Blog
How Modern Technology is Destroying Many Small Business Myths
In the United States and many other countries, the small business is at the heart of economic growth and sustainability. Though the definition of a small business may vary, one thing is clear: the number of people employed by them greatly outnumbers that of the largest corporations. With the expansion of the Internet over the […]
What Social Media Can Mean to Your Business
You have probably heard more than you care to about social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, their popularity and the viral nature of people’s posts that claim to “crash the Internet.” Dramatics aside, social media serves many valuable functions in the company business plan, particularly how it relates to your customers. Engaged and […]
What Is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing, a term coined by writer Jeff Howe, is the act of designating tasks usually performed by a specific person, such as a contractor or employee, to a large pool of workers who handle these individual chores on a freelance basis. Since these workers are independent contractors, the usual expenses of hiring, training and even […]
Protecting Your Customers’ Credit Card Data
You are opening up your own business, or your small business has decided to start accepting credit cards to make purchases more convenient for customers. What steps will you take to garner your customers’ trust that their credit card data are secure and remain confidential? PCI Data Security Standards First, as a new business accepting […]
What’s the Difference Between Virtualization and Cloud Computing?
So which is right for your business: virtualization or cloud computing? Do you know the difference? No? That’s okay; a lot of people who don’t work in IT don’t know the difference either. The word “cloud” is thrown around so often that sometimes people aren’t sure how “virtualization” fits in, and the two get confused […]
Improvements to GoogleNow Well Received; More Updates Coming
GoogleNow’s service has now been listening to, learning from and directing people for nearly three years, and the newest round of improvements reflects all of that time spent collecting information. As GoogleNow continues to develop, the goal is that it will become more and more like interacting with a human. While Siri did pioneer the […]
Four Technologies of Today That Will Help You Build Your Small Business
You might not want to keep up with technological advances, and that’s understandable. Everything changes so quickly that sometimes it can be quite overwhelming, especially when you have a business to run and employees to manage. However, sometimes a technology will make running your business so much easier that passing it up would be a […]
Facebook Changes It Up With Messenger & Video
The biggest social media platform in the world is, yet again, changing things with its services. While sometimes these changes are things that hardly even go noticed, this time that might not be the case. Mark Zuckerberg and team recently had a keynote where they discussed upcoming changes with Messenger and video on Facebook, and […]
Do You Need an Email Autoresponder?
Some people believe that autoresponders are just a little too impersonal and that they don’t convert or result in any good except for a click or two. Sometimes they don’t even result in that and you get stuck in the spam folder. All of the hard work you put into your autoresponder was for nothing, […]
Ashley Madison – The Latest Victim of Hacking
Anyone who’s even loosely associated with the tech industry knows that there’s no such thing as privacy on the web. Most government agencies have, at this point, been hacked. Private companies from banks to insurance firms, with state-of-the art protection have been breached, data stolen, customer trust destroyed. The independent TOR project, whose primary goal […]
A Visionary Approach to Your Security
The purpose of an IT partner isn’t just to fix something when it is broken, it is to keep your people working and your data secure. Astral moves beyond traditional managed services by addressing all the key areas of cybersecurity in today’s complex landscape.
