users might click on a malicious link through a personal email account, like Gmail. In that case, your corporate email spear-phishing protection is unable to see the traffic. Bottom line: your web security gateway needs to be intelligent, analyze content in real time, and be 98 percent effective at stopping malware.

3. Employee behaviour:

The human element is incredibly important. Many CSOs that I've spoken with are adopting employee testing programs with Phishme.com (Editor's note: Clark is on the executive board of *PhishMe Inc.), and do this training on-going basis. The result isn't really employee education or security awareness - it's behaviour modification. See my five employee behavior tips below.

Employees are critical to your security success, spear-phishing defense and ability to prevent a data breach. Below are five ways you can turn them into security advocates.

1. Pen-test your organisation:

One of the best ways people create new behaviors is by making a mistake and being corrected. It's time to put your black hat on. Select a group of folks from each major department and send them targeted spear-phishing emails using an outside email address. Use only information you can locate on their social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). For example, you see they like a local sports team. Send them information about a local happy hour that supports the team. When they click on the link, inform them that they have been phished and communicate best practices in a positive way.

2. Ask marketing for help:

Start a partnership with marketing to help you communicate to your employees. Your marketing team specializes in communicating to different audiences to get them to take action. It's time to use their skills. Create a communication plan that both teams can execute against and track what methods are the most effective.

3.Change how your message is communicated:

Some people learn visually, others learn audibly and for many, it's a combination of both. Change how your security message is delivered to employees. Start with a monthly email, webinar and Intranet post. Switch it up with in-person trainings and videos. Using these different mediums will help your message resonate with more employees. Remember, you will need to communicate a message multiple times for it to stick.

4. Make security relevant to them:

Just asking employees to watch out for suspicious-looking emails doesn't drive home the urgency of spear-phishing. Rip it from the headlines. When a large company makes headlines for a data breach, because an employee opened an infected email, immediately communicate how something like that could happen to your employee base. It's well-timed, newsworthy and will be on your executives' radar.

5. Reward good behaviour:

IT security is known for doom and gloom, but what if you change that perception? Start rewarding your employees for a "Catch of the Day." Start an internal contest that asks employees to forward suspicious emails they receive (both from their personal and work accounts). Pick your "Catch of the Week" every Friday, reward the employee with a $100 gift card to Starbucks, and publicise the spear-phishing attempt for other employees to see.

Social networks are gold mines of personal information for cybercriminals, especially for targeted spear-phishing emails. Below are three things I don't recommend IT Security professionals discuss online.

1. Any birthdays/addresses/other items that are used for your network passwords:

Seriously, youd be surprised at what Ive seen.

2.Your vacation schedule and home photos:

It's like an advertisement for when you will be out of town, while doing reconnaissance for the criminals. You may not think you are a target, but cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated.

3. Don't ever post your phone number:

Cybercriminals are getting more creative. We have seen more and more criminals call targeted employees and ask for information. For example, some criminals call and pretend they are from their help desk and need to reset passwords. When in doubt, go with your gut. If something seems off or you don't know the person, ask for their contact information and look into it. Ultimately, its better to be safe than polite.

Spear-phishing isn't going anywhere. As long as people use social networks and email continues to be a key workplace communication channel, spear-phishing will be a weapon of choice for cybercrime. We will continue to see the bad guys evolve and spear phish through new mediums like Twitter, SMS. We must continue to work together as leaders in Infosec to share creative/successful was to protect our organizations.

How to dual-boot Windows 8 and Windows 7

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Although you may not be jumping for joy that Windows 8 is coming, I'll wager you're at least a little curious. Could the new OS make your computing life any better? Is the new interface a boon, or more of a boondoggle?

Fortunately, you don't have to sacrifice your current PC to find out - nor do you have to buy a new one. You can install the Windows 8 Release Preview alongside Windows 7 and take it for a full test-drive. It's simply a matter of setting up a dual-boot configuration.

Before you go one step further, make sure you have a complete backup of your hard drive, just in case things go wrong. This is a pretty safe operation, but you never know.

The first step is to create a partition on your hard drive, a chunk of space that's reserved exclusively for Windows 8. You'll need at least 16GB, or 20GB if you're loading Windows 8 64-bit, but I recommend giving the OS plenty of breathing room: at least 30-40GB.

This process has been covered many times before, so rather than repeat it here, I'll direct you to Patrick Miller's "How (and Why) to Partition Your Hard Drive."

Next, you'll need to download the Windows 8 Release Preview. It's available in 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) flavours. Most modern PCs can run the latter just fine, so that's what I recommend unless your system is more than 3-4 years old. Whatever its age, be sure to check Microsoft system's requirements. Likewise, make note of the product key: TK8TP-9JN6P-7X7WW-RFFTV-B7QPF.

By far the easiest way to install Windows 8 on that new partition is via a USB flash drive. I described this process last year in "How to Put Windows 8 on a Flash Drive," so those instructions should get you squared away.

Once you've loaded the Windows 8 ISO on your flash drive, boot to that drive. (If your system bypasses the drive and boots straight into Windows 7, you may have to do some tinkering in the system BIOS. Not every PC will boot from a flash drive by default.)

This is the only really critical part of the process. After accepting the installer's software licence, be sure to choose Custom, not Upgrade. Next you'll see a list of available partitions; click Drive options (advanced), then select the unallocated space you created earlier.

Now, click New from the drive options icons. By default, it should display the full amount of the selected partition, in which case go ahead and click Apply.

Finally, click Next to begin the installation process. This will take about 20 minutes, after which your system will boot Windows 8 and run you through the usual initial-setup stuff. (You might have to remove your flash drive so the installer doesn't try to run again. It did on my system.)

From now on, when you boot your PC you'll see a start-up menu that gives you a choice between Windows 7 and Windows 8 - and it'll proceed with booting the latter by default. If you want Windows 7 to remain the go-to operating system, click Change defaults or choose other options while this menu is visible, then click Choose the default operating system. Easy-peasy.

And that's it! Keep in mind that this Release Preview will expire on January 15, 2013, so you've got exactly three months to poke and prod. Have fun!

How to shut down Windows 8

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Anyone who has given Windows 8 a test drive has probably encountered the same conundrum - how do you actually shut down your PC?

In pretty much every version of Windows prior to this one, you'd click Start, then Shut Down.

Windows 8 notoriously lacks a Start button, so obviously the old rules don't apply here. More on that in a moment; in the meantime, here's how to shut down Windows 8:

1. Mouse over the little gadget in the lower right corner of the screen. (You can also move your mouse cursor to the upper left corner; same result. Or, you can press Windows-C on your keyboard.)

2. In the slide-out menu (known as the Charms Bar) that appears, click Settings.

3. Click the Power button, and then click your desired action: Sleep, Shut down, or Update and restart.

So, there you have it. In Windows 8, it requires four actions to shut down your PC: hover, click, click, and click.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's always been something of a joke that shutting down your PC required a click of the Start button. Now the joke has turned downright cruel, with Microsoft seemingly going out of its way to hide one of the most basic computing options. In the Settings menu.

Shutting down a PC is not a setting. It should not require three clicks. Windows 8 arrives with a bunch of cool-looking tiles in its Start screen; how hard would it have been to add a Power tile?

The unfortunate reality here is that Windows 8 doesn't work as a desktop operating system. On a tablet, it's pretty sweet. But I have a feeling I'll be sticking with Windows 7 for a long time to come.

How to add Windows Media Center to Windows 8 for free

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Earlier this year I suggested that because Microsoft was unbundling Windows Media Center from Windows 8, fans of the former should avoid upgrading to the latter.

Thankfully, Microsoft plans to charge a reasonable (but still annoying) $9.99 for Windows Media Center. Given how few users actually use the product, I can live with that.

Of course, free is always better. And if you have Windows 8 Pro, you can get Windows Media Center free for a limited time. Here's how:

1. Head to Microsoft's Feature Packs page, scroll down a bit, and fill out the short form to request a free product key.

2. Once you've received the e-mail with the key, press Windows-W (i.e. hold down the Windows key and tap W) to bring up the Settings menu, then type add features.

3. Tap or click Add features to Windows 8, then tap/click I already have a product key.

4. Type or paste in your product key, click Next, read every last word of the licensing agreement (kidding!), and then click Add features.

Presto! You've got Windows Media Center - after a reboot, of course. Some things never change.

This offer is good through January 31, 2013, so you've got time. However, if you don't have the Pro version of Windows 8 and you want WMC, you'll need to pony up $69.99 to get the Windows 8 Pro Pack. Something to think about as you ponder your OS upgrade plans.

How to make sure Facebook Page posts you want to see aren't hidden

Monday, June 24, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Your News Feed may appear full, but there's a good chance you're not seeing everything that the brands and businesses you've "liked" are posting.

A change to EdgeRank, Facebook's algorithm that determines what posts are seen by whom, is sparking controversy among Page administrators and Facebook users.

Some experts suggest that the changes were made to improve users' experience by ensuring businesses and brands post more interesting, engaging content. Others say Facebook wants businesses and brands to dish out money for advertising to reach more of its audience.

Whether for improved user experience or profit, one thing is clear: Page managers report a drastic decline in user engagement and activity on their page within the last month, which means you aren't seeing the content they post.

The good news: There is a quick fix to remedy this, but it's not available to all users yet. In addition, Facebook confirmed this week that it's rolling out a feature that will notify you when a friend, business or brand posts something you might be interested in.

"We are currently rolling out the ability for people to receive notifications from specific pages, friends or public figures that they are connected to," Facebook says. "This feature will help people to keep up with the people and things that they care most about."

Here's what you need to know about both.

To ensure you receive all updates from a business or brand you have liked, visit its Facebook page. Hover over the "Liked" button below the page's cover photo, and a list of options will appear.

The top option is "Get Notifications." By opting in, you'll receive an alert in your Notifications center whenever that page posts something new. You'll also see the alert in the bottom-left of Facebook, if you're currently logged in.

Click the second option, "Show in News Feed," to make sure all the page's posts appear in your news feed.

How to enable Hibernate mode in Windows 8

Monday, June 24, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Last month I explained how to shut down Windows 8, an option you wouldn't expect to require step-by-step instruction. And yet.

One thing you might have noticed, especially if you're a laptop user, is that the Power menu, once you finally reach it, has no Hibernate option. You can click Sleep, Shut down, or Restart, but if you want to hibernate your machine, well, you're outta luck.

Why on earth would Microsoft remove this option? I have no idea. It probably came from the same logic-defying committee that decided eliminating the Start button was a smart move. (Seriously, if you can think of any good reason Microsoft removed Hibernate from Windows 8, I'd love to hear it. I'll keep an open mind, promise.)

Thankfully, it's fairly simple to restore that valuable option. Here's how:

1. You'll need to access your system's power settings, which you can do any number of ways. My preferred method: press Win-W (that's the Windows key and the letter w) to bring up the Settings Search menu, then type power.

2. Click Change what the power buttons do.

3. Click Change settings that are currently unavailable.

4. Scroll down to the bottom of that window to find the "Shutdown settings" section.

5. Click the box next to Hibernate to enable the option.

6. Click Save changes.

Presto! Now, when you go to power down your system, you'll see the Hibernate option in your list of choices. Also, in that same System Settings window (step 4), you can choose Hibernate for any of the "Power and sleep buttons and lid settings" options.

In other words, if you want your system to hibernate when you press the power button or close the lid, this is where you can configure that setting. Good stuff!

How to make your own (cheaper) Fusion Drive

Sunday, June 23, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

A Fusion Drive gives you the best of two worlds: the high storage capacity of a traditional platter-based hard drive, and the speed boost of a solid-state drive, without you having to manually manage files. Apple offers the Fusion Drive as build-to-order options for the $799 Mac mini and the upcoming iMac, but if you are willing, able, and have the parts, you can make your own Fusion Drive.

To build a Fusion Drive, you need to use the Terminal. We're going to lay out the commands you need in a way that most can understand, and you don't need to enter a lot of them. However, a warning to anyone who has never used the Terminal: Working with the Terminal isn't as simple as a graphic interface, as spelling counts and you don't always have a nice list of commands. You also need to be using OS X 10.8.2 or later.

You need two drives to make a Fusion Drive, and if you want to get the speed boost, one should be an SSD. In our setup, we used a Hitachi 1TB 2.5-inch hard drive (the one that ships in a Mac mini) and a 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD.

Apple chooses the drives they use based on extensive testing, which is why they recommend buying a Fusion Drive at the point of purchasing your Mac. Apple does not support users who have built their own Fusion Drive. (In our lab experiments, I was able to create a Fusion Drive with two flash thumb drives.)

If you have anything that you want to keep on either of the drives, now is the time to back it up: linking the drives with CoreStorage, the technology behind the Fusion Drive, will erase them completely. If you need help with backing up your data, check out our guide on how to back up your data with Time Machine or, if you don't need to save absolutely everything on your drive, our more generic guide on backing up your data.

The Disk Utility application (Application > Utilities > Disk Utility) doesn't support the management or creation of Fusion Drives in its graphical interface, and knowing Apple, it might not ever support it. To create the Fusion Drive, we'll use Disk Utility, but the command line version that comes with every Mac.

If you aren't going to include the drive you booted from in a Fusion Drive, you can open the Terminal app (Applications > Utilities > Terminal). This would be the case, say, if you're using a Mac Pro with multiple drive bays, since you can format them both externally.

If you want to include your current boot drive as part of the Fusion Drive, you're going to need to boot into recovery mode and run Terminal from there. The CoreStorage process used to "fuse" the drives also formats them, and you can't do that to a drive used as the boot drive. You can boot into recovery mode by holding Command+R when starting up your Mac, and open Terminal from there.

One last thing to note: If you're using a Mac currently in Apple's product line, such as the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro or the new Mac mini, you can't use just any old install disc as a boot disc. Those machines require a special version of Mountain Lion that's not yet in the App Store. So in this circumstance, recovery mode is your best bet.

Once you have the Terminal open, you're ready to get to creating the Fusion Drive.

List the drives you system can see. Use the following command to list the drives attached to your system:

diskutil list

The drive mount points are labeled /dev/disk#. Make a note of the mount points for the disks you want to make into a Fusion Drive. In our example, /dev/disk0 is the boot disk, while /dev/disk1 and /dev/disk2 are the SSD and hard drive (respectively) that we want to put together as a Fusion Drive. An easy way to tell drives apart is by their size and their name. Make sure you don't confuse them, as the Terminal doesn't give much warning before wiping your drive.

Create a logical volume group. Let's create a CoreStorage logical volume group, the pool of data that will be made from the combined space of our physical drives. Use the following format of the diskutil command:

diskutil coreStorage create nameYourThing drive1 drive2

Going off the example using /dev/disk1 and /dev/disk2 as the drives to combine, I simply type:

diskutil coreStorage create myLogicalVolGroup /dev/disk1 /dev/disk2

When the process is done, your logical volume group should be completed and the command will finish by presenting you with a unique identifier for the group, which you should copy to your clipboard.

Create a logical volume. Now that we have a logical volume group, we can create the logical volume, what your Mac will recognize as a single drive. Use the following format of the diskutil command:

diskutil coreStorage createVolume lvgUUID type name size

lvgUUID is the unique identifier you copied from the previous step.

type use Journaled HFS+ (typed as jhfs+).

name can be whatever you want to name the drive (traditionally "Macintosh HD"). Make sure you use quotes if there's a space in the name.

size is how much of the "pool" that you want to make into a drive, using the following suffixes: B(ytes), S(512-byte-blocks), K(ilobytes), M(egabytes), G(igabytes), T(erabytes), P(etabytes), or (%) a percentage of the current size of the logical volume group.

That will create a volume named Macintosh HD, and fill the entire logical volume group (100%), or all the space on the two drives.

Enjoy!

Once that command is done, you have your Fusion Drive. You can now restore Mountain Lion back onto it, or do whatever you want. The only thing to remember is that they both need to be connected at the same time to work.

How to add a Windows Server 2012 domain controller to an existing Windows 2008 domain

Sunday, June 23, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

By Mike Brown, Windows Server Instructor at Firebrand Training | Techworld | Published: 16:59, 09 November 2012

Most of us will already be working on a network with a Windows 2003, Windows 2008 or Windows 2008R2 Forest deployed. So it will be our job to integrate Windows 2012 into the existing environment.  This might be installing Windows 2012 to manage File and Print resources, or taking over the running of a service like DHCP or DNS. Or it might be that we want to start adding Windows 2012 Domain Controllers (DCs).  

In this article I’ll talk through some things we need to think about before adding our first Windows 2012 DC to an existing Windows 2008 domain.

There are two ways to add Windows 2012 DCs to an existing domain:

1)    Perform an in-place upgrade of an existing Windrows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 domain controller

2)    Install a new Windows 2012 Server, join it to the domain and promote it to be a domain controller.

Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 can be upgraded to Windows Server 2012 Domain Controllers.  You can upgrade a Windows 2008 DC to a comparable version of Windows 2012 operating system. 

If you are running a Domain Controller on Windows 2008 Standard or Enterprise edition you can upgrade to Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacentre edition.  If you are upgrading from Datacentre edition you can only upgrade to Windows Server 2012 Datacentre edition. So if you’re running 2008, you have lots of choices!

However, you cannot upgrade from previous editions of Windows. So if you’re running Windows 2003 Domain Controllers they must be upgraded to Windows 2008 as an interim step, then upgraded to Windows Server 2012.

How to use the functional Levels

In order to add a Windows 2012 DC to an existing domain, the Forest functional level must be Windows 2003 or higher.  Remember that all domains must be running the Windows 2003 domain functional level first, before we can go through the process of upgrading our Forest to the minimum functional level of Windows 2003.

With the introduction of Windows 2012 we also have the option of new Windows 2012 domain and Forest functional levels. Once ALL of our DCs are running 2012 in a domain, we can upgrade the domain functional level to 2012 - and once all domains are running 2012 we can upgrade our Forest to Windows 2012.

The Windows Server 2012 Forest functional level does not provide any new features, but it ensures that any new domain created in the Forest will automatically operate at the Windows Server 2012 domain functional level. The Windows Server 2012 domain functional level does not provide any other new features besides support for Dynamic Access Control and Kerberos armoring, but it ensures that any domain controller in the domain runs Windows Server 2012.

Before adding your new Windows 2012 Domain Controller, or attempting to perform an in-place upgrade of an existing Windows 2008 or 2008 R2 DC, you must make sure that the Schema is upgraded to support your new Windows 2012 DC, and that you prepare each domain where you plan to install Windows 2012 DCs.  To do this we can use the ADPREP.exe tool found in the support\adprep folder on your installation media.

Starting with Windows 2012 there is only one version of ADPREP available, and that is a 64-bit version.  When you install a domain controller the ADPREP commands are run automatically as needed - as long as you are logged in with an account that has the appropriate credentials.

The two ADPREP.exe commands are ADPREP.exe /forestprep (to prepare the Schema) and ADPREP.EXE /DOMAINPREP /GPPREP (to prepare each domain).

In order to run ADPREP.exe /forestprep you need to be a member of the following groups:

Scheme AdminsEnterprise AdminsDomain Admins for the domain in which the Schema Master resides.

In order to run ADPREP.exe /domainprep /gpprep you need to be a member of the following group:

Domain admins for the domain in which you are running ADPREP.exe.

As we said earlier, the ADPREP.exe command is now integrated with the DC promotion process. But if you’re performing an in-place upgrade, or not a member of the appropriate groups, then ADPREP.exe can be run separately.

The Windows Server 2012 version of adprep.exe can run on any server that runs a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 or later.  The server needs network connectivity to the schema master for the Forest, and also to the infrastructure master of the domain where you want to add a domain controller.  If either of those roles is hosted on a server that runs Windows Server 2003, then ADPREP must be run remotely.  The server where you run ADPREP does not need to be a domain controller: it can be domain joined or in a workgroup.

Mike Brown, Windows Server Instructor at  Firebrand Training

How to temporarily disable Microsoft Security Essentials

Saturday, June 22, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

When it comes to keeping my PC secure, I rely on a small handful of tools: Windows 7's built-in firewall, Gmail's spam filtering, Web of Trust's helpful browser plug-in, and Microsoft's free Security Essentials anti-virus utility.

At this risk of jinxing things, here's my score to date: My PC: 1. Malware of any variety: 0.

However, I recently needed to troubleshoot a program that wasn't working properly, and, as always, the tech support department's first suggestion was to "disable my antivirus program".

Normally I ignore this advice, but because the program in question involves a lot of file downloading from various protected servers, I thought it might actually be worth a try. Just one catch: How the heck do you disable Security Essentials?

When you open the tool, there's no immediately obvious way. But if you absolutely need to, here's how:

1. Find the Security Essentials icon in your System Tray (usually it's represented by a little green house with a flag on top). Right-click it and choose Open.

2. Click the Settings tab.

3. Click Real-time protection.

4. Uncheck the box next to Turn on real-time protection (recommended).

5. Click the Save changes button.

So that's the equivalent of switching Security Essentials to 'off'. Do that, then go back to whatever you're trying to troubleshoot and see if it solves the problem. (If it does, well, that's a whole other can of worms.)

When you're done troubleshooting, repeat steps four and five (this time checking the box, natch) to turn Security Essentials back on.

How to build a killer Windows 8 gaming PC for under $1,000

Saturday, June 22, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Building a fast gaming PC is easier than ever. Building a fast gaming PC on a tight budget is a little hardernot because of the building, but because of the shopping. You have to scour the web (or your favorite retail stores) for the right prices on components.

I've built gaming rigs that cost under a grand a number of times in the past. Typically, I'd hunt around for the lowest-cost set of components that could hit the price point. But given the rapid pace of change in the PC industry, this edition of the $1,000 gaming rig required fewer sacrifices. This time around, I felt free to take a different approach. I wanted a PC that could be gracefully upgraded in order to keep pace with technical advancements. To achieve this, I had to spec out relatively modern core components, particularly the motherboard. I spent a lot of time number juggling to get a faster CPU, but also wanted a graphics card that could deliver good performance at 1080p.

In the end, I barely squeaked under that magic $1,000 mark, mostly due to the current high prices of hard drives. I'll walk through the component list, and then take a look at performance.

I'm providing two lists of components. The first, with all the entries boldfaced, are the components I actually used. The second is an alternate list, with a few changes to drive the price even lower.

An important note: Some of the prices you see above were the result of lucky sales. For example, the Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black is usually $95 or so, but it was on sale at Newegg, so I picked that up. The same was true for the Core i5 3570K, which is normally about $10 more. Also, I didn't include shipping or taxes in my price tallies. Taxes vary quite a bit, and with some careful shopping and bundled shipping, you can often get shipping for free.

This brings up a key rule of building a system on a budget: shop around! You'll find deals on components that will enable you to hit a tight budget, and end up with a system better than you might have otherwise realized.

The basic PC platform consists of the CPU, motherboard, and memory.

The CPU choice is pretty straightforward. The combination of processor performance and power efficiency made an Ivy Bridge class CPU the logical choice. But which Ivy Bridge? The higher end Core i7 3770s were out, since the price would have likely pushed the system over $1,000. On the lower end, Intel ships the Core i5 3450, with a default clock of 3.1 GHz and a maximum turbo clock of 3.5 GHz. I ended up going for the middle solution: the Core i5 3570K. The 3570K is unlocked, so if you wanted to overclock the CPU, it's pretty straightforward.

I wanted a fairly premium motherboard. I didn't need hefty overclocking capabilities, but I wanted something that would support current and upcoming LGA 1155 CPUs for some time to come. The Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 is a midrange motherboard using Intel's Z77 chipset. It includes a couple of cool features. One is an MSATA slot, so if you want to later add a small SSD drive as a RapidStore cache for the larger hard drive, you can. The second is the presence of dual Thunderbolt ports, so you can attach high-speed external storage should you want it.

Finally, you want enough DRAM to get the job done. The good news is that memory prices are cheaper than ever. I found out that 8GB DRAM kits, consisting of a pair of 4GB modules, are only marginally pricier than 4GB kits. So I picked up a Corsair XMS 1600 kit for just $38.

How to gain access to an old PC without the logon password

Friday, June 21, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Obviously, you're not supposed to be able to log onto Windows without knowing the password. But sometimes, it has to be done.

Can the technique I'm about to describe be used unethically? Yes, but keep two issues in mind. First, it doesn't reveal the password; it removes it. That way, if someone breaks into your PC with this technique, you'll know something is fishy the next time you boot. Second, the logon password really doesn't protect all that much to begin with.

To remove the password, you'll need the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor--a free, bootable program. You can download either the CD or USB version, depending on how you want to boot into the PC. Either way, you'll have to set it up on another computer.

The CD version comes as an .iso file, inside a .zip archive. If the computer you're running has Windows 7, you can simply double-click the .iso file to bring up the Windows Disc Image Burner. Otherwise, try double-clicking the file. If that doesn't work, you may have to download and install a third-party iso-burning program, such as Active@ ISO Burner.

If you'd rather boot from a flash drive than a CD, download the USB version. This also comes in a .zip archive; but this one contains several files. Read the readme.txt file for setup instructions.

One important caveat: If the PC contains EFS encrypted files, removing the password with this program will leave those files unreadable. I've never been a fan of EFS, and this gives me just one more reason to hate it.

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

The is not a pretty interface. Text- and prompt-based, it's ugly to look at and intimidating. But it's really not that difficult.

At each prompt, always at the bottom of the screen, you'll be given some options, then asked to pick one. You choose an option by typing the appropriate number or letter. Or just press RETURN for the default, which is displayed in brackets. If you're unsure, go with the default.

A few tips:

When you get to the "User Edit Menu" option, select 1 for "Clear (blank) user password."

And when you're asked about writing files back, answer with a y.

When you're done, and you remove the CD or flash drive and reboot, you won't even be asked for a password.

By the way, I tried another program that many people like: Ophcrack. This one, which is also bootable and has a much friendlier interface, actually tells you the correct password. But it only works with short and simple passwords.

I don't find it worthwhile.

RIP MSN. How to become a Skype power user with our 7 must-know secrets

Friday, June 21, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Skype is so popular that in some circles people use the name of the service as a verb. Yet most people use Skype only for making free voice calls, and for conducting occasional video chats between far-flung relatives. That's a shame, because Skype is a powerful business tool. A Skype-powered videoconference can take the place of a business trip, saving you money on airfare, hotel, and car rental. And lets not forget the free Skype-to-Skype calls you can make to overseas suppliers, clients, and other contacts.

Theres actually more to Skype than meets the eye, however. For example, you can use the service to show someone a PowerPoint deck. You can use it to dial in to conference calls without all the usual hassles. And you can add a Skype button to your website to give customers a free and easy way to contact you. Sound good? Let's begin.

Its always easier to show than tell, and Skype lets you show not only yourself (on a video call), but also your computer screen. One of the softwares best-kept secrets, this feature allows you to share a presentation, show off a webpage, or demonstrate how to use your new product.

Start a video call or a Skype-to-Skype voice call from the free Skype client for Windows or Mac. Once youre connected, click the + icon in the call bar, and then choose Share screens. (Just to clarify, this is how you share your own screen. If you want to see the other persons screen, he or she will have to perform this process.) In the pop-up box that appears, click the Start button; that will share your entire desktop. If you want to share only a specific window or program, click the down arrow and select Share window. Choose the window you want to share, and then click Start.

Presto! Now the person at the other end can see what you see. If you want to do the same thing with a group, youll need a Skype Premium account.

Call recording gets a bad rap (thanks a lot, CIA!), but it serves a valuable purpose in business. As long as all parties agree (and in some states, even that isn't a requirement), a recorded call can help you revisit the important talking points in a conference call, create a written transcript of a conversation with a client, or even improve customer service (if youre using Skype for service calls, that is; see #4 below).

Thankfully, several Skype apps for Windows can record your calls. MP3 Skype Recorder, for example, can start recordings automatically and manually, and it works with Skype Conference, Skype-to-Skype, SkypeOut, and Skype Online Number calls. Cooler still, it can split the recordings into different tracks: one for the caller, one for the person called. And its free.

If you want something even more versatile, the $50 IMcapture adds video-call recording to the mix, and its compatible with both Windows and Mac.

If you spend a lot of time on conference calls, then you know the hassle-packed drill it takes to get on one: Find the call details in your appointment calendar or confirmation email, dial the number, enter the passcode, and so on.

If youre an Outlook user, check out Plantronics InstantMeeting. This free add-on culls conference calls and dialing details from your Outlook calendar, reminds you before a meeting is about to start, and provides one-click dialing via Skype. If youre the meeting organizer, you can use InstantMeeting to notify attendees of a delay. And it can even redial a dropped call with a single click.

Its worth noting that InstantMeeting is also available for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS, though those apps dont pair with Skype.

Want to offer customers a way to call you for free? Normally that would mean setting up a toll-free number, which isnt exactly free for you. Fortunately, you have another way to extend this option for sales or service calls, and thats by adding a Skype button to your site.

After choosing one of half a dozen different button styles (two of which are dynamic, meaning theyll change in accordance with your Skype status, such as online or offline), you simply paste the provided HTML code into the appropriate spot on your site. You then add some descriptive text explaining how this button enables customers to contact you.

If you want to get more granular about your Skype button, visit the Skype button wizard, where you can customize the style, size, color, background, and other aspects of your Call me! button (including changing its function to chat with me, leave me voicemail, or something else). Its a really simple (and cheap) way to give customers another option for getting in touch.

Adding a Skype button to your site lets people call your business directly, but that isn't the same thing as having an actual phone number that you can share with clients and other important contacts. If you want to make Skype as flexible for inbound calling as it is for outbound, grab a Skype Online Number.

As the name suggests, this is basically a dedicated phone number, one that people can call from landlines and mobile phones. When a call comes in, Skype rings the same as it does for a Skype-to-Skype call, complete with on-screen caller ID.

One nice perk is that you can choose an area code and city code for your number, which is helpful if your business is based in one location but youre traveling or residing in another. The feature also includes call forwarding, voicemail, and the option of associating ten different numbers with one Skype account. Skype Online Numbers cost $18 for three months or $60 annually.

Like screen sharing, text messaging is one of Skypes better-kept secrets. Using either your computer or your mobile phone, you can send SMS texts to any contactoften for less than your carrier would charge, especially overseas.

For example, suppose youre sitting at your PC and want to text a coworker. You could pull out your phone, sure, but its faster and more convenient to tap out the message at your keyboard. Just use the chat option as you normally would, but check the SMS option in the chat window. If youre using the Skype app on, say, your iPhone, tap More and then choose SMS.

Skype texting isnt freeand youll need to have some credit in your account to use the featurebut rates start at 4.7 cents per message, depending on the country youre sending to. In France, for example, messages cost 13.3 cents apiece. But most carriers charge significantly more for international SMS, so it definitely makes sense to Skype-text when you can. You can check the rates in advance on Skypes SMS page.

When youre on the road, its not uncommon for a hotel to hit you up for $10 to $20 per day to access its Wi-Fi hotspot. And if youre overseas, Internet access can cost even more.

Skype WiFi promises to connect you for less. By using the latest version of Skype for Windows or the Skype app for iOS, you can join any of a million-plus global Skype hotspots. Since this service isnt free, youll need to have some credit in your Skype account, but Skype charges by the minute instead of by the amount of data you consume.

In the United States, for example, you can find Skype WiFi at hotel chains such as Best Western and Econo Lodge, and it costs 14 cents per minute. In India, rates range from 4 cents to 14 cents per minute. Obviously, if youre planning to be online for hours at a time, you might be better off paying the flat daily rate (if one is available). But if you just want to, say, check your email, Skype WiFi could save you big bucks.

Have you discovered any other ways to wring more business power out of Skype? Lets hear your best tips in the comments.

How to look behind URL shorteners with Unshorten.it

Thursday, June 20, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Shortened links are everywhere these days, especially on Twitter, where long Web addresses are at odds with the 140-character message limit.

You've seen them: bit.ly this, ow.ly that, t.co the other.

Convenient and space-saving though they may be, shortened links can actually be Trojan horses: links that lead you to scam sites aimed at stealing personal information and/or infecting your PC with viruses.

So how can you vet those links before clicking them? How can you peek behind that shortened URL curtain?

One option: Unshorten.it. True to its name, this site shows you exactly where any shortened link will lead, at the same time providing a screenshot of the target site and safety ratings courtesy of Web of Trust (one of my favorite web tools). It will also alert you if the site appears in something called hpHosts, a community-managed blacklist.

All you do is copy the URL you want to investigate, head to Unshorten.it, paste the URL, and then click the Unshorten.It! button. In a flash you'll get all the key details about that destination.

Of course, that's a lot of steps. If you're using Chrome or Firefox, you can install the Unshorten.it browser extension. Once that's done, you can right-click any shortened URL and then click Unshorten this link to get the same results as if you'd manually copied and pasted it.

To my thinking, using a tool like Unshorten.it is a no-brainer. So many people unwittingly end up with viruses and spyware just by clicking seemingly harmless shortened links. This helps you take the mystery out of what you're clicking.

How to buy the best portable hard drive

Thursday, June 20, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

You can never have too much digital storage, and the day will come sooner than you think when you wont be able to squeeze a single new file onto your computers hard drive. And if your primary computer is a laptop or an all-in-one desktop, you wont be able to solve the problem by opening the case and tossing in a supplemental drive.

One solution might be to rent storage space in the cloud, but buying a hard-drives worth of capacity is prohibitively expensive: 500GB of storage on Dropbox, for example, will set you back $499 per year. If you need just storage, as opposed to a service for file syncing or collaborating via the cloud, buying a portable hard drive is far more economical. For less than $200, you can get a 2TB drive that supplies four times the capacity of a Dropbox account. Pay for that storage capacity once, and youll own it foreverand you can take it with you wherever you go. Before you can choose the right drive, however, you have to identify your needs, wants, and budget.

Mac or PC: OS X and Windows use different file systems (HFS+ and NTFS, respectively), so most hard-drive manufacturers offer platform-specific models; the drives are preformatted accordingly, and the bundled software (if any) is compatible with the given platform. OS X can read files on an NTFS drive, but it cant write them. If you intend to use the same drive on both platforms, you can install software on your Mac that will enable it to do both: NTFS-3G is a free option. If you prefer commercial software, take a look at Paragon NTFS ($20) or Tuxera NTFS ($32).

Capacity: To determine how much storage you need, consider adopting this rule of thumb from drive manufacturer Western Digital: A 500GB hard drive can store approximately 100,000 digital photos taken with a 6-megapixel camera, or 125,000 songs encoded as 128-kbps MP3 files. Higher-resolution photos and music, of course, consume more storage.

Everything else being equal, a high-capacity drive will deliver a better price-to-performance ratio than a low-capacity model: For instance, a 500GB drive priced at $100 costs around 20 cents per gigabyte, while a 2TB drive priced at $180 costs just 9 cents per gigabyte. You wont regret buying more storage capacity than you currently need, because you will surely need more later.

Rotational speed: The rate at which a hard drive spins its platters has a direct effect on how fast it can read and write data. A drive spinning at 7200 rpm will deliver much better performance than a drive spinning at 5400 rpm. Some high-end desktop drives spin their platters at 10,000 rpm.

Drive interface: Once youve decided on the speed and capacity you need, you need to consider how the drive will connect to your computer. USB is the most common interface for Macs and PCs, and USB 3.0 delivers a faster data rate than USB 2.0 (5 gbps versus 480 mbps) and more electrical power to an attached device (900mA versus 500mA). The newer standard is backward-compatible, so your computer will be able to use a USB 3.0 drive even if the computer has only USB 2.0 ports.

Thunderbolt ports are twice as fast as USB 3.0 ports, achieving a raw data transfer rate of 10 gbps. Thats speedy enough to transfer a full-length, high-definition movie in less than 30 seconds. Apple provides Thunderbolt ports on its most recent desktop and laptop computers, and the technology is beginning to show up on Windows machines, too. Thunderbolt hard drives are relatively expensive, however: At $180, Buffalos 500GB MiniStation HD-PA500TU3 portable drive costs nearly as much as a 2TB hard drive equipped with a USB 3.0 interface. Still, If you choose to buy one of Buffalos drives, youll be happy to know that the company includes a Thunderbolt cable in the box, given ho pricey these cables are: Apples 2-meter cable costs $49.

FireWire (also known as IEEE 1394) is another high-speed interface used on both Macs and many PCs. The FireWire 400 interface can support a data transfer rate of 400 mbps, while the newer FireWire 800 interface can deliver throughput of 786 mbps.

USB, Thunderbolt, and FireWire all provide enough electrical power to run an attached drive, so the only cord youll need to carry with you is the appropriate interface cable.

Enclosure: The vast majority of portable hard drives are 2.5-inch mechanisms, but not all portable hard drives are the same size. Some models come housed in low-profile enclosures, while others are wrapped in shock-absorbing material within ruggedized cases. Such design decisions affect the drives overall weight, but they also influence how well the drive can survive misadventure. If youre a frequent traveler who grudges every ounce that goes into your laptop bag, youll need to work out for yourself the right balance between data security and tolerable shoulder load.

Some manufacturers, including Seagate and Western Digital, offer accessory cases for their drives that can add shock protection. We especially like the Nomad hard-shell case for Western Digitals Passport drives. The amply padded, 6.25-ounce polycarbonate case has an opening for a USB cable, so you dont have to remove the drive to use it.

Other features: In situations where performance is roughly equal, the easiest way for a hard drive manufacturer to differentiate its product from the competition's is by adding special features or by bundling the drive with useful software. If youre interested in backing up your PCs, watch for drives that come bundled with automated backup software.

If youre security conscious, look for a drive that you can password-protect or that includes software for encrypting the data stored on it. Some Seagate drives support the Universal Storage Module standard: They use SATA as their primary hardware interface, but you can switch to a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire interface by plugging in the appropriate module. Seagate is also unique in offering a portable drive that can wirelessly stream media to a mobile client device.

Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt: The MiniStation sports both a USB 3.0 and a Thunderbolt interface, but the drives rather pedestrian rotational speed of 5400 rpm hobbles its overall performance. It comes preformatted for the Mac, and both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt cables are included. Read our review here.

Rocstor Lancer LX: If youre looking for a ruggedised drive with a very fast interface, Rocstors Lancer LX provides both USB 3.0 and two FireWire 800 ports. The border of the enclosure is fabricated from aluminum and can bear a fair amount of weight, while shock-absorbing material inside the case protects the drive from thumps and bumps.

Seagate Satellite: This battery-powered drive can create its own local hotspot, and stream audio and video to up to eight wireless clients. Seagate provides client software for Android and iOS devices, plus an NTFS driver for the Mac. It uses a USB 3.0 interface. Read our review here.

Seagate Slim: The 9mm-thin Seagate Slim is appropriately named. It leaves the factory with a USB 3.0 interface, but since its based on the Universal Storage Module standard, you can purchase an optional Thunderbolt interface for $100 (youll need to provide your own cable). It comes formatted for NTSF, but Seagate provides an NTFS driver for the Mac. On the downside, this model delivers only 500GB of capacity. Read our review here.

Western Digital My Passport: For people who need a lot of storage on the go, this drive packs up to 2TB of space into a package that weighs just 8 ounces. It comes with a USB 3.0 interface and a collection of utilitiesincluding automatic back-up software for both the Mac and the PC. Read our review here.

How to shut down your MMO's servers for good: Farewell Glitch

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Developers and players pour themselves into building up MMOs, but the games can't always support themselves, and then those worlds blink out. All too often, MMOs close but don't offer closure for the workers who spent so much time on them -nor for the players who expected to keep playing for years. For instance, City of Heroes went dark on November 30 with little in-game fanfare aside from what the players brought themselves.

Glitch, the nearly indescribable (and indescribably delightful) browser-based open-world sandbox MMO, closed last night after three years and two betas. Developer Tiny Speck gave the quirky, innovative game a memorable ending that made the blank stare of the servers more bearable for loyal players and development team members.

This is how they did it. And this is how it's meant to be done. Providing everything from special screenshot collections of player avatars to physical mementos art books and CD sets, both the Glitch developers and its most ardent players worked to ensure that even a virtual world lives on long after its servers have shut down.

Glitch - a shortlived but much loved MNO game

When a game shuts down, it can be an emotional blow to players. Dr. Henry Lowood, Curator of History of Science and Technology Collections for Stanford University Libraries, says, "When you have memories, a sense of space, you always have a sense of having been somewhere. You end up with associations with that world. Even though you know they're not real, the associations are real. When those are disrupted--especially in a way that would be catastrophic, when it goes dark--it's like a tidal wave or an earthquake wiping out a town. It's not exactly the same, but emotionally and in terms of memories, it's very similar."

Sophia McKenna, whose Glitch character Voluptua Sneezelips reached the level cap of 60, remembers her reaction to the November 14 closure announcement. "My status update at the time was simply, 'devastated.' Glitch is such a beautiful world and it's heartbreaking that it's going to be no more. I've spent every ounce of spare time - and then some - in this game since I started playing."

Tiny Speck anticipated such reactions. The Glitch Shutdown FAQ, posted along with the announcement, even included the heading "I'm really angry about this!" along with the anticipated player questions. And on the same page, under the heading "We are really sorry. We failed you," Tiny Speck offered players the choice between a refund, letting Tiny Speck keep any money paid, and charitable donation. "Donating to charity is a new one," comments Lewis Ward, a gaming analyst at IDC.

Tiny Speck CEO Stewart Butterfield thinks providing refund options may have helped bring out more charitable feelings in the players as well. "They've been very supportive. There have been a few people who are angry, but it's fewer than one in a hundred. Ninety-nine percent are supportive and understanding, although, of course, sad."

On the official shutdown thread in the Glitch Forum, Butterfield (via his Glitch identity, Stoot Barfield) informed players that not only would Tiny Speck return their money, they would give subscriber benefits and 2500 credits to all account holders. In Glitch, 2500 credits could buy a near-total home and tower remodeling, with enough left over for a killer wardrobe.

"It's a classy way to handle this," says IDC's Ward. "It's certainly respecting the gamers they were able to attract and showing some appreciation for them."

Tiny Speck resurrected favorite rare in-game items, such as the Stoot Barfield Pullstring Doll and the 2010 Glitchmas Yeti, as rewards for participation in the last feats. The company also continued to release new content, from feats to recipes to new areas, until a few days before the closure. Players raced to earn new achievement badges and take screenshots in the just-opened areas. "In my experience, once a game company has announced that a game is shutting down, all development ceases," says Ward. "The decision to release content after that date is a bit of a surprise."

Players enjoyed the fresh content, and developers enjoyed creating it. Butterfield said that much of that content was almost completed when the staff was notified of the game shutdown - and the jobs that would go with it. Letting staffers complete their own pet projects was a way to recognise their work.

The shutdown FAQ also included a link to a "Hire a Specker" page with photos, skills, and contact information for laid-off Glitch staff. "It looks like significant planning went into it," Ward observes. "For such a small company to have significant planning around that process isn't always easy. I give the Tiny Speck executive team credit for clearly thinking about this and trying hard in what has to be a trying time for all the employees."

Three weeks after the Hire a Specker page appeared, Butterfield says, "So far, so good. A lot of people have the luxury to choose between different offers. Many are still interviewing, many have already accepted offers."

Tiny Speck's Technical Community Manager Kevin Collins, known in-game as kevbob, says, "I think it was handled about as well as it could have been. We always knew there was no guarantee that it wouldn't work out in the end, that's how it is in business. Stewart has made sure that we knew if there was anything he could do to help us land in a new gig, he would do it." About his overall Glitch experience, he says, "I miss working with them all, and even though the game didn't work out, I have no regrets of the time I spent working on it."

Glitch, like most MMOs, didn't have a long plot arc planned. The tales that made the setting - and the legends in the feats and quests - were the extent of the story. That said, Butterfield had some plans for how to end Glitch "since the day we started. You have to be conscious of the risks."

In the final days of Glitch, the Forehorsemen appeared on various streets, crying out, "The end is neigh!" On the penultimate day, the "hi" signs that appeared when players greeted one another became "bye" signs.

On the last day, server load went up as players logged on. Lag became frustrating for many and insurmountable for some. Beau Hindman streamed video of his last hour as Glitch "Beau" on Massivelytv.

Each of the eleven Giants - the godlike beings that imagined the world of Ur and its Glitch population - appeared to speak a few words. A minute before the ending, a server message rolled onto IM windows, saying "We really, really love you. You have no idea."  "Goodnight, Groddle," a haunting lullaby sung by player Lelu and accompanied by Glitch Sound Designer and Composer Daniel Simmons, closed the game. "Goodnight, Groddle" was a familiar and beloved tune to longtime players; the song closed Glitch's first beta and was used in the popular GNG Music Block rare item in-game.

Even before the shutdown announcement, the Glitch site already offered downloads of art, music, and ringtones. Players asked for downloads specific to their own avatars. Tiny Speck stepped up to offer a one-time, one-download option for a player's collected snaps.

Images of any avatar's collected wardrobe are available, too, "a feature that's been under-recognized by most developers," says Stanford's Lowood. "They're definitely above the mean in what they allow you to take out of the game." Eventually, the site will shift to a more static mode, but Butterfield plans to keep this archive function available "at least until the end of the year."

Players staged screenshots and video captures of their favorite places and moments. Videogame preservation researcher Rachel Donahue, who played as Sheepy, launched an oral history project. Various player-driven archiving and game-building projects popped up in the Glitch Forum.

Still, Glitch stalwarts clamored to get their hands on memorabilia. "There's a desire to own something tangible," Lowood points out. "You see all the tchotchkes. My pop-psychology explanation is that's the one part of the virtual world is missing: something physical. I think people fill that void by having artifacts from the world....I don't think virtual mementos are enough. People do need to have some sense that it's with them when they're not sitting at their computers."

Although Tiny Speck Art owns the art, the company has allowed Art Director Brent Kobayashi to sell some of the distinctive art outside of the game. Kobayashi added zipper pouches featuring Glitch avatars and locations to the Kukubee Etsy shop, which he runs with a partner. After the first "200 or so" requests for custom pouches, Kukubee had to dial back the degree of customization offered on new orders. He also began sells a limited run of Glitch art prints through another Etsy shop, which he holds under the name "meowza."

Many players asked for a book of Glitch's signature art. Kobayashi, who also went by the name "kukubee" in the game, posted an Indiegogo project for a book titled The Art of Glitch on December 5. It reached its goal of $17,000 in about two hours. Within a day, the total more than doubled. In a project update to backers, Kobayashi wrote, "I am talking to my book printer right now, but I am exponentially going to increase production costs to increase the pagecount of the book....But just want to say thank you guys for such overwhelming support and I'll do the best I can to make this the incredible tribute that Glitch deserves."

Daniel Simmons launched another indiegogo campaign, Music of Ur: The Glitch Soundtrack, on December 8. Project rewards include Kukubee art as well as sounds and music from the game. That project reached its $8,000 funding goal in less than an hour.

An MMO is a collaboration. Tiny Speck recognised the dedication of both its in-house talent and its player base, and treated both with respect. "We wanted to make that as easy and pleasant as possible," says Butterfield.

Players appreciated Tiny Speck's efforts. The overall tone of the forum posts is sympathetic, even affectionate. "I feel I've been treated incredibly well, given the circumstances," says McKenna.  "In a way, it's both been comforting and added to the sting of the closure to see what could have come next. It's been happysad. Bittersweet."

Tiny Speck is moving on to an undisclosed business product to be announced in 2013. It doesn't seem like a stretch for Butterfield, who drew Flickr from the ashes of a former game project, Game Neverending. He doesn't rule out the idea of another game, and even says, "it's possible we might be able to make a deal with someone or find a home for the Glitch stuff."

McKenna would play it. "At the very least, I would give any TS game a try and would be there for the opening with every bell on that I could possibly find."

Tiny Speck didn't turn its back on players or on employees. The company tried hard to make the final weeks of the game enjoyable to those who built the game and those built within it. Just as Glitch showed us something new in games, it showed us a better way for MMOs to say goodbye.

Why, how and where to update your Windows 8 drivers

Tuesday, June 18, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Has your computer's hardware started freaking out, freezing up or behaving in weird ways since you've made the jump to Windows 8? Don't lay blame at the feet of a mischievous gremlin. Instead, it's much more likely that your devices simply aren't rocking the most up-to-date Windows 8-compatible drivers.

Yes, a simple driver update might just fix your Windows 8 hardware woes.

The Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant does a decent job of identifying which parts and software in your rig need an update prior to installing Windows 8 - and Microsoft's Windows Compatibility Center website offers the same feature for DIY types who prefer to search for specific programs and hardware--but many devices still fall through the cracks, and you'll need to manually update any drivers Microsoft can't snag itself. (Note that the process outlined below works for Windows 7, as well.)

Before you get your hands dirty, however, you should see if Windows Update has automatically checked for driver updates. Not all drivers are available through Windows Update, but many are and it's the easiest way to proceed.

To check, open the Charms bar and select Settings. Then, choose Change PC Settings and navigate to the Windows Update settings menu. The only thing you can do here is click the Check for Updates Now button and see if it finds any. By default, Windows will install updates during your next scheduled maintenance--usually in the middle of the night--but you can force the updates to install post-haste by clicking on the link that tells you how many updates are ready to install.

If that doesn't work, you will need to manually update the driver for your finicky hardware. To do that, you'll have to use the trusty Device Manager. You'd be excused for thinking that the Device Manager would be found in the Devices tab of the Windows 8 settings menu, but it's not quite that simple. Instead, you'll have to launch it manually by returning to the Home screen and typing "Device Manager" then clicking on the Settings tab in the search menu. There you'll see the Device Manager, which will launch in desktop mode. You can also scrounge for the Device Manager in Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager.

Actually updating a driver is simple. Just find the device you would like to update, right-click on it, and select Update Driver Software. You'll have the option to have Windows search for drivers for you, but if you've come this far it's likely that you'll want to choose the second option, which allows you to manually select a location where you've downloaded drivers for your misbehaving device.

What's that? You want to know where to snag a specific driver? In general, you'll find them at the manufacturer for your particular device. Here's an index of download locations for common hardware, arranged by product type--laptops, motherboards, peripherals, et cetera--for your convenience. Not every manufacturer offers drivers that are specifically called out as being made for Windows 8, but if a given piece of hardware is giving your troubles after upgrading, it's a good idea to make sure you're running the most up-to-date drivers available.

Use some common sense when it comes to driver updates, though. If your keyboard is working just fine, for instance, there's really no need to spend the time tracking down and updated your driver and exposing yourself to the (small) risk that updating the driver will actually cause a problem.

If you're using a laptop, and your problem isn't with an external device such as a mouse or external hard disk, your first stop should be at the website of your laptop's manufacturer. Laptop hardware is often specialized, and drivers for specific drill-down components (such as the hard drive) typically aren't available on the component manufacturer's site. If drivers aren't available at the laptop manufacturer's page, they should at least have the exact model number for each component in the system, which will make your search go faster.

If you have a desktop PC, your motherboard manufacturer's site is an important stop. The motherboard's chipset drivers may need to be updated, as might the drivers for integrated components such as the network interface, integrated sound or graphics, Bluetooth, or any pretty much anything else that's listed as a "feature" of your motherboard. You can see the motherboard's make and model number by physically opening up your computer and looking at it with your own two eyes, or by using a free software utility like CPU-Z.

When it comes to graphics cards the most important thing to have is the latest driver from AMD or Nvidia, which controls the actual graphics performance of the cards.

For features specific to your graphics card model--GPU monitors, overclocking utilities, and so on--check the website of your card's manufacturer.

You won't often need to manually install a drive for an internal hard drive or SSD, as they're managed by the motherboard's SATA controller. If you're having issues with your drive, or are looking for an update for any pack-in utilities that came with it, you can find them here:

Like hard drives, optical drives generally won't need a driver update except for bundled applications and utilities.

Note that networking is usually handled by the motherboard network interface controller (or NIC), and in those cases the driver will be found on the motherboard manufacturer's site. If you've installed a networking add-on card, however, you'll find the drivers here.

Hope that helps, and happy driver updating!

How to make an SAP enhancement pack upgrade 'silent'

Tuesday, June 18, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Several years ago, SAP introduced enhancement packs, which were supposed to provide a much easier and less painful way to upgrade its ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. Executives extolled how customers could add new functionality without committing to a full-blown upgrade.

But in reality, the packs involve enough work on the part of customers to inspire a session at last week's Tech Ed conference in Las Vegas that focused on how to make the process as "silent" as possible.

The very notion of SAP upgrades tends to inspire "fear and apprehension" in customers' minds, said speaker Calvin Hill, SAP release manager at Microsoft, which uses SAP ERP.

But enhancement packs are well worth the effort for many reasons, not the least of which is that the new functions provided can help cut down on the amount of custom code companies write, he said.

Some key steps should be followed by all customers weighing enhancement pack upgrades, according to Hill.

For one thing, technical staff should perform a functionality scoping exercise with business users, to determine which enhancement pack features should actually be included in the upgrade and help minimise risk and downtime, he said. It's also important to perform an impact assessment of the changes inside a sandbox environment, Hill added.

SAP is providing tools to help with enhancement pack projects, including a business process change analyser, he said.

It's wise to consider placing any discretionary SAP system work on hold while the enhancement pack is implemented, he said.

Hill gave his talk in a large conference room with few empty seats, suggesting that many SAP customers are both interested in applying packs but aren't certain of the best way to go about it.

Overall, SAP users are adopting the enhancement pack strategy, but "slowly", said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.

While the packs have "helped ease the pain" of upgrades, "the promises of plug and play and upgrade when you want is not entirely true," he added.

While SAP has shown no public indication otherwise, it's conceivable that the company could somehow back away from enhancement packs over time in favor of SaaS (software as a service) extensions to the core ERP suite.

The next generation of the suite, which isn't expected to emerge for a number of years, could also provide an improved means for adding functionality instead of continuing with the enhancement pack approach.

How to uninstall Windows 8

Monday, June 17, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

Windows 8 is set to launch on October 26 and many PC, tablet and laptop users have already installed the Consumer Preview or the Release Preview. But Windows 8 is a big change from Windows 7, and won't be for everyone: particularly those who wish to continue using only mouse and keyboard.

 What happens if you've installed Windows 8, but want to go back to Windows 7, or even Windows XP (we're assuming no-one is keen on returning to Vista)? Here we explain your options if you wish to uninstall Windows 8, in a variety of circumstances.

Before we start it is worth pointing out that Microsoft makes it very clear that rolling back a Windows 8 installation is not a simple task. The upgrade to Windows 8 is made fantastically easy, but the pay-off is that uninstalling takes some doing.

On the download page for the Windows 8 Release Preview Microsoft says: "If you decide to go back to your previous operating system, you'll need to reinstall it from the recovery or installation media that came with your PC, which is typically DVD media.

"If you don’t have recovery media, you might be able to create it from a recovery partition on your PC using software provided by your PC manufacturer. Check the support section of your PC manufacturer's website for more information. After you install Windows 8, you won’t be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows."

And although Microsoft hasn't explicitly said so, we expect that the situation will be the same with the final release of Windows 8.

So if you are considering overwriting your Windows 7 install just to try Windows 8, think carefully. If in doubt, install Windows 8 alongside your current operating system, or not at all. And whatever else you do, back up everything on your PC before you make the move. You'll never regret backing up.

For more on the changes in Windows 8 and how to use them visit Windows 8 Advisor. For detailed advice on installing Windows 8 Release Preview, read our article: How to install Windows 8.

Windows 8

Congratulations if you took notice of this warning, and created a second partition in order to install Windows 8 on that partition. This dualboot option means your original installation of Windows 7 or XP remains on the primary drive and you can play at using Windows 8 without committing. If that is the case it is pretty easy to uninstall Windows 8 while retaining your old operating system and data. (For more, see: How to dual boot Windows 8.)

First of all, back up your entire PC (see: How to back up your PC and laptop). Be especially careful to copy off any files and folders that you need to keep, and any that are in your Windows 8 partition.

Once you are done boot into the OS you want to keep - we're assuming it is Windows 7. Go to Start, Run, msconfig (or search 'msconfig' in the search bar, and click the .exe that appears). Navigate to the Boot tab, and highlight the Windows 8 boot option. Click 'Delete'. Then highlight the Windows 7 boot option. Click 'Set As Default'. You can now close msconfig.

msconfig

Now you have deleted Windows 8 from your PC's Boot process, you can delete the Windows 8 data. Go to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. Find 'Disk Management' in the lefthand pane, and click it.

Find the partition you created for the Windows 8 install. Right-click on it and select 'Delete Volume'. Once this is done, if you right-click on the empty volume and select 'Shrink Volume'. Close the module, and reboot the system. Your Windows 8 partition is now no more.

If you installed Windows 8 after formatting or deleting your Windows 7 installation, the only way to go back is to wipe over the Windows 8 install. You need to do a clean install of Windows 7, which will wipe your PC. So you will need Windows 7 installation media (and a product key). And you need to back up all your files to a separate drive. Your PC will be wiped clean in the move.

Boot using the Windows 7 DVD or USB drive. Then format the Windows 8 partition, and install your copy of Windows.

Read our How to install Windows 7 from a USB flash drive for detailed instructions on creating, booting from and installing an OS from a Windows 7 USB stick.

How to use social media to create business value

Monday, June 17, 2013 0 Comments A+ a-

What makes your business a top business? According to a new report from the IBM Institute for Business Value, it could be how well your company implements social business.

In "The Business of Social Business," authors James Cortada, Eric Lesser and Peter Korsten argue that social is no longer "simply a 'sandbox' for the under-30 generation." Merely developing and deploying the technology isn't enough.

"Companies at the forefront are doing more than developing a presence on major platforms. They are taking their external social tools and embedding them into core business processes and capabilities. They are using social approaches not only to communicate better with their suppliers, business partners and, perhaps, most important, their employees."

IBM's study of more than 1,100 businesses around the globe reveals that investment in social business is on the rise: 46% of the companies surveyed increased their investments in social business in 2012, and 62% indicated they are going to increase their expenditures in the next three years.

The sudden rise of social business is challenging the corporate culture at some companies, which respondents indicate is something they're struggling with: Nearly three-quarters report they were underprepared for the required cultural changes.

"Executives are concerned because social business represents a different way of thinking about employees, customers and how work is accomplished, as well as the potential risks of increased organisational openness and transparency," the report says.

Here's a look at the study's top findings, plus tips for how your company can transform into a successful social business.

"Our survey and interviews have made one thing clear," the report says. "Those organisations experiencing the most success in social business approaches know they have to make fundamental changes in the way their employees worked across the entire enterprise."

Successfully embedding social business into an organisation requires three steps, according to the report:

1. Consider how to incorporate social metrics into traditional enterprises and processes.
According to the report, only about 20% of organisations are able to define key performance indicators and track the ROI of social business efforts. Those that couldn't do so struggled with their social initiative.

But quantifying results based only on cost-savings isn't sufficient, the report finds. Instead, businesses should consider piloting a project to demonstrate the hard and soft benefits of a social initiative and compare it to the performance of individuals not using the social tool.

"We also heard from respondents that justifying the ROI of social effort is only one potential use of social data," the report says. "Analytics can make it possible for organisations to integrate social and traditional data sources to make more effective decisions about customers and the workforce. By examining the residual data from social activities, organizations can develop valuable insights not previously available."

2. Understand and manage the risks associated with social business.
Respondents to IBM's survey cite a number of concerns about the use of social business tools: attacks on their brands, legal issues, data security and privacy, and unintended disclosure of company information.

About half the companies surveyed say they do not have effective processes in place to deal with these concerns, while nearly a quarter say they do, and another third have efforts underway, according to the report.

Successful businesses have established policies for employees to follow when engaging in social business and have a governance structure for managing and monitoring enterprise-wide social business behaviour, the report says. In addition, successful businesses must achieve the following:

Identify potential exposures, proactively involve the right experts and develop risk management plans.Think through their problems and understand regulatory drivers and their impact on the organisation.Ask questions about why a behavior is a risk and how to mitigate it.Engage key functional experts before problems occur. These include people from areas such as HR, legal, IT, communications, finance and risk.

3. Establish a unique application of traditional change management principles to influence corporate culture and performance.
According to the survey, 48% of organisations have support from the C-suite, but only 22% believe that managers are prepared to incorporate social business into their daily practices.

IBM suggests three actions that will assist people in understanding the value of social initiatives, involve the right stakeholders and provide the appropriate support and motivation:

1. Get people involved in using the right tools. Create hands-on opportunities to use new social business tools; provide one-on-one coaching and reverse mentoring and encourage leaders to model desired behaviors to signal social "permission"; and capture success stories through the use of social tools such as wikis, blogs and videos.

2. Apply traditional change management concepts to support transitions. Appoint a number of social business champions or subject experts to encourage and accelerate adoption; provide education about why this is important and what the guidelines are for using social media tools inside and outside the organisation; and recognize desired usage and behaviours.

3. Incorporate social approaches to supporting the change. Develop user narratives and scenarios of possibilities provided by using social approaches; use social networking approaches to identify and engage with influence leaders; provide support to employees, partners and customers.

"The case for why more organisations are implementing social business practices comes down to sustaining their competitiveness and profitability in economies in which rivals, partners and customers are adopting new ways of conducting business," the report says. "More than simply using social media tools, we have entered a new period of fundamental transformation in the way work is done at all levels of the enterprise and across all organisational boundaries."