• Using personal instant message clients that I had no control over (skype being the worst)
• A file transfer method for employees to use that was more efficient than email

Sending files thru email, sure that’s quick…kinda.  If you compare creating a new email document, finding your file, attaching, entering in contact/subject/body and clicking send verses dragging and dropping the file onto the contact on your Spark app…Jabber wins.  Add in the fact that our email server is hosted offsite…makes sense to use Jabber since it moves the files as fast as the source and destination machines can handle.  1000Mb/s vs 4.5Mb/s twice.  No brainer there.

So all of these are great and really that’s why I installed the server and had everyone setup with clients.  Then you get into the plugins.  The one I am going to focus on in particular is called fastpath.  Fastpath allows you to setup queues for your employees, insert a bit of code on your website and viola!  You now have live chat enabled on your website.  Here are some things it will do:

• Queue requests based on user input
• Multiple queues
• Canned responses allow a generic/draft to be built for all employees within a workgroup to have a standard response.
• Reporting on average hold time and time taken with a customer
• Observing features for management and transcripts of conversations
• Customer emailed transcripts of the conversation
• Automatic prescience adjusted icons depending on the status of your employees in queue (online/offline/idle) and automatic changing from online chat to sending an email to us

We went live about a week ago and I have had nothing but good responses from our employees, preferring it over email for communication with customers.

Setup for the server was simple, Ubuntu has a .deb build that installs itself.  Just point your browser to the server afterwards to configure server name and users.

Plugins are simple as well.  Ignite-realtime keeps an updated list embedded in the server.  Just click the + sign next to the plugin you want to install, wait for it to finish and you’re set.

If you know what you’re doing and want an easy way to transfer files around…you’re still better off with FTP or just simple file sharing.  But what several of us were running into at the office was trying to copy 4gb files amongst ourselves and that can take a while.  This solved that and wound up being a very powerful tool.

Check out the source:  http://www.ignite-realtime.org

The interface is very simple to use, just select the drive, click analize and if you see a lot of red squares or white spaces between the blue, just click the defrag button and minimize.  Though it would be better to not use the machine while running it, this Defraggler isn’t as picky about not touching the machine like the Windows version.  Keep working, go do something else or just sit and watch it move your data around.  Your choice.

Another key feature for me is that it works to move your most used files to the front of the drive.  For those of you that need a refresher course, the closer to the center of the drive a file is kept, the slower the read/write speed.  So if you just emptied your recycle bin (or run CCleaner), it would be wise to use this program.  Your files that you use on a daily basis after a CCleaner run will probably be anywhere between 300MB to several GB toward the middle of your drive.

Now on most of the newer machines, I don’t notice too much of a difference after running, but I still consider it good practice.  I have noticed faster boot times on most of the machines tested on, and if it’s an older machine with a smaller hard drive, the speed increase of daily tasks can be substantial.

So if you are a believer, or even a non-believer of defragmenting, give this program a try.  It gets 2 thumbs up from me.  Download it from here.

Developed by Piriform, CCleaner (formerly “Crap Cleaner”) will clear your hard drive of all the crap files left on your computer that you don’t really need…and most of the time you don’t know are there.  Most people delete IE history or even temporary files, but this thing goes DEEP into your system to delete anything that you don’t really need.  I was on a computer about a month back, and the machine was running very slow with only 90MB left of disk space.  Yes, 90MB not GB.  So I ran this little tool that wound up deleting almost 800MB of crap files…most were logs from windows updates and temp files.  I was amazed.  Add in the fact that it will even clean up wasted and error prone items from your registry, and that makes it a winner in my book.

Download CCleaner from the developer’s website, here.

Registry scan and clean

Windows Cleaner

So here I am talking about a great program called Spybot – Search and Destroy. It is an anti-spyware program that has helped in solving and preventing countless issues on computers I’ve used in the past.

First and one of the most attractive features is…it’s free.
I am a firm believer in the fact that most issues with spyware and virus infections are done on the home user and that those companies providing software for prevention should provide it to those users for free. Corporate users still need to pay for the software but they will…for them it’s a small price to pay to stay protected. But if you take Granny who only checks her email every 2 weeks, she’s not going to spend her Social Security check on a program that will keep the pictures of her grandchildren safe. It isn’t worth it to her…the computer was probably a gift and she can’t see spending any money on the machine. So now Granny is infected with God knows what, spreading all over the net infecting all the other ignorant people who won’t or don’t want to spend the money for software that they need. So back on topic, I’m always happy to see an Essential Software that winds up being free.

Second, it is easy to use.
There are a few things that could be made a little easier. The initial setup does just about everything you need to scan your computer and lock it down tight. The only thing I wish it had was some initial setup for a scheduled scan. Sure you can set it up later, but unless you know what you are looking for, you will overlook it.

Third, it just works.
One of the greatest thing about it is right off the bat it does an “immunization” of your pc, blocking all blacklisted sites retrieved from their servers. That helps keep down bad software downloading more bad software in the background, also helping keep you from getting bad software in the first place. Not perfect but definitely a must. Also the scanning engine is very thorough and gives a description of the program on the right so you can be sure of what you are about to delete permanently from your computer.

Link to download is here.