Stephen Allen's Blogs

As reported today in Crain's, New York City restaurants are now racing to add the latest chic accessory:  Their own beehives. Who knew when the city lifted the beekeeping ban in March 2010 that bees would be taking up residence at some of the city's poshest hotels? Later this month, the Waldorf Astoria will join a handful of its peers—including its neighbor The InterContinental New York Barclay—and begin raising honey bees. It will start with 45,000 and aims to have 300,000 bees by the end of the summer. The historic property, known as the inn of choice for heads of state, is installing six beehives in a rooftop space on the 20th floor that will also serve as a chef's garden. “We look ...

"As a business owner, when should I worry about implementing data backup for my company?"

The answer comes in the form of another question, "How much do you value your business?"

Many of us have experienced the dreadful moment when we realize we have caught a computer virus.  Computer viruses can wreak havoc on software, steal data and transmit it off your computer, sniff around for passwords of bank accounts and other nasty business. Viruses typically infect commercial software (operating systems and applications), but BitDefender, a security firm that tracks the malware market, reports on a new phenomenon:  Viruses infecting other viruses. When this happens, the resulting code, called Frankenware, can behave unpredictably and cause untold damage.  This problem is not a rare as you might think.  Symantec reports that it is finding viruses that infect computers and...

Outlook 2010 has a great new feature for organizing messages by date and arranging them by Conversation. Using this feature, messages that share the same subject appear as Conversations that can be viewed and expanded or collapsed by clicking the icon to the left of the Subject line. The messages within each Conversation are sorted with the newest message on top. When a new message is received, the entire Conversation moves to the top of your message list, helping to make tracking email threads a snap. To turn on Conversations, on the View tab, in the Conversations group, select the Show as Conversations check box. You can reduce the size of a conversation with the Clean Up feature, which d...

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced on Monday that he was taking a medical leave of absence to concentrate on his health.  The U.S. stock markets were closed on Monday, for Martin Luther King day, but markets in Europe saw Apple shares drop by as much as 8 percent. This is the third medical leave of absence for Jobs in the last 10 years.  His first was for treatment of a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and his second was for a liver transplant.  Both times these details were not available until after he returned.  That is the case this time as well.  While there are no details as to why or how long he will be gone, Jobs will remain as CEO of the company, while Cheif Operating Officer Tim Cook w...