Network Service of Cape Cod

Hello world!

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:10:55 +0000

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Dejumble: My new best friend

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:10:16 +0000

Since I’ve been using Snow Leopard, I’ve virtually stopped using Entourage. Granted, I had just upgrade to the web edition, allowing for tasks and notes to be synchronized… I’m very happy with the native Mac integration. The more I work in an Apple environment, the happier I am. While certain aspects of the OS are not as regimented as Windows, once you learn some keyboard shortcuts, away you go. And since it’s based on Unix, there are endless options for add-on software. Now on to my new discovery: Dejumble.

The native exchange support is very weak in it’s handling of tasks. Productivity for me is hard-wired into GTD mentality. It is very important that my contact data/schedule, etc be universally available from any device or computer I happen to be working on. It is also extremely important that the machine I use the most have a good interface for entering and handling tasks. I used Things and Omnifocus (both on the iPhone and my MacBookPro), but found their lack of exchange integration to be a deal breaker. Exchange integration is critical as my exchange mailbox is synchronized with the company ACT! database.

Dejumble is the answer to iCal’s weak access to task notes. Initially, I wasn’t sure how it would handle the exchange sync. I expected tasks to be lost in the process. I am pleased to report, that after 5 days of heavy use, I am here to say that the syncs are handled perfectly. Any change to task notes in Dejumble are instantly updated in iCal, which then updates the exchange server.

If you want to sync your tasks to your iphone, check out TaskTask.

First Impression: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Exchange support

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:17:09 +0000

I’ve been running Snow Leopard for several hours now. I’ve setup multiple exchange accounts with the new native support built into the OS. The results are very good. If you have an exchange account hosted on a 2007 Exchange Server, this update is a must.

Aside from the simple fact that exchange is now fully supported, there are some things that you can do with the configuration that are well thought out. Similar to Outlook’s ability to open multiple exchange mailboxes, the native Mail application can open more than one exchange account simultaneously. You can also choose which components of exchange you wish to access. For example, you can sync each of the following individually: calendars & tasks, contacts, e-mail & notes. For business users that rely on exchange, but have Macs at home, this integration is very nice. Now if I can only retrain myself to use Mail instead of Entourage…

QuickBooks Update

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:00:41 +0000

At first, I was pretty excited about the announcement. “They’re going to fix the shitty interface for online banking,” I thought! Then I read the release notes. So they’re going to allow access to other QuickBooks windows while the online banking window is open. I guess that’s not so bad… at least my PaperSave software won’t throw an error every time the listener checks the database for a new transaction. I was really hoping they were going to fix that business whereby QuickBooks matches transactions to vendors without prompting. It would be much easier for me to reconcile my own online banking (without having to remove the matched vendor name for each transaction), given the fact that I use the company debit card for a wide range of purchases. So here it is, straight from my inbox to you:

Latest update coming to Online Banking in QuickBooks 2009. See Web version. February 18, 2009

QuickBooks ProAdvisor^® Alert

Top Product FAQs Monthly Newsletters Archived Alerts Feedback More Resources

Next Release of QuickBooks^® 2009 Responds to Customer Feedback on Online Banking

Issues Addressed Thanks to Your Feedback

Dear William Kirwin,

In Intuit’s continuing response to your feedback on Online Banking in QuickBooks 2009, we are making this early announcement about a new update to Online Banking in QuickBooks 2009. [Note 1]

In late March, Release 7 for QuickBooks 2009 will allow accessibility to other windows in QuickBooks while Online Banking is open so users can easily move between QuickBooks windows. [Note 2]

With the new release, once again QuickBooks users will be able to have multiple windows open, and have access to other areas of QuickBooks, when working in Online Banking.

Updates to Online Banking Available Late March

Release 7 is expected to be made available in late March 2009. We are now putting the final touches on this new release, which we expect will provide

Access to multiple QuickBooks windows while users work in Online Banking.
Faster performance for the Online Banking feature.
Several other minor changes relating to customer feedback.

Stay Tuned. As we get closer to deployment we will confirm release dates and provide additional release notes.

Please Help Your Clients Get Ready

Check to Make Sure Clients Are Ready for the Update. Efficiencies in Online Banking for your clients should translate into fewer data entry errors and less time spent fixing errors. To make sure you and your clients will benefit from this update, you may need to make sure their QuickBooks settings allow Automatic Updates.

You or clients can turn on Automatic Updates by going to the Help menu in QuickBooks and selecting Update QuickBooks. Then, go to the Options tab and select Yes for Automatic Update. The QuickBooks user will then be prompted in QuickBooks when the update becomes available in late March.

Manual Update May Be Ready Sooner. When we confirm release dates, it’s possible we will be able to identify an early download (requiring a manual update) of the Release for you to test and preview. Again, stay tuned.

Public Announcements: Online Banking Information Center

How We’re Sharing This Information. Over the next few weeks we will reach out to other QuickBooks users by a variety of means, and typically those messages will include a link to the Online Banking 2009 Updates page at

http://intuitcommunity.com/onlinebanking2009

This page — which will be updated soon to reference Release 7 — serves as a central location for QuickBooks users to find our most updated information on Online Banking.

Note: The site also repeats instructions on obtaining the release by automatic or manual update. Feel free to share this link with any clients also concerned about Online Banking access.

Ongoing Feedback on Online Banking Is WELCOME

We’re Listening. Please continue to email us at OnlineBanking_QB2009@intuit.com with your thoughts. We appreciate your suggestions to help us better meet the needs of both our existing and new QuickBooks users.

Previous Improvements from Your Feedback

Thanks to your feedback so far, in earlier QuickBooks 2009 releases we were able to provide many of the most-requested online banking features. These included

Quick Fill. The ability to start typing entry information, such as payee and account names, and QuickBooks will recognize what you are typing and complete the information for you.
Add New. The ability to quickly add new names, accounts, and classes within Online Banking by selecting Add New from the dropdown list.
Manual Match. The ability to view and select QuickBooks register entries to manually match the downloaded transaction.
Review and Add Multiple Bank Transactions at Once. The ability to easily review, edit, and save downloaded transactions in a batch.

Thanks for Your Help

Getting It Right. At Intuit we are committed to making the new Online Banking feature as good as in previous versions, and we hope better. As QuickBooks ProAdvisors, your feedback is especially valuable to us in this effort.

Because of your help, we can continue to develop the best way to address your needs as accounting professionals, while still finding ways to encourage use of Online Banking by other QuickBooks users.

Sincerely,

Your QuickBooks ProAdvisor Team

Notes

This alert relates to Windows versions of QuickBooks 2009 in its Pro and Premier editions, as well as to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 9.0.
Pre-announcement of Release 7 is based on best available estimates. We will update ProAdvisors as we get closer to the actual release date.

QuickBooks ProAdvisor Alerts

Editor: Bill Teague

Publisher: QuickBooks ProAdvisor Team

We welcome your suggestions and feedback on the content or design of your newsletter at pap-editor@intuit.com. For feedback or questions about your ProAdvisor benefits or log-in, please contact proadvisors@intuit.com.

© 2009 Intuit Inc. All rights reserved. Intuit, the Intuit logo, Intuit ProConnection, EasyACCT, Lacerte, ProSeries, QuickBooks, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Quicken, and TurboTax, among others, are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other parties’ trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective owners and should be treated as such.

Program terms and conditions, pricing, features and service options are subject to change without notice.

This Alert is provided as a convenience for our customers and is not intended to supplement, modify, or extend the Intuit software license agreement between Intuit and the customer for any Intuit product or service. Terms and conditions subject to change without notice.

Please Note: Intuit respects the personal nature of email communication. Every effort is made to offer only information or products that may be of value to you. If you do not wish to receive this QuickBooks ProAdvisors Newsletter, please click here to UNSUBSCRIBE and we’ll take you off the list as quickly as possible. Unsubscribing will remove your address from receiving the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Newsletter and noncritical product alerts. You will still receive critical product alerts on Intuit products which are registered to your name. If you desire to halt ALL communications from Intuit please send an email to proadvisors@intuit.com.

MOST TRUSTED. In January 2008, TRUSTe, the leading Internet privacy seal-of-approval, in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute, announced that Intuit Inc. has been honored as one of the Top 3 Most Trusted Companies for Privacy for 2007. The award is designed to celebrate the companies who take active measures to protect and inform their consumers and to encourage a safer online ecosystem. To view the full report, please visit http://www.truste.org/about/most_trusted_company.php. To learn more about TRUSTe, go to: www.truste.org.

Intuit Inc., Customer Communications, 2800 E. Commerce Center Place, Tucson, AZ 85706

PDFCreator

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:15:51 +0000

One of the requests that I seem to have run into a few times lately is in assisting clients produce pdf files from word documents and excel spreadsheets. For many years, Adobe has set the standard for pdf document creation with their Acrobat product. More recently, there are more and more options available for users that don’t require an advanced feature set.

I have used Adobe Acrobat and sometimes Scansoft PaperPort for pdf creation. Since I now work about 50% of the time on my MacBook Pro, I find myself creating less pdf files in Windows. I am now less willing to spend money on third party software to gain access to capability that is a native component of OS X.

PDFCreator to the rescue! Another great project from SOURCEFORGE.NET!

PDFCreator is a light weight, full featured pdf creation utility (print driver), that includes browser integration, integration with the Windows shell, and excellent MAPI support for your default e-mail client (Outlook). I use this software in conjunction with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader on my Windows system. My favorite feature is the interface that prompts for a file name and has the option to e-mail the file as an attachment. I like this interface both for it’s utility and ease of use.

Check it out!

Apple Technical Support

admin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:06:15 +0000

When making a new computer purchase one of the components that I think most consumers, and certainly a large percentage of small business owners overlook is the level of warranty support they purchase with the system. Like most other things, Apple likes to keep their warranty options simple. With computers you get 1 year of coverage and the option to purchase “AppleCare” support for years two and three.

Note: I figure the average PC has about a three year productive lifespan based on the ultimate cost per unit. Most OEMs will balance warranty support offerings around a three year period. Computers purchased during a promotion, like most consumer electronics, come with a much shorter warranty (sometimes as short as 90 days); while computers purchased through the business channel often have a standard warranty period of three years or more. Recently, the option to select warranty coverage up to five years is available at time of purchase from online vendors such as Dell. When you consider the cost of new equipment and the potential for increased productivity (thanks to faster responding systems) versus the availability and price of a warranty extension for years four and five, you might decide to:

replace some systems (possibly incurring additional expense if you outsource your IT)
extend warranty coverage for critical or expensive systems such as servers, laptops, or proprietary systems
do nothing
throw away your PC and get a Mac

Personally, I went through several generations of Dell Latitude laptops prior to purchasing the black MacBook (Once Intel processors became standard on Apple computers, I could run my business applications and enjoy the sheer simplicity of OS X on a single computer). After awhile, I replaced that with a 15″ MacBook Pro, and I’m finding that this machine does everything I should ever need it to do for the foreseeable future. Because this laptop gets so much use, the battery has seen a lot of action in the past nine months. Still, I was a little disappointed that the battery in my MBP now only lasted a little over an hour on a full charge. Hell! It takes longer to charge the battery than it does to discharge it… sort of like fusion power, I guess.

After weeks of procrastination, I finally decided to see if I could get a battery replacement, given the fact that the laptop was less than a year old. When I looked through Apple’s online knowledge base, user forums and blogs, I found some out that a battery should still be at 80% capacity after 300 load cycles. My battery was at 46% after only 265 cycles. Ah ha! I might be entitled to a replacement.

Since it was very late when I decided to seek a warranty replacement, I went to Apple’s website and followed along to the support section. Here I was able to log in and retrieve a list of all my apple products that are currently under warranty. I filled out a form that had common issues in a multiple choice format until I selected “battery does not last as long as it should” (or something to that effect). I filled out the comments field to include information on the current capacity, discharge time, and load cycles of my battery. Since Apple tech support was closed, I was able to click a button to request a call back the next day. I selected the time I wanted my call back, and went to bed.

This morning around 10:15 am, I received a call from a number I did not recognize. When I answered it, a computer played a message prompting me to press one if I still required support. Within seconds, I had a live technician on the phone. This technician was in Texas (not Bangalore), and within two minutes had begun processing my RMA request for a new battery. He thanked me for the information provided and stated it was clearly a defective battery.

How about that? Dell’s technical support is good (if you purchase the right one), while Apple’s technical support is simply superb. Moral of the story: you get what you pay for with Apple.

Announcement RE: Network Services scheduling for February 2009

admin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:26:29 +0000

Due to several illnesses in my family immediately following the holiday season, I have had to take a great deal of personal time this January. For the past few weeks, I have had to reschedule or cancel many appointments, put some projects on hold, and limit the number of hours per week that I am able to work for clients of Network Services. As a result, response times for non-critical issues have suffered. Due to more illness in my family, it is likely that I may be called away from work at any time over the next several weeks. In order to better service clients, I will be subcontracting any work that cannot be completed in a timely fashion. I hope to be back to a full work schedule as soon as possible.

E-mail Virus

admin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:50:14 +0000

I haven’t actually seen a message like this in some time. This is a good example of a virus/malware attached to an e-mail. In this case, you actually have to extract the executable program from the zipped file, and then run it to compromise your system. That makes this relatively harmless for the most part.

Overall, this is pretty weak, and most obviously spam:

- Notice that the domain is “ups.com” where the United States Postal Service should be “usps.gov”

- Notice that the format of the communication has no contact information and does not look like the professional communication you’d expect from the postal service

- You may also note that you did not ship a postal package on November 25th

So, if you see a message like this in your inbox, be kind to your computer and delete it.

Internet Explorer Vulnerability

admin — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:11:25 +0000

No big surprise here. Another Internet Explorer security issue as reported by CNN. If you’re using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC to surf the net, consider switching to another browser such as Firefox. If you’re not dependent on Windows based software, consider switching to a Mac.

QuickBooks 2009 Updates

admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:10:05 +0000

I guess Intuit got my e-mail. If any of you are using the online banking features of QuickBooks 2009, then I’m sure you’ve also found the implementation to be abysmal. Every time I classify an unmatched transaction to a vendor, every transaction with the same description is automatically marked as belonging to the same vendor. This is very annoying, and the result is such a convoluted process that the end result is a product that seems unfinished and barely usable. I am pleased to see that the updates to be released address the exact issues I am having with my QuickBooks installation.

Update 1 (QuickBooks 2009 Release 4)

Update 1 provides the ability to

Quick Fill. You will be able to start typing entry information, such as payee and account names, and QuickBooks will recognize what you are typing and complete the information for you.
Add New. You can quickly add new names, accounts, and classes within Online Banking by selecting Add New from the dropdown list.
Manual Match. You will have the ability to view and select QuickBooks register entries to manually match the downloaded transaction. [2]

Update 1 becomes available on

Thursday, Dec. 11, as a download at www.quickbooks.com/support (click on the Updates & Downloads link along the top navigation bar).
Thursday, Dec. 18 as an auto-update if you and clients have automatic updates enabled.

Update 2 (QuickBooks 2009 Release 5)

By working overtime, our programmers were able to complete this first update and catch up with one more heavily requested change. Update 2 provides the ability to

Review and Add Multiple Bank Transactions at Once. You will be able to easily review, edit, and save downloaded transactions in a batch.

Update 2 becomes available on

Thursday, Dec. 18, both as a download from www.quickbooks.com/support and as an auto-update if you and clients have automatic updates enabled.

More Feedback

Bank of America. Some QuickBooks users have reported difficulties downloading bank transactions from Bank of America. Bank of America reports it will be able to update its systems to resolve these difficulties as early as December 12.

Multiple Windows. Some QuickBooks users have asked for the ability to have multiple windows open at the same time. We are working on an update for this as well.

Feedback on Online Banking

Feel free to email us at OnlineBanking_QB2009@intuit.com with your thoughts or if you would like to be notified of Online Banking-related updates. We appreciate your suggestions to date to help us better meet the needs of both our existing and new customers.