Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/255988
14 January/February 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com THE BLEEDING EDGE challenges to its desktop supremacy. Even if the challenger is open-source UNIX-based. • Social Media will begin to wane. It has been marketing dogma for more than a decade that companies must have a "social media strategy." Never mind that the soc ial med ia are declining across the board, w ith Facebook losing its core youth audi- ence and Twiter under legal assault for libelous posts. Never mind that MindSpace is on life support, and new entries such as Pinterest are having trouble bui lding the same mass audience as their predecessors. Never mind that Google's entry, Google+, has not caught fre. Linked-In con- tinues to build members for business purposes, but it still has no viable business plan other than selling the personal information of its members. The bottom line is that it is nearly impossible to track interest of sales back to a social media site. And if an accounting firm can't build clients based on its social media strategy, why spend the money? • Tablets will continue to show strong sales. At $200 to $400, tablet PCs ofer fexibility that their higher-priced laptop cousins cannot – such as robust video, HDMI outputs, high-resolution cameras and 4G connectivity. In a year of recession and lower employment, which 2014 promises to be, tablets will continue to show strong sales growth. In the long run, once the recession has run its course, con- sumers will stop trying to pretend that their smartphone or their tablet will replace a decent desktop or laptop PC. But that will not be this year. • Data caps will falter, then fall. Cell phone companies have major prob- lems w ith smar tphones. Hav ing convinced Congress that 4G cellular could take the place of broadband, they now fnd that they can't deliver the throughput w ithout massive investments – which the government will not fund. So the major networks have caps on how much data you can download. Te secondary networks pretend they don't have data caps, but in truth they do. The caps are just hidden in their subscriber agreements. The bottom line, though, is that streaming media is the future, and that the cellular companies can't hope to compete while still enforcing data caps. Tat is particularly true now that Verizon has purchased Red Box, and AT&T; has its Entertainment service. Tose companies can't make money from streaming video and at the same time enforce data caps. Te year 2014 will be one of the most sluggish and most stagnant years of the past decade in terms of technology innovation and new products. On the other hand, this will be an enormously important year in terms of refining technologies and deciding how best to use them. For accounting frms, this means that 2014 will be a good year to invest in new hardware; a great time to move to SaaS accounting and tax sofware programs; and a nice time to consider investments in new data storage, whether in the cloud or on the desktop. TOP WEB SITES OF 2014 A compendium of ideas, products, rants and raves from the viewpoint of the author. Tese are the seven top web sites we reported in 2013, reprinted for the consideration of our users at the beginning of 2014. Note that the author has no fnancial interests in any of the products mentioned. Feel free to dis- agree, or to share your ideas by sending them to dave.mcclure@cpapracticead- visor.com . The BelArc Advisor. For those maintaining a personal computer at home, this is a handy free utility that provides a complete audit of the hard- ware and systems of your computer. Available at htp://www.belarc.com/ free_download.html , note that this is for personal and not business use. Still, it is worth using at home to keep a log of w hat you have in the s ystem, including model numbers, BIOS numbers, etc. C C l e a n e r a t P i r i f o r m . c o m (www.piriform.com). CCleaner in its free version (the business version is $34.95) is a first-rate program that cleans temporar y files, cleans the computer Registry if you wish, and wipes clean space on the computer so that it cannot be recovered. Highly recommended, and incorporates into all versions of Windows. Microsof Security Essentials and Microsoft Defender. Looking for a highly-rated and free anti-virus and anti-malware utility? Look no further than Microsoft itself. The Microsoft Security Essentials program works on computers r unning Windows XP through Windows 7, and Windows 8 comes pre-installed with Microsoft Defender. W hile you will need addi- tional malware removal tools for some of the nastier viruses, both of these work well and are highly regarded as anti- virus programs. Glar y Utilities (www.glar ysoft. com). Te Glary Utilities, for $39.95 and ofen discounted, are among the most popular and highly rated utility collections on the market. Te collec- tion scans and cleans your PC, cleaning temporary fles, removing junk fles, fxing broken shortcuts, and resolving a wide range of issues, both major and minor, that most Windows users will have no trouble recognizing. You can confgure its One-Click Maintenance option to run just those processes you want with a single click, making regular maintenance simple. MalWareby tes (www.malware- bytes.com). One of the most highly recommended tools to remove viruses is Malwarebytes. For home use, the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free uti- lizes Malwarebytes' powerful tech- nology to detect and remove all traces of malware including worms, trojans, rootkits, rogues, dialers, spyware and more. A small business license is also available for $24.94. Microsoft Windows Malicious Sof t ware R emoval Tool (w w w. microsoft.com/en-us/download/ details.aspx?id=16). Te Microsof Windows Malicious Sofware Removal Tool checks Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 computers for and helps remove infections by specifc, p rev a l e n t m a l i c i o u s s o f t w a re — including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom. When the detection and removal pro- cess is complete, the tool displays a re p o r t d e s c r i b i ng t h e o u tc o m e, including which, if any, malicious sof- ware was detected and removed. Te free tool is updated each Tuesday by the Microsof Updater and is a frst line of defense if malicious sofware is discov- ered by an anti-virus program. iProp (htp://www.amazon.com/ Universal-Android-Windows-Tab- lets-eReaders/dp/B004W697ES). I don't spend a lot of time beta testing hardware these days, but this gadget has some strong appeal. It solves the problem of how to balance a tablet in those awkward places where the usual type of stand doesn't work…like when you want to balance it on your knees. It's marketed as an iPad device, but works well with any tablet. FOR ACCOUNTING FIRMS, THIS MEANS THAT 2014 WILL BE A GOOD YEAR TO INVEST IN NEW HARDWARE; A GREAT TIME TO MOVE TO SAAS ACCOUNTING AND TAX SOFTWARE PROGRAMS; AND A NICE TIME TO CONSIDER INVESTMENTS IN NEW DATA STORAGE, WHETHER IN THE CLOUD OR ON THE DESKTOP. cpa_12-14_McClure.indd 14 2/5/14 11:42 AM