Recent Blog Posts

To keep your IT out of danger due to inexperience or negligence, we want to share with you a way that you can keep your technology up-to-date and functional, without putting it at risk. It?s called managed IT services, and you?d be surprised what they can do for you. We?ll discuss some of the many benefits that your business can stand to take advantage of by forsaking break/fix IT in favor of managed IT. Additionally, since you?re taking proactive measures to ensure that your organization?s technology is maintained, you?ll be less likely to experience crippling hardware failure. Break/fix IT providers basically depend on your technology not working properly for them to make money, so they have no real incentive to ensure that your technology is working properly. Managed IT providers, on the other hand, want to build a relationship with the client and prevent problems from happening in the first place, saving your organization money and boosting rapport in the process. Less Wasted Time Small businesses have a tough time acquiring an internal IT department due to budget restraints, but if you do have one, it?s probably swamped with work. This means that the work is either not getting done, or it?s being done poorly due to time constraints. You can?t cut corners in IT, as it could lead to dangerous downtime or missing important updates, putting your data at risk. In fact, one of the most important skipped maintenance procedures is the administration of patches and security updates. This shouldn?t happen. Ever. Managed IT services, regardless of whether or not you have an internal IT department, can provide value in the fact that they provide your organization with more experts for more work. Whether you want to catch up on missed work, implement new solutions, or stay up to date, managed IT providers give your business the flexibility to accomplish your technology-related goals in a time-efficient manner. Peace of Mind Let?s face it, user error is almost impossible to completely prevent, so it?s reasonable to suggest that only those trained in the proper best practices should be managing technology solutions. This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of managed IT services; you don?t have to have untrained users maintaining your technology solutions.  How does your business manage its technology? To learn more about our brand of comprehensive IT services, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Comment Sections Have Devolved into Garbage Whether you?re considering an online article, news story, or video, the comments section probably isn?t someplace you look for insight and civil discussion as it was intended to be. Instead, there?s an assortment of hate, lewdness, and spammy ?advertisements? filled with malware and/or empty promises. Naturally, the platforms and organizations that support and provide this content aren?t all too pleased with this situation, so they have taken various steps to try and eliminate these comments?some going so far as to eliminate their comment sections entirely. Others have taken a more progressive approach by leveraging advanced technologies?the aforementioned artificial intelligence playing a critical role in their strategies. AI and Automation, Now Involved in Comment Moderation Let?s start with Google, which has a dedicated AI conversation platform called Perspective API. Joining with OpenWeb to conduct a study, Google implemented Perspective API in some news platforms? comment sections to test the real-time feedback functionality. How Well Did AI Moderation Work? This study examined comments that violated community standards on these websites and provided the user with a request to edit their comment??Let?s keep the conversation civil. Please remove any inappropriate language from your comment? or ?Some members of the community may find your comment inappropriate. Try again?? As a control, some commenters saw no intervention message. According to the study, about a third of commenters went back and edited the comment. Of those, half took the advice to heart and made their message more acceptable by eliminating the problematic language. However, a quarter of these users doubled down, simply editing their comment to still make their message clear by evading the filter. For instance, rather than saying ?booger,? the user would edit it to read ?b o o g e r,? or would adopt a new word to stand in for an offensive one. The rest of the responses were those that revised the wrong part of their submitted comment, misunderstanding the issue, or those that instead directed their comment to the AI feature, rather than the media they were commenting on, complaining about censorship. These results were pretty much in line with those that came from a similar study that Google conducted with Coral, which showed toxic language being edited out in 36 percent of cases. Having said that, another experiment that The Southeast Missourian conducted showed a 96 percent reduction in ?very toxic? comments after this feedback was provided. Ultimately, the number of people who persisted in posting their comment unedited or simply chose not to post anything after all show that these gentle reminders are only effective to a degree, with people who legitimately don?t mean any offense. Fortunately, there is also some indication that the number of so-called Internet trolls is overestimated, and that most inflammatory comments come from people feeling some strong emotion. This interpretation was boosted by the findings of another study conducted with Wikipedia. Most offensive content was reactive and isolated. Besides, compared to the scale of the Internet, the 400,000 comments sampled by OpenWeb and Google are far from statistically significant. YouTube?one of Google?s most prominent possessions?has especially been active when it comes to comment moderation. Its comment sections are notorious for exactly the kind of problematic dialogue that these enhancements are looking to correct.  This kind of approach […]

Quibi?s Quick Exit In 2020, streaming services are all the rage. That?s why Quibi thought that they could alter the business model somewhat and succeed. The streaming service offered some of the biggest names out there in short-form episodes. With so much talent connected it was easy for Quibi founders to get the financial backing they needed, some $1.75 billion in all, to press forward. They charged $5 a month for the service. At that price point, how could they fail? They did. With the pandemic sheltering a lot of people in place, people just didn?t have the need for  mobile-exclusive short-form content. Quibi wasn?t available on any of the devices that people use to view content from home and therefore had middling demand, despite the celebrity attached.  Quibi shut down service just seven months after it?s debut and most of the remaining investment was returned to the financiers.  So, what can we learn from Quibi?s failure? The old adage ?timing is everything? stands true. Not to say that Quibi couldn?t have failed in a normal economy, but the COVID-19 pandemic made people a lot less reliant on mobile for their chosen content and it negatively affected the company?s chances to succeed. Zoom?s Security Missteps As people were asked to stay inside to ward against the spread of COVID-19, individuals and businesses began to lean heavily on conferencing solutions. Some platforms simply weren?t up to the challenge, but as the pandemic entered its second month, Zoom answered the call and was being used by hundreds of millions of people.  Unfortunately, Zoom didn?t have the security in place early on, and it had negative effects for people. Hate groups would ?Zoombomb? a meeting and share their bigoted world view, and other people reported being inundated with lewd conduct from outside parties while in a Zoom meeting. Since then, Zoom has built onto their service and now has the security needed to be used by so many people to this day. Celebrity Twitter Hack It?s off putting when people?s social media accounts get hacked. 2020 saw some of the most high-profile people?s Twitter accounts get hacked as a part of a Bitcoin scam. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Kanye West all had their Twitter accounts hacked in the scam. Twitter quickly locked down the accounts and put the kibosh on the scam and has since taken further steps to ensure that that kind of scam won?t happen again, but questions about account security and data privacy remain as a result of the hack.  Coronavirus Myths and Misinformation In times of public crisis, hackers and scammers typically thrive. This was evident for most of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic brought out the worst. With so many people conducting their business and social lives online, it was the perfect opportunity for cybercriminals. Here are a few examples of problems created for people online due to the coronavirus: Numerous conspiracy theories linking the development of 5G connectivity to COVID-19, resulting in acts of cell tower vandalism and assault against telecom employees. Bill Gates being accused of masterminding COVID-19 or using the pandemic to implant people with microchips?despite his long history of contributing to disease-fighting causes and efforts. Fumbled information sharing efforts on the part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?s […]

What is Voice over Internet Protocol? VoIP is a telephone signal that uses the Internet to transmit its data, rather than the traditional phone infrastructure. This methodology helps businesses in a few different ways?including significant cost savings and many included features that would otherwise come at an additional charge. Basically, utilizing VoIP makes the services provided by the telephone company essentially redundant. Why You Should Use VoIP VoIP offers a lot of real benefits to a business that implements it. First off, it is easily accessible on a wide variety of devices, from desktops to laptops and even mobile devices. This not only keeps your communications accessible to your team members, but it also helps to minimize the investment you need to make into your business? communications. After all, since your business should already be capable of supporting Internet connections, it is already equipped to support VoIP. If there are any additional costs associated with your VoIP implementation, they?ll generally be less expensive than the charges the phone company would likely require. VoIP also lends itself well to unified communications, simply due to the diverse integrations that it has with other enterprise solutions. As a result, VoIP can help tie together the rest of your collaborative tools. Furthermore, by helping to track your communications, VoIP helps to improve the efficiency of the conversations you have. White Mountain IT Services can help you make the most of VoIP, starting with your implementation of it. For our assistance with it or the rest of your IT, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

We?ve all had our full helping of lessons to learn in 2020. Many of us had to make hard decisions and take on uncomfortable roles in order to get through the year. Some were able to make the best of a difficult situation and adapted quickly, while others had a much harder time. I think one of the bigger lessons to take away from this past year, and attempting to commit to business as usual, is that a lot of us are blessed to be surrounded by great, caring, forward thinking people. I feel this way about my team at White Mountain IT Services. They worked hard to help our clients earlier in the year get set up remotely. They worked hard to keep the internal communication happening and adjust our internal processes and deal with obstacles despite what was going on in the world. I?m proud to be a part of this group of people. I feel thankful about having great clients too. Clients who trust me and my team with their technology. The clients who have been with us for a long time, through ebbs and flows, who continue to put their faith in White Mountain IT Services to keep the gears running in their organizations?we thank you. To the new relationships we?ve made over the last year or two, we are so grateful that you chose to work with us and we can?t wait to see where we can go together over the next several years. Our hearts go out to those who have been struggling and have had to downsize, or close their doors altogether. It?s not been an easy year. We hope we see you all again, building new opportunities for New Hampshire. I?m specifically addressing the business owners and C-levels here?I hope you are proud of your people. I hope you are thankful for them. I hope they were able to adjust to remote work if they had to, and I hope that, despite the obstacles, your business comes out on top. As much as we want it to, when the clock strikes midnight on December 31st, the world isn?t going to suddenly change. It?s up to all of us to take the lessons that we?ve learned and apply them to our lives, whether that?s our personal lives or our professional lives. Many of us make promises to ourselves for the new year in the form of resolutions?from one business owner to another, I would like to suggest one to you. Nurture Your People How you do this will depend on your business, on you, and your employees. A good place to start is to realize just how important they are, and how much of an impact they have on your business. For some of us, simply conveying honest, thoughtful gratitude can be huge. If you?ve felt disconnected from your remote workforce, you aren?t alone. It?s harder to sweep the office and check in on people. Doing check-ins and dishing out kudos doesn?t seem as organic when it?s done remotely, but it?s still important. Commit to educating your staff. Cybersecurity threats have evolved to take advantage of home users more than ever before, and with many organizations already being stressed, the last thing they need is to get caught with ransomware or a phishing attack. Your employees (in general) want to […]