This past year has seen a lot of firsts, and instead of our usual “what’s to come” year-in-review, insights and trends email, we’ve created for the first time, these insights in an interactive mini website format for you to peruse.
News-wise, it’s almost as if 2021 told 2020 to ‘hold my beer’. In 15 days, this new year hasn’t offered any respite from the drama and anxiety that pervaded 2020, especially in the United States. I will not be rehashing or opining on any of the events that engulfed Washington DC last week, but it’s becoming clearer now that the aftershocks of the DC Riots will be far-reaching and will have a major impact on technology and free speech.
2020 has been a year nobody will forget any time soon, and it presented every one of us with unprecedented challenges in our personal and professional lives. At RPost, we sought to adapt to these new realities by offering solutions designed specifically to help you, the user or potential user of our RMail® email security and RSign® electronic signature products.
Google suffered not one, but two outages this week, with its Gmail (among other Google services) going dark for several hours at a time. Many Gmail users reported emails bouncing back and other error messages. At their peak, these outages affected a vast number of users, many of whom seemed to be in Europe. The cause of the outages is, as of yet, undetermined, but your intrepid Tech Essentials staff has a theory…
On a recent all-company call, one of our American colleagues (who is not very soccer-futbol-football-knowledgeable) was shocked to learn of the passing of Maradona, exclaiming “But she was just working on a new album!” Maybe the sound quality wasn’t ideal, but such miscommunications are occurring with more frequency now in this era of working from home and having to use video conferencing. (Soccer fans on the call gave a chuckle😊)
We at Tech Essentials were all saddened to learn of the death of David Prowse this week. He was the actor who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars movies—though the character was actually voiced by James Earl Jones. Funny aside: you can watch the scenes where Prowse’s voice was used before they dubbed in the more menacing Darth Vader voice we all know now. Imagine Darth Vader with a Scottish accent!
As Remember the good old days when there was an abundance of live sporting events on television? The time slots for those big games may have been elusive.
What to do? Set your DVR to record it. Settle down with a bag of chips later in the evening, munch away and enjoy watching the recorded session.
For the brave, this Coronavirus season has created opportunity to try “old” things in new ways. These minor adjustments can have major benefit. Here is one that is easy to try: Use emojis in your business email (yes, even you lawyers and bankers).
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April and May introduced the world to the growing potential of video web meetings. Some of the daring, agile businesses that had a slew of cancelled in-person conferences in Las Vegas, Orlando, and other conference cities have transitioned to virtual conferences.
There are some positive changes in human behavior accelerated by this current health crisis. One is easily being able to identify what a 6-foot distance looks like – or the measurements used in Canada (one hockey stick length) and in Florida (one alligator length). Another is the realization that video meetings really do have an intangible benefit of subconsciously creating a human connection among participants.
