Author Archives: Scott Hirschfeld

About Scott Hirschfeld

Scott enjoys helping companies get to the next level with technology. Solving tough technology issues, implementing strategy, IT management and leveraging technology are all in a day's work. He has over 20 years of technology experience and is the President of CTAccess/Computer Technologies of WI, Inc. When he is not working, he enjoys renovation projects and spending time with his family.

Microsoft’s Blue Vision for Beating Apple

As one might expect, Microsoft does view Apple as one of its biggest competitors, and in the consumer device market Apple has gained serious momentum. Microsoft’s big picture strategy to compete has been a little bit broken and very reactive over the past years. Their response to the iPod was the “Me Too” release of the Zune, which tanked terribly. Windows smartphones have been around for a long time, but never really presented serious competition to the iPhone. The release… [Read More…]

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Protecting Your Information Assets

Taking Care of Your Data & Your Company It just happened again this week. One of our customers who uses us solely on a fix-when-broken basis lost data. Why? Their backup was not functioning properly. They needed to recover data, and when we logged into their server it became evident that something had stalled the backup over a week ago. It had not been backing up since then. Fortunately, the file they needed to recover was re-creatable and not a… [Read More…]

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Yammer Update

What’s Up with Yammer? Yammer is a hot social media tool for business. The easiest way to describe its features is that it creates a Facebook like social media site specifically for your company and your business partners. It allows collaboration in some ways not unlike Microsoft SharePoint, but with a great deal more simplicity. It really makes setting up a company Intranet easy. The big news last year was that Yammer was such a hit that Microsoft decided to… [Read More…]

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Your Digital Footprint

Have you ever considered what type of information trail you might be leaving about yourself in cyberspace? In today’s connected world, your digital footprint is out there for everyone to check out, and many do not realize its importance. We have all heard the crazy stories of photos portraying gross indiscretions being posted on the web and people getting fired as a result. Or you may be following the news about prospective employers requiring that they be given Facebook access… [Read More…]

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Trending Mobile In a Big Way

Flurry Analytics recently posted statistics tracking usage of smartphones and tablets across both Android and IOS devices. These statics are interesting, and maybe not what one might expect. According to Flurry, the average time spent per mobile device is slightly more than 2.5 hours per day. Of that time, 80% is spent within applications, and only 20% is spent browsing the web. Surprisingly, email only gets about 3 minutes per day. What is the biggest category? You might have guessed… [Read More…]

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The Distraction of Our Digital Age

We recently posted a quote from Seth Godin on the wall in our lunch room at the office. This quote rings true, I believe, because we live in a society of great distraction. “A big part of doing your work is defending your time and your attention, so you can do your work.” Why is our age more distracted than others before us? I’m guessing the first thing that comes to mind is something related to smartphones or iPads or… [Read More…]

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A Paradigm Shift

Personal computing and technology has been an integral part of progressive businesses for at least twenty-five years now. As business owners and managers, we have grown accustomed to dealing with technology, and most of us have created a set of rules that we play by. Are these rules the right ones? They have worked okay so far, right? In working to grow business at CT, we regularly contact business owners and managers who are not our customers, and ask them… [Read More…]

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We Are All Connected with IoT

Technology is moving at a mind boggling speed, and sometimes it is easy to let it pass us by.  Cloud Computing has been the hot topic for awhile now.  What is next?  Some say it is IoT and M2M.  These two acronyms stand for “Internet of Things” and “Machine 2 Machine”.  Both are terms used to describe technology that has been building for years. It is simply tiny sensors that collect data and automatically transfer the data to servers, where… [Read More…]

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How Productive Are You?

The sheer pace of business and life makes it difficult to remember what comes next, what is critical, what is really important, and what can wait until tomorrow.  Applying technology is not the solution to every problem, and technology won’t solve our own lack of discipline.  But, this area of cutting through the clutter and staying focused is one that technology can certainly help with, if blended with good time management and organizational principles. Here are a few things I have… [Read More…]

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The Data Explosion

Over the past twenty years, data has completely reformed the way that we work, live and play.  It encompasses every area of our life from how we read books, to how we communicate, and how we do business.  The creation and use of data has become so ingrained into our everyday lives that many people overlook how prevalent it has become.  Access to data is just like the lights in the building.  When you flip the switch, you expect it… [Read More…]

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