Carla Schroder

The Lenovo SuperFish fiasco is a very big deal: a major computer maker broke fundamental online security and exposed millions of customers to identity theft, all in the name of “improving the customer experience.” Let us briefly review what happened, and then discuss how you can protect yourself, because the way Lenovo did this is […]

‘Tis the season to look beyond the usual humdrum small business gear and give your favorite small business owner something new and unusual. In this roundup we’ll look at a little flying and rolling camera drone, a mobile library and Webserver, a new-generation 3D printer, a clever customizable key organizer that you can print with […]

The Web browser acts as the gateway for myriad online services these days. Computer security problems are far from solved, and technology advances provide new ways for malware to infect our devices and enter our business networks. For example, smartphones and tablets offer fresh new fields for malware—and its malicious cousin, “malvertising“—to exploit. Malvertising, or […]

Software tends to suffer from feature creep, because it’s tempting and easy for developers to keep stuffing features into a program until it’s crushed under its own weight. This assortment of simple, lightweight apps for Android and PC will help you tackle business tasks without bogging you down with unnecessary features. The list offers a […]

OwnCloud is an excellent, open source personal cloud server for individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises. It’s a remarkable bit of software engineering that wraps complex technologies into a friendly interface. OwnCloud’s core function is file sharing, and it also supports Webmail, streaming media, shared contacts and calendars, encryption, and many other features. OwnCloud offers […]

You already know you need good, regular backups of all of your business data, but you may get stuck figuring out the best way to manage them. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend a scary amount of money to buy and set up a reliable backup system. Your data backup system requires two parts: onsite […]

Google’s Android is a great little operating system for mobile and low-powered devices, but even though it has open source roots, most Android apps are not open source. (Please see The Small Biz Guide to Understanding Linux & Open Source for an overview of open source software, and why it matters to small business owners.) It’s […]

We looked at some excellent open source security applications for small businesses in our article,  5 Open Source Security Tools for Small Business. This roundup includes more open source tools to protect your online privacy, evade snoops and censors, protect your passwords, and protect your data. Is Open Source Secure? The Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL was alarming, […]

Good photos and videos play an essential role for all kinds of small business purposes: real estate sell sheets, product photos, website images, tutorials and educational videos, insurance claims, appraisals, and loads more. Camera phone quality (remember when phones were for talking to people?) has improved greatly, and they’re super-convenient. But when you need higher-quality […]

You may have heard of 3D printers—they’ve been all over the news. But you may not know that they represent real opportunity for small business owners. While 3D printers have been around since the 1980s in manufacturing (they were more commonly known as industrial robots), the big change came just a few years ago, when […]

The biggest money-pit for a small business is downtime. Every minute wasted coddling fragile hardware or waiting for a repair costs real money. When you’re shopping for an Android tablet or phone, consider one of the options from this roundup of ruggedized Android mobile devices. They’ve all been designed to survive the rigors of mobile […]

If you’ve spent any time shopping for digital signs for your small business, you might be a tad discouraged at the cost and complexity. But thanks to Linux and Android, you can enjoy a whole new generation of software, services, and devices that range from free to inexpensive, and that offer all kinds of great […]