Ripplers Get Down

By Joshua Flail

Tonight, one of our Ripplers will be spinning at Octane’s Grant Park location, beginning at 8pm. Catch Joshua Flail and other Atlanta DJs at what they call FREE SPIN, an all-vinyl record experience that takes place on the 3rd Friday of every month. If you’re a fan of funk, soul, and/or cocktails then this is the event for you! True to the name, there’s no cover to check out the event. But you will have to pay for your own drinks, so bring that wallet. We’ll be there, dancing and spilling our manhattans until the bartenders turn the lights up. Good times.

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Backup everything.. twice, even!

By Joshua Flail

Everybody knows that backing up your stuff is important. But how you backup files, and where you store them is equally as important. Accidents happen. Backups fail. It’s an inevitability, even for the bright minds at Pixar Animation Studios.

Yep, it can happen to anyone, and at anytime… usually a pretty critical time. That’s why we backup everything twice, on both an image and file level, using two different systems. This ensures that if one backup service crashes or bugs out, the other is still making sure your files are safely and securely stored offsite.

You can’t predict when something is gonna go wrong, but you can be prepared for it. Ripple can help you be ready for when the you know what hits the fan.

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(Not so) Stupid Siri Trick

By Homer Bartlett

So you found an iPhone 4S and being the honest responsible adult you are you want to get it back to its owner, but the owner has (smartly) enabled the lock screen and you can’t get into it to find out who owns it. What to do?

Siri to the rescue! Hold down the home button until Siri asks what she can help you with, then say “who am I?” Siri will respond with something like what you see here, and if the owner’s contact record contains a phone number or email address, voila!

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Twitter Passwords Leaked #dontpanic

By Joshua Flail

Hey all you users of that popular social media application that begins with a ‘T’ and ends with ‘witter’, we suggest you take the time today to make a password change. As mentioned in here, over 50,000 Twitter accounts were compromised earlier this week when corresponding email addresses and passwords were posted to Pastebin. Fortunately, further investigation showed 20,000 of those accounts to be duplicates, spam bots, or inactive users. But that’s not to say that your email address and password isn’t one of the 30,000 active accounts on the list.

So, for safety’s sake, we highly recommend you log in and change that password. Oh, and while you’re at it, you might wanna take the time to think about the best method for password creation (and storage). We recommend using phrases (sentences complete with capitalization, spaces, and punctuation) instead of any letter and number combinations. Using phrases makes it a lot harder for someone to hack your account, and at the same time they’re easier for you to remember. Just make sure you don’t use that phrase for every site or application, and change it every once in awhile.

In case you’re wondering, my Twitter password phrase is Please, hack my account!

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It’s decaf, I swear!

By Joshua Flail

This week I’m trying something radically different than my normal routine. I’m going to try to limit myself to one espresso, coffee, or similarly caffeinated drink per day. It’s a bold choice considering I haven’t gone more than a day without ingesting at least three (usually an Espresso in the morning, Americano in the afternoon, and some Earl Grey after dinner) in quite awhile. But what began as a love of good coffee and strong tea has become an addiction that makes mornings without caffeine something of a cross between sleepy and irritable. I’m sure my fiancee could be more descriptive, but for the sake of brevity (and in avoidance of slander), I’ll leave it at that.

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Ripple Improvement Pairings

By Joshua Flail

For a little over a two months now, Ripplers have been pairing off each week and brainstorming about ways to improve the efficiency of our processes. In addition, each pairing is assigned a particular client and asked to come up with at least one way to better their IT systems. It could be something as simple as labeling a wiring closet, or as complex as retiring a seldom used in-house server and migrating them to cloud storage to save some cash. But no matter the complexity of the solution, things get done. We know, because we’ve been using LessMeeting to keep track.

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Latte Art Throwdown in Atlanta

By Joshua Flail

That’s right! There’s a monthly competition in Atlanta where baristas from all over town (and sometimes beyond) get together, pitch in 5 dollars, and try their luck at pouring the best latte art. And from what we’ve observed, the Atlanta barista community knows how to throw a party.

Sooo… latte art? Yep, if you’ve ever ventured beyond the corporate chains to an independent coffeehouse you’ll likely be familiar with the hearts, flowers, and more abstract designs that can be created from pouring frothed milk into espresso by way of skillful, steady hands. It’s a sight to see for sure, but also a good indication that the person across the counter actually cares what goes into the cup.

You can catch the next Throwdown this coming Thursday, May 10th, at Octane Westside. It’s free to attend and watch. And if you’ve had some experience on an espresso machine, you can toss in a fiver and bet on your ability to craft a cash-winning pour. You might even spot some Ripplers in the crowd cheering for the competitors. So, whether your all in for the competition, or just a sideline spectator, we urge you to head to Octane, get a beer, and check out this Atlanta-born experience.

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Positive IT

By Joshua Flail

There are a gazillion ways to promote your company through marketing campaigns. And like the modern US Presidential elections or the Cola Wars, these campaigns generally fall into two categories: positive and negative.

The instinct to compare and contrast is great, and it’s not necessarily the wrong way to go. People need to know the differences between two companies offering similar services. An entire industry has grown around the need to research and review difference businesses and products (Angie’s List, Consumer Reports, Yelp, Carmax, etc), which is great. Near instant access to information is certainly a perk. Unfortunately, some companies pollute their brand by marketing themselves through talking smack about their competition.

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Welcome to Managed IT Services

By Joshua Flail

Managed IT is a term familiar to those companies who have it, and those which supply it. Outside of those groups, it might be a little vague as to what the whole “managed” part really means. I’ve come to relate it to staying at a great hotel (an experience I’ve had only a handful of times).

We make every effort to anticipate your needs and provide great service, like The Ritz-Carlton. We’re on the ball: monitoring your network, running backups, pushing out updates, and thinking about the next step to improve the structure of your IT. And if you find you need help with something, we’re just a call away. Extra towels are not a problem.

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Helping People, Not Computers

By Chris Moody

Being responsible for someone’s technical needs changes you. And it can be for the good or ill, depending on your temperament, threshold for stress, troubleshooting skills and, above all else, how you feel about people.

Some IT folks become jaded after years of doing technical support. It could be because they’ve seen and heard the same things for years and feel like they’re just spinning their wheels. Or it might come from an inability to relate to the people they’re helping. Over the years, I’ve found that what works for me is taking a moment to evaluate the experience after each case. I’ll often get off of a call and wonder: Did I just sound like a horse’s bum asking you to reboot? Did I sound jaded? continue reading

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