I hope everyone had a great Valentines Day yesterday. I know this year was a little harder for us personally so we did not do anything big this year. My wife was a little disappointed, but I told her that our upcoming anniversary would be worth the wait. Women love the romance that comes with Valentines Day, so men, Don’t Skip!

The new social media is out and ready for testing and I thought I would mention it here. It is Google Buzz and since I am a gmail user I get exclusive first dibs on it. It is like Twitter and Facebook combined. It is pretty neat, but not sure if it is really necessary. I have to be honest, I have not investigated into it that much, so there may be more uses that I am aware of. Anyway, it is something that might be nice to know about.

Last thing I wanted to mention was that Venture Technologies will be starting some new iPhone development toward the end of the first quarter. We are not sure what we will start with, but we are going to be developing some cool apps that will be available for iPhone first with an Android version to follow.

If you are thinking of getting an iPhone or some sort of Android phone, or wondering how it all compares and what it all does, shoot us an email, info@venturetechmn.com and we will be glad to help you pick out something that would work great for you.

Over the last two weeks I have run into more people that have had a virus, trojan, malware, or spyware, and it is crazy. I am not sure if there is a mass surge of these malicious guys out there, or if it was all great timing, but as I tell everyone, keeping your computer protected is the number one most important thing.

There are several ways to protect your computer and you should invest in more than one.

• Backup!!!! – If you have any sort of file on your computer that means anything to you (pictures, outlook data file, excel or word documents), then you need backup. I have online backup as well as local backup to my external hard drive. I don’t think everyone needs both, but everyone needs one or the other. At any time your computer can crash, just like an old car breaking down, and you could possibly loose everything, or have to pay thousands to recover it. i recommend Carbonite for online backup.
• Anti-Virus – Do not walk in the valley of the shadow of death without protection. There are several viruses and trojans out there on facebook, youtube, and other sites that will attack you at any moment and some of them are ruthless. If these guys get too far into your system, you will have yo reinstall Windows on your computer just to clean them out, and if you have backup, this would be a great time when it will come in handy. Have some sort of protection against these guys. We recommend Microsoft Security Essentials which is FREE!!!
• Dust!! – This one is a killer. Keep your computer clean by buying a can of compressed air and blow out the fans from the outside. This is not the best solution, but it will be better than nothing. If your computer is real old, give us a call and we can come out and open up the case and do a good cleaning on the inside. When dust takes over your system, it will slow everything down, cause the system to overheat and cause major problems you don’t want to have. Please do not open your case by yourself, please call a computer technician.

If you have any more questions about protecting your computer email us.

In our monthly newsletter, we are going to be featuring a new business each month. We will be starting this with the January newsletter and run it all year. We are looking to help our local businesses and help raise awareness about local resources that consumers can rely on.

If you are interested in becoming a feature business, please email us with a short paragraph about what you business does and who you are. There is no fee to get featured, it is completely Free!

Hope you all have a great new year!

Tyler