Free and easy Windows troubleshooting by Microsoft, Fixit Center

Over the weekend we got news of a very quiet product release by Microsoft, the free Fixit Center application.  We’ve given it a try and think this program may serve a lot of our clients well as a first line of support.  After being installed Fixit Center automatically grabs all of the relevant details about your computer and looks for any problems you may have been having.  From there you must sign in with a Windows Live ID (don’t worry if you don’t know what that is, it’s just a free account with Microsoft and doesn’t automatically share any of your personal information) before the troubleshooter opens.  After that you’re presented with a list of automated troubleshooters which did fix a couple small problems on our test machine.  However, even if the Fixit Center doesn’t solve your problems it does record all the relevant details about your issue and give you the option to forward that to a professional technician.  It’s free, works pretty well and even if it can’t solve your problem it will assist a real person in getting your computer back to normal.  We like it and will be recommending it to all of our clients.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for free

There are literally thousands of companies out there who will charge you or your business an arm and a leg for better results in Bing, Google, or Yahoo!.  And while we wouldn’t discourage any of our clients from using those services, a few minutes and a free tool from Microsoft could save your organization a lot of money.  Enter the free Microsoft SEO Toolkit, a powerful and very easy to use program which will tell you exactly what can be done to improve your website.  We’ve tested it here on the official TechMinds site and were pleasantly surprised at the productive feedback it creates.  You don’t need any real knowledge about how your website works to get results, to give it a try click on the picture above or follow the link after this post.

http://www.iis.net/expand/SEOToolkit

Remove Duplicate Contacts easier in Gmail and Google Apps

While not quite as popular as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail a lot of you rely on Google for your email needs.  Most of our small business clients use Google Apps (free or paid) to manage their email. calendar, contacts and tasks for up to 50 people.  So you can imagine how important it is to have only one “contact” for each person you’re in touch with.  A contact list can easily get out of hand when you have different entries for someone’s email, home/work address and multiple phone numbers.  After listening to enough complaints Google has now made it easy to merge duplicate entries with the touch of a button.  Just click on “Contacts” when you sign into your Gmail or Google Apps Account and then click “Find Duplicates” in the center of the page.  That’s it!