National Technologies Group Blog

Managed IT
Every business decision is made based on available capital. IT professionals--the good ones--can cost a lot of money, prompting many organizations to cut costs by simply going without hiring IT professionals. This presents another assortment of problems, as there is an inherent risk associated with not taking proper care of your technology assets. It also makes technology deployment considerably more difficult, if not impossible.

One-way organizations can take advantage of IT services without having a full-fledged IT department is through a managed service provider, or MSP. MSPs provide many services for a fraction of the cost of an internal IT department, including monitoring and maintaining your network and computing infrastructure. Furthermore, you can trust that they will adhere to industry best practices, as when you succeed, they succeed as well. Through preventative care, MSPs help your business find value in one of the most costly parts of operation: your IT.

Co-Managed IT
Even if your business would rather have an internal IT department, you can still benefit greatly from outsourcing at least a portion of their responsibilities to a MSP. This is called co-managed IT, where your business still maintains an on-site IT staff while outsourcing the remainder of its responsibilities to a managed service provider. This solves a number of issues related to having an on-site IT department.

For example, the IT department of a small business is likely to have issues keeping up with maintenance, helping those in need of assistance, and implementing major projects. There’s just not enough time in the day to make all of this happen regularly. Through co-managed IT, you can outsource specific roles to National Technologies Group to ensure it all goes off without a hitch. The end result is a more focused in-house team that can handle their primary responsibilities while the rest is handled by trusted IT experts. To learn more, reach out to us at +61295186000.

Restoring Closed Tabs
Accidentally closing a tab can be annoying--especially if you can’t remember how you got there. Thankfully, there is a shortcut you can use to get back to where you were. This shortcut is Ctrl + Shift + T, which will reopen a recently closed tab.

Close a Window or Tab
If you are ready to close your window or tab, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W to close it quickly.

Spacebar Scroll
If you don’t want to use your mouse wheel to scroll down a page, you can instead use the spacebar. If you hold down the Shift key and tap Space, your screen will jump down in full-screen increments rather than the slow crawl from just the arrow key.

Mousewheel Functions
You can use your mouse scroll wheel to perform various tasks. One of them involves quickly opening a link in a new tab. You can do this by clicking on it with the mouse scroll wheel (yes, there is a button under it). This saves you the trouble of going through multiple clicks with your mouse.

What are your favorite computer tips and tricks? Now’s your chance to share them in the comments.

What is OLED?
OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diodes, which is similar to normal LED technology. Light emitting diodes, or LED, are a semiconducting light source that produces light through moving electrons into defined spots with a screen’s emissive layer. It basically transforms electricity into light. OLED uses practically the same concept, but rather than involving individual LED bulbs lighting up, OLED uses light emitting films. This gives the OLED display the ability to produce higher contrast images. In other words, the lights are lighter and the darks are darker. This is due to the makeup of the OLED film (hydrocarbon chains rather than semiconductors), which also means that they consume less energy (electricity).

How Does It Work
An OLED panel contains several layers. The substrate layer acts as a structural framework; the anode, a film that draws electrons; the cathode, a film that provides the electrons; and the organic layer between them. The organic layer also contains two layers: the conducting layer that has holes, and the emissive layer where light is produced.

Types of OLED
The various types of OLED displays are used by different types of devices. Passive-matrix OLED has a slower refresh rate, which results in them being used on devices that have more static images. Active-matrix OLED devices have a faster refresh rate, making them ideal for devices like televisions, smartphones, and other displays that are always changing.

What are the Benefits?
OLEDs operate as both a light source and color simultaneously, which can create several benefits over your standard LED displays. Here are just a few of them:

• Reduced power consumption: An OLED display doesn’t need any of the electronics used to power the back light that were needed for traditional LED displays. Therefore, it uses less power.
• Improved picture quality: OLED uses color filters that can produce warmer colors and darker blacks. Additionally, OLED displays don’t have shutter arrays, meaning they can be produced with a higher refresh rate, as well as better viewing angles.
• Lightweight durability: Since OLED displays don’t have the backlight and shutter array technology found in ordinary LED displays, OLED devices are generally much lighter and flexible. A new innovation called inkjet-based printable OLED displays can reduce the nitrogen volume in a display and enhance the thermal uniformity of the display. This enables manufacturers to make more malleable displays, like wallpaper-like screens.
• Lower costs: Like any kind of technology, the more it’s used, the less costly it becomes to make. This drives down prices and makes them more affordable for everyone.

OLED displays are showing up all over the place, and they are only going to grow in popularity. How can your business benefit from this new technology? Find out by giving us a call at +61295186000.

Every business executive wants an office assistant that can help with the everyday “grunt work.” These office assistants handle a lot of work that the busy business owner simply doesn’t have time for. Unfortunately, small businesses are working with a limited budget, making the odds of affording extra help slim to none. Can Amazon’s Alexa offer an alternative to this dilemma?

The cloud might be a great new data storage resource for SMBs to get more done during the workday, but it’s far more than that. Uses for the cloud are constantly evolving to adapt to a shifting online environment, and it’s now an indispensable tool for the serious modern business. The cloud is changing the way businesses handle their data and information, but it can do so much more.