Apple CEO Steve Jobs has resigned from the consumer electronic company. Leaving behind a legacy that has made Apple considered ahead of the curve technology-wise several times, and has changed the game in the industries that he's touched. While Microsoft still rules the personal computer market globally towering over OSX's 8.3% market share, Apple has certainly played a major roll in paving a path to high-end electronics and devices over the past decade that has raised the bar for companies, and has even created a few new industries to boot.

2011 has been a busy year for security experts worldwide. Major corporations have been reporting harmful attacks by hackers. So far, technology news site CNET has reported over 80 known major hacks since March that have been publicized. The publication of these hacks is inevitable, especially when user-data, contact information, and credit card information is at risk, and that publication can easily cause a PR disaster which can take loads of time and money to rectify (and in some cases, just can't be rectified). The big questions are who is at risk, are Brighton small businesses at risk, and what kinds of IT solutions need to be deployed to prevent data-theft and other intrusions.

Ever since the mid-1990s employees have been taking advantage of personal gadgets to help them get work done faster. Remember the PDAs and Palm Pilots from a decade and a half ago? Even though many companies weren't quick to establish policies to protect corporate data, tech savvy users were able to sync contacts, schedules, email, and company files to their mobile device. These days, mobile devices are in the hands of many more users, but there are ways to provide security without sacrificing your employees rights to their personal device.

USB thumb drives are fantastic. Small, portable, fast, and highly compatible; these devices make it easy to transfer files and documents from one place to another. If you are burning the midnight oil working on a presentation or document from home, a thumb drive is a fast, cheap solution for grabbing those files and taking them from one device to another. Of course, there are plenty of other alternate ways to move files that are even easier and even more fool proof (how many of you have lost a thumb drive or let one go through the wash?), so the thumb drive has been becoming less popular for businesses. If you hate to see perfectly good technology go to waste, check out these 3 tricks that give new life to your old thumb drive.

RAID, you hear it everywhere. From the techs in the server room talking about it to computer manufacturers asking if you want a RAID formation for your computer's hard drive. Not all RAID configurations are considered equal. Here's an explanation of RAID formats in plain English.

At the beginning of the month, Microsoft officially launched Office 365. What makes this Office different from the other Office suites that Microsoft has released is that Office 365 doesn't run on your computer, it runs on a cloud server. All of your data is stored securely in the cloud on Microsoft's servers. This is great for smaller Brighton businesses that need to access their files from anywhere but don't currently have the infrastructure in-house to make it happen.

You've probably heard of cloud technology. All the big names in the technology industry are talking about it; but for a lot of people, it's still just a buzz word. Microsoft has been pushing the idea of a cloud for a while, with a couple sitting at an airport waiting for a layover, with the end result being that the cloud ceases their boredom by letting them stream movies from home. What exactly is the cloud and why does it matter for businesses?

The Internet giant Google is well know as being the primary search engine on the Internet and the definer of many web standards. The Big G isn't afraid to trek into new and exciting verticals. Google Wallet is one of those endeavors. Google states that Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem. Their goal is to eventually replace the cards that you keep in your wallet. Since Google wallet is a mobile application it can store as many cards as you want without having to carry multiple cards.

We've been talking a bit about the benefits of going mobile, especially for business owners who want to get more done. One of the best benefits of a laptop computer is portability, which leads into its greatest weakness; it's easy to steal.According to the FBI, over 1 million laptops are stolen each year. If you are using your laptop for business, you'll want to take action ahead of time and employ some protective countermeasures to keep your business safe. We'll even go over some ways you can recover your stolen laptop.