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"Valley IT is proud to bring quality IT Services to Meeker. This means that you can now find quality: web design, computer repair, graphic design, and network services in a local business."- Trevor Nielsen
Rio Blanco County Abstract Co. Website Launch
Check it out, meet the team. While you’re there check out their amortization calculator, and follow the link to homeclosing101. Hopefully this will make business smoother than ever!
Spiceworks – The Ultimate IT Management Software!
UPDATE: Spiceworks 4.5 released. Check out the post on the Spiceworks Blog.
Managing IT isn’t as easy as it may sound. IT has so many different facets and niches, and most small IT departments manage several major systems from the Phone System and the Network, to the toaster and coffee maker. Consolidating management of these systems is necessary to maintaining them at their best performance, and guiding these systems into the future. Being able to effectively use preventative maintenance, and greening the routine is even harder to accomplish with these disparate systems. Perhaps the most difficult system to deal with, is the people system. Users can take up the majority of every IT Administrator’s time and more importantly energy.
Spiceworks, based in Austin, TX, has set out to make our lives as IT personnel easier in any way they can. From their offices in the beautiful hills in north Austin, they produce software that has allowed admins from around the world to get a grip on their IT Systems.
Below is a list of a few of the features and services their software provides:
- Help Desk
- User Portal for the Help Desk (AD or Web Credentials)
- Network Scanning (SNMP, SSH, and WMI)
- Systems Inventory (online AND offline).
- Network Map!
- Reports (and reporting user privileges to go with them).
- Monitoring and Alerts (AV, Software, IT Services, Printers, and much more)
- IT Services (Keep track of your vendors, service contracts, etc . . .)
All of that and more, and the best part part is their extensive online community. The Spiceworks Community includes several thousand IT Pros, from every part of the world, and every part of IT. Members share everything from tips and tricks, to plugins and how-tos. Also, they have a rapid-release cycle, and every few months they jump back in to beta and work toward a polished final product. One more thing about their release cycle that stands out is that they aren’t afraid to admit when there are bugs, and they aren’t afraid to do a minor release to fix said bugs. Using Spiceworks to manage our IT infrastructure, has allowed us to focus better on long-term and major projects. Priceless output from free software.
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Now that you’ve just read about possibly the best software company and product ever, it gets better. Spiceworks is on the cusp of releasing version 4.5 to the world. This release is substantial and includes several new awesome features:
- Scan Scheduling
- Built-In Apache Web Server
- Editable Network Map
- Help Desk Queues
- New Extensions for Power Management (Green the routine right?)
- 30% performance improvement
- and more . . .
You can beta test 4.5 and add your expertise to the build, or wait for the release. I haven’t heard the official word, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it on the shelf before Christmas.
If you’re still confused check out their slideshow below. However, if you already use Spiceworks check out Spiceworks TV for training and more . . .
Cick here to go to Spiceworks TV
Spiceworks Intro
View more documents from spiceworks.
Inkscape
I use Inkscape on a daily basis. Inkscape is a vector image editing software, comparable to Adobe’s Illustrator product. Inkscape is of course free and open source project, which is great. They’re working on getting a new version out the door, but for now version 0.46 is a solid release. You can use Inkscape to create W3C standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images, which means that these images are web compliant.
Heathenx has some awesome tutorials, I recommend keeping up on them. They’ve taught me a lot of things about Inkscape that I didn’t previously know.
Paint.NET
Photoshop prices out of your league? Try Paint.NET, a free alternative photo editor. I use this all of the time to re-size, re-color, and add certain effects to photos and other digital images.
The great thing about programs like this is that they include about 95% of the basic functionality of the expensive versions. I admit that there are certain things that would be nice, like more filters. However there is an extensive list of plugins that I haven’t tried that might do some cool stuff.
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InMeeker.com Launch
There is still a lot of work to do, but InMeeker.com is finally off of the shelf.
If anyone is out there reading this, I’d love to have some help filling it’s empty pages. Not that I can’t think of anything, just that it takes time.
Wendll’s & Cuppa Joe Website Launch
Yesterday we launched the new website for Wendll’s and Cuppa Joe’s. The newest feature on the site is the Cuppa Joe’s menu. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the drinks are awesome. My daughter recommends the Cookies & Cream Blended Creme. Wendll’s has been the best gift shop in town for a long time now, and it’s good to see them make their presence online. Keep checking their website, soon there will be lots of new stuff. We’re working toward putting some of their products online, and maybe some specials as well.
The Tan Line & Salon Website Launch!
The only salon in Meeker to date with a website is The Tan Line & Salon. It’s been a great learning experience building their site. They’ve really taken the initiative in marketing their business.
One major feature of their website that I hope really takes off, is the ability to book an appointment online.
Go check it out!
PortableApps.com
PortableApps is a portable application platform. I use it everyday. There are a lot of applications out there, many of them free and capable of running from a USB memory stick. Three years ago I set out to make the ultimate USB drive, not just with applications, but full servers and other useful tools and methods of organization. Today, I use free portable applications for pretty much everything I do from browsing the web to running a full web server. PortableApps.com has made this much easier. Although I have some applications that they don’t yet, I look forward to when they do. It’s nice to have a central place to find portable applications, rather than trying to make them all portable on your own. It’s also extremely stable, I’ve been running this platform for well over a year, and haven’t had to rebuild it at all.
Meeker Chamber’s Marketing Seminar
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the Marketing Resource Seminar (Click here) held by the Meeker Chamber at Mountain Valley Bank.
The Print Shop / Craig Daily Press had some tips and statistics on mailing ads to customers, apparently more people open ad mail than I thought.
KRAI/55country had some very interesting points about incorporating repetition and image into your ads. Obviously radio reaches a lot of people all day long. What I really gleaned from them, is that you should tell a story about what you do to generate interest in your business. So don’t be surprised if you see some site changes in the near future reflecting that philosophy. I think it is a little bit more difficult for me to describe my business, than most others. For example,
what does a retail business do? They sell stuff. What does a trash service company do? They take care of your trash.
For Valley IT it is much more complicated. What does an IT Services company do? Well, a little bit of everything: aquire, setup, manage, and maintain servers, computers, and other technology equipment, manage digital security, design networks and applications, answer any and all computer questions, develop websites, and much more. IT Services really manages Information Technology, in all of its various forms.
The newspaper also had some good points about marketing. The ones that stick out in my mind are: “We need to work together with each other, even competitors, to improve everyone’s businesses”, and secondly, “You really do need to advertise, and people really do see your ads in the paper”.
I really appreciate the Meeker Chamber helping us out, everyone who is willing to learn can benefit greatly from these seminars.