Eastvale Computer Services

I joined Shoeboxed last month and it's pretty sweet for small businesses. My problem was keeping receipts, scanning them and keeping them for expenses incase uncle Tim (Geithner) comes calling. Basically think of Netflix for receipts. Check them out at www.shoeboxed.com. Watch their demo movie. I have no secret relationship with them, just a cool service we use for keeping receipts in order.

Lots of people have emailed in about this virus, You can read about it here. Microsoft came out with a patch for this virus back in October. If you have done your Windows updates recently you probably are fine. You can check out their alert about it here just in case. Do your Windows updates and you’ll be fine. Could be media hype, could not be. Update your Antivirus and Windows updates nonetheless, but of course you do that anyway…right?

Most viruses are stopped cold by Windows Updates. The problem is most people just do not do it. Do it or you'll be sorry.

I am often asked when XP will be obsolete. Well looks like the latest news is probably 2011. Once the new Windows 7  is officially released, look for them to ditch XP within a year. If you have an aging machine, look to upgrade you XP's memory one last time and ride it until it is no longer supported. The date constantly changes, but 2011 looks to be when it will cease being available.

Watch those search engine results!

More and more trickery is out there and one very little known place for it is search engine results. Most search engines have sponsored results when you search. The few results that come up on the top are usually sponsored links. See this photo for an example.

Make sure you look at the address of the link and in general, avoid clicking on sponsored results unless you proceed with caution.

Toolbars are notorious for doing this. I am not talking about the big toolbars like Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. I mean the ones that “suddenly" appear in your browser window. They have names like MyWebSearch, Allot Search and various others. These are breeding ground for questionable activity as their results are more interested in tricking you than giving you the information you are trying to get.

 If you like toolbars, stick with the big 3. Still, watch those sponsored results.

Eastvale Computer Services is now using Freshbooks for our invoicing and receipts. We have been using it on your Business Clients and thought we’d bring it to our residential customers. When your service call is over, we quickly enter your invoice in our system and you get an email receipt (and/or a printed one) for your records. You also have the ability to pay that online with Credit or Debit Card.

When you get your receipt, you also get a login to our invoicing system so you can track your invoices and paid purchases. This really makes it handy for you to track your service calls, payments and makes the end of the year much easier on taxes. There is no additional charge since we put you in our system anyway.

Web forms are pretty boring and not sexy at all. We are using Wufoo.com for our form management. If there are such things as sexy web forms, they did it. They make it fun to build and have nice spam control. We created a new Service Request and spiced it up with color. I’ll play with a color scheme until I find a good one. Plain white is soooo boring. You can check it out here. The fields will highlight as well when you click inside them. You can pick your date and time of your appointment. We'll do our best to schedule you.

Check it out.

We are trying out our hand in marketing to South Corona since we do lots of service in Triliogy at glen ivy. The response has been great.  Actually, we are in North, South, East and West Corona.  The ad we are in is the Corona Magazine of Values.

For the last 5 years, we have primarily marketed heavy in the Eastvale area and it is still where about 90% of our business is. Just thought we'd test the marketing waters in Corona.