Fourth Quarter 2011
In this issue:

First, I encourage you to check out our Mavidea Blog, the Mavlog. You’ll find it at www.Mavidea.com, and then go to the Media section, and then the Mavlog. The Mavlog is home to a bunch of different announcements from us. The following people are sharing up tidbits for you:

• Jason Lerblance, our SEO Guru (SEO is Search Engine Optimization) has a great series of Jason talking about how to get your website found on Google and other search engines.
• Dan Woodman, the Swami of Success ™, has been writing notes about how to increase worker productivity in the office.
• Erik Barnlund, Mavidea CEO, pops in with news and changes regarding the web industry in general.
• Jake Davis, Mavidea COO, has a fabulous daily series on personal development and motivation.
• Jamie Mathy, Mavidea CTO and yours truly, on just general geeky stuff that is changing and is good for business.
• And the final and tastiest blogs are written by our very own Chris Nichols, Network Engineer and master of all food he touches. Chris’s blogs are on healthy eating habits, and he shares recipes that he loves. The Paella was delicious!

You can always see these article on our website, and a lot of them make it to our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Mavidea ).

Or you can read them using any RSS Reader. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it is simply a way to subscribe to news articles from website. I love RSS and use it to keep up with the news on dozens of websites. You can tell if a website allows RSS by looking for the RSS symbol:   If you click on that icon at the top of our webpage, you get taken to our RSS feed page. Firefox and Internet Explorer will give you several options to read updates with. I normally just use Microsoft Outlook. In Outlook 2007 or 2010, there is a RSS Feeds section if you look below the Inbox /Sent Items / Outbox. Right click on RSS Feeds, left click on Add New Feed, and type in www.mavidea.com/feeds .

Microsoft has a really nice video on how to use RSS feeds. It’s about 5 minutes, and you must use Internet Explorer to view it at http://tinyurl.com/MavideaRSS .

I wanted to take a couple of minutes to explain about the Mavlog and how to use RSS as an introduction to some of the changes happening at Mavidea.

The first big change is the continued explosion of Mavidea FirstSearch, our search engine optimization service. With the surge in mobile devices and search, making sure potential customers find your business first is increasing in importance. Jason and his team are having huge success for our clients, and the results are staggering. Cost to attract a new client is dropping, and the number of clients coming in via the website or social media is skyrocketing. I think a big part of our success is we are only taking on 2 clients per industry per town. We refuse to sell our services to your competition – if we did that, how would we have your best interests at heart?

The other big change is we’re taking Mavidea to the cloud. I’ve written about cloud computing a bunch of times. It is still an immature and developing set of technologies, but we are moving as much of our server infrastructure out to the cloud as we can. Along the way, we’re going to be blogging about what works and what doesn’t. Mavidea has grown enough that we have non-technical staff, and we’ll be sharing their thoughts and feelings with you, as well as what us geeks think about things.

Keep an eye on the Mavlog to see what we’re up to!

Why wireless security?
When you have a wireless network, you need to make sure it's kept secure. An unencrypted network presents the potential for security breaches.

Wireless technologies that provide long-range connectivity can't be contained within an office. When you use a network that's not secure, hackers could potentially "capture" the information you're sending back and forth. This means passwords, records, and more.

Isn't my network already secure?
With some older wireless technologies, like Bluetooth, access is limited by physical proximity to the corporate network.

Read More

Tables are extremely useful in documents of all types, but they can frequently be confusing when you want to modify them to get a specific effect.

We’ll show you two ways to insert a table. In another tip, we’ll show you where and how to modify border thickness and color, background colors, and more.

Table Structure
Tables are made up of cells (“boxes”). Cells are organized vertically into columns and horizontally into rows. When you insert a table, you’ll need to know how many rows you want and how many columns.

Read More

Jake Wolber

Jake Allen Wolber was born January 4, 1988 in Sterling, IL. Ever since Jake was a child, he has loved playing sports and any other activity that involved being outside including bike riding, camping, and fishing. Jake attended Rock Falls High School and played several sports, unfortunately, he has torn his ACL twice in the last 5 years, ending his sports career. Later, he continued his education at Illinois State University (ISU) in Bloomington/Normal IL. He studied Marketing and Management and graduated with his bachelors degree in May of 2011. During his spring semester, Jake interned as an Inside Sales Executive at Mavidea and then came on full time following his graduation, Jake has been a valuable addition to Mavidea’s sales and marketing team. In his spare time, Jake spends time with his girlfriend (Mel), and being a die-hard fan of the Packers, Bulls, Cubs, and Blackhawks. He also enjoys playing golf and bags.

Hurricanes are one of nature's most powerful and destructive forces generating heavy rainfall, destructive winds, flooding and tornadoes. Hurricane Irene became the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic season as it moved over Puerto Rico early Monday morning. Irene is projected to strengthen over the next five days before reaching Florida and the Southeast U.S. between Thursday and Saturday.

With several storms brewing in the Atlantic, it is important to prepare now. Download the Hurricane Preparedness Checklist to help prepare your business, employees, and community.

I have never been jealous.
Not even when my dad finished
fifth grade a year before I did.

Jeff Foxworthy