Directive Blogs

Smartphones have revolutionized the way that we communicate with each other and increased productivity, but for some businesses, they are only making things worse. A perfect example of this is the restaurant business - in fact, one restaurant owner decided to take matters into his own hands, and has performed a study which examined their business before and after the mobile revolution.

We all experience temporary mental lapses (also known as "brain farts"). The worst kind of brain flatulence is when the consequences stink up the workplace, causing downtime and loss of revenue. One of the worst places to let a brain fart rip is in the IT department.

Outsourcing your companies IT is a great way to free up money and take advantage of time-saving remote services. Businesses have different reasons for signing up for the outsourcing service, but many clients have similar expectations of the results they want out of their managed IT service provider.

A change is happening in the White House. Mikey Dickerson, a Google site reliability engineer, has just been appointed by the United States government as the deputy federal CIO, proving that even the big wigs need consulting from time-to-time.

Microsoft and Apple have been at the forefront of personal computing since the 1970s. The competition has caused partnerships and strain between the two companies and in the interim, created hardware and software that would change the world. Although the two companies will be forever linked, they both are betting on mobile, and for good reason.

We recently covered net neutrality and all of the threats that could compromise our right to indiscriminate Internet service, but a new development concerning 21st Century Fox and Time Warner might be one of the most scary situations yet. In a $80 billion bid, 21st Century Fox attempted a takeover of the media supergiant.

Businesses that are aggressive will grow quickly, and in the same way, businesses that have an aggressive continuity plan will survive the worst disasters. You need to aggressively be prepared for any disaster, even the scenarios that leave your company without computers.

Language is one of the biggest contributors to determining office culture. For example, a workplace where the management motivates with threats will be a completely different environment than an office where encouragement is liberally applied. The allowance or forbiddance of swearing is another major indicator of your company's culture. How does the language in your office reflect your company's values?

By now the vast majority of people have settled into using the Internet as a 24-hour shopping center, where almost anything imaginable can be purchased and shipped right to your door. From goods to services, everything under the sun has a digital price tag. While most of us have used a credit card to buy something online, many of us have alternatively chosen a more secure option, especially when closing deals with individuals on online auction sites like eBay. That option has traditionally been PayPal, which in many ways, has helped to revolutionize the way people transfer money. In fact, PayPal has been so successful, and essential to eBay's success, that eBay bought the company in 2002.