IC Data Communications LLC Blog

Modern wisdom states that if you’re not paying for a product, you’re the product.

For all the good the Internet is capable of doing, it is equally capable of being extremely harmful… especially when data is involved. Websites and social media platforms collect data from their users and track their movements across the Internet, sell it to advertisers, and more recently, use it to train AI.

Let’s go over what you can—and arguably should—do to limit these platforms' ability to do so.

Windows 11 takes a page out of Apple’s design playbook and features a taskbar that, instead of being off to the side, is smack in the middle of the toolbar. While some may like this change, others may not.

Fortunately for these others, a simple setting change can return the taskbar to its familiar place like on older versions of Windows.

Windows 11 features a robust desktop environment with a lot of neat tricks and customizations to work more effectively. Controlling your Windows desktop experience can enhance productivity and streamline the way you interact with your computer. In today’s blog, we give you four tips to help you customize and manage your Windows environment more efficiently.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere, and it is making data more valuable than ever. This is because AI platforms rely heavily on data to function effectively. Many platforms and services collect data from their users to fuel these algorithms. LinkedIn has recently been found to do this—by default—without properly informing its users or updating its terms of service.

File sharing is a big deal. When you try to send your friends a meme or share a video with them and it doesn’t send… that can be extremely frustrating. When it comes to business file sharing, miscommunication can cost quite a bit. Today, we will look at two concepts in small business file sharing and how they help a small business.

If you are a Gmail user, you might have noticed the different inbox categories available. This makes it much easier to reach “inbox zero.” With the “priority inbox,” you can achieve this feat without so much as breaking a sweat—unless you count sweat from how much you’re laughing at how easy this tip is to pull off.

Being scammed—in either the professional or personal sense—is a scary thought. To avoid this outcome, we must be vigilant all the time now.

Of course, it also helps to know what to look for.

Let’s take a few minutes to go over a few warning signs and red flags that something is likely a scam.

Google Workspace is an effective business platform for your productivity suite, but Google Drive on its own has some merit as a cloud storage and file-sharing platform. Today, we want to discuss how to use Google Drive to share large files.

With technology being such a massive part of business today, many organizations are looking to use it to their advantage. One aspect of the business that is increasingly significant is their ability to stand out amongst their competition. Let’s take a look at a few technologies that can improve your organizational marketing efforts.

You can do everything in your power to secure your social media accounts and lock down your privacy settings. Still, at the end of the day, social media users expose themselves to a torrent of information and content every time they log on. As a civilization, we’ve never really had something like this before. These platforms curate content that the user wants to see to keep the user coming back and staying longer. It’s inherently designed to be enticing and addicting, which is dangerous for certain individuals.

Then, there are scams and an endless stream of grifts that pose a wide range of additional problems for users.

Let’s talk about ways you and those you care about can be safer on social media.

Social media is constantly evolving, and if the big social networks had it their way, it would be the only place people go when they log onto the Internet. Whether you have strong feelings for or against social media, or perhaps you are indifferent, it’s important to understand how to protect yourself when using social media.

Have you ever seen the file types that look like normal folders, but they have a zipper on the icon? These are ZIP files, and they are helpful for a variety of reasons. We’re sure you have encountered zipped files throughout your time using technology, and today, we want to demystify them a little bit and show you how to use them effectively.

While AI is far from perfect, I always love discovering ways that it can help do something mundane and speed up a workflow here or there. I’m no expert in Photoshop either, so if I need to edit something, I usually depend on someone with a little more experience, but this was a really neat trick I was able to do in just a few minutes!

Note taking apps are really useful and Microsoft OneNote is one of the most available and feature rich apps on the market for this use. You are probably familiar with the sticky note. They are notes that give a solid visual representation of items that workers need to be cognizant of for all types of processes. In today’s blog, we will go through the process of creating “sticky notes” in OneNote.

There will always be times when you have to invite guests and other external users to your Microsoft Teams meetings, especially if you want to take advantage of the many collaboration options offered through the platform. However, you need to be very careful with guests and external users–especially in today’s cybersecurity-centric world.

Technology plays a massive role for most organizations nowadays, and not everyone always grasps the importance of it. Most of the time, there is so much built into today’s enterprise software that it can often be overwhelming for workers to use it effectively. Today, we will give you three tips on how to help employees get a grasp of the technology their productivity depends on.

There are several reasons to use a form to collect data for your business, from customer impressions and service needs to employee feedback about internal matters as a means of collaborative decision-making. The trouble comes when it is time to compile all the responses… unless you know how to use the tools at your disposal.

For this week’s tip, we’re walking through the process of creating a form that self-populates a spreadsheet using Google’s toolkit.

Your Android smartphone is a computer in and of itself; as such, it runs with an operating system installed. You install programs on your smartphone the same way you install them on your computer, although the process is more complicated. Today, we want to explain the types of files that the Android operating system uses to install apps on your phone, as well as why it might be a good idea to let the Google Play Store do the hard work for you, in terms of locating and installing apps.

Small businesses are presented with the challenging prospect of monitoring and policing various IT-related policies that you might have for your network infrastructure and workplace technology use. The difficulty of this notion does little to lessen its importance, however. You need to take action to protect your assets, data, and reputation from the countless threats out there, and ensuring that your employees are properly using technology is paramount to this endeavor.

We could go on and on about the benefits of using Voice over Internet Protocol (also known as VoIP) for your business telephone needs. However, it is important that you do everything you can to prepare your network for this kind of utilization. Let’s review a few tips to help make sure your network is properly optimized for VoIP.