Three Bears IT Consultancy

Archive for the ‘Business Services’ Category

The Virgin group have added yet another service to their ever growing portfolio especially for home users have problems with their computer, smartphone and other digital gadgets.

Virgin Digital Help offers a variety of services including fixed price jobs ranging from troubleshooting printer issues through to setting up your digital camcorder as well as an IT helpdesk for a monthly subscription.

More information is available from the Virgin Digital Help web site or press the red button now.

We have been working closely with the Leeds Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit (LMBRU) to create a number of internal and external facing web sites to support the implementation of their IS/IT strategy and to subsequently support their bid to become a biomedical research centre.

Based around Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the newly created Extranet site provides the facility to securely upload and share documents and information between collaborative partners; facilitating closer working relations and building a foundation upon which to build more complex data capture programmes.

The Extranet system provides dedicated sub sites for individual projects with the ability to upload documents via email, Windows Explorer as well as the typical Upload features of SharePoint 2007.  The system also makes use of SharePoint’s security trimming functionality to ensure that only authorised users are able to view a particular sub site by hiding any information, functions and documents to which the user does not have access.

In this way, users must know the exact URL of the collaboration site and have an authorised username and password before gaining entry.  Once successfully logged in, system auditing ensures that any unusual access is identified at an early stage and ensures the administrators can fine tune the security permissions where appropriate.

The system also allows anonymous access to the home page providing visitors with background information on the mission of the LMBRU along with links to a support wiki and various online training courses.

More information is available from the LMBRU Business Systems Analyst.

If you’ve ever arrived at an important meeting or presentation to realise that you left your USB memory stick on the kitchen table, then LogMeIn can come to your rescue. Likewise, if you’re planning to set up a remote IT support team, LogMeIn can help. If you’re tired of popping three doors along to give Mr Jenkins IT support every time he installs something free from the Internet, then again LogMeIn is your saviour.

LogMeIn is a web based service which allows you to take remote access of any machines on the LogMeIn network via your standard web browser – Firefox users need to install a plug-in.  Essentially, you sign up to a free account on the LogMeIn web site, open your emails to confirm your identity and install the application from the web site.  Subsequently, install the application onto all the machines you need to connect to – premium versions of the software also allow remote connection to iPhones and other similar devices.

Once installed, LogMeIn runs as a background process in your taskbar.  Open to console and get access to any machine running the application which you’ve registered against your account.  Premium versions give you the option of transferring files from your remote computer to your local computer, but users of the free version can just load up a web browser/Microsoft Outlook and email them across.

Three Bears IT support a range of systems and users utilising this technology and in the current economic climate, it pays to reduce both your carbon footprint and expensive travel costs.

Businesses can take advantage of a great offer from T-Mobile for business broadband. £127.65 (+ VAT) per annum gets you unlimited access to the mobile Internet.

More information available via this link.

We’re aware of a number of people who have been experiencing problems with downloading and installing updates from the Microsoft Update site.  Microsoft Vista, as users will know, often has two phases to installing updates – the first happens after the download, the second phase happens when you subsequently reboot the machine.

We’re aware of a number of users for whom the second phase does not execute correctly.  During the boot up sequence, the computer displays the message “Configuring Updates.  Stage 3 of 3.  0% Complete” and at that point, the machine shuts down.

This is due to an issue with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and a required update which was released around April 2008, but which was never flagged as being essential.  As a result, your machine may not have downloaded it, depending upon your individual settings.

For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358