Look at how many Web services we use daily that can be authenticated against a Facebook account. Facebook is quickly coming the de facto real ID. This is a mixed blessing.  It drastically simplifies profile management and maintaining multiple passwords, but it does mean that it is more challenging to separate a personal Internet identity from a professional Internet identity.

I do believe that is completely reasonable to have a professional and personal Internet identity.  I never advocate having anything online that you would not feel comfortable having your boss look at, but I also understand that my weekend photos from San Francisco that my family might be interested in are not relevant to my professional identity.

So here we stand with two distinct Internet identities that are quickly becoming unified. For better or for worse we must accept this fact and deal with it the best that we can. What is this mean? Simply, we pulled back a little on the personal side for the sake of the professional side.  A little sad, but I do not see any alternative.  Do you?

So what happens?
Often, one or two profiles stay up-to-date and the rest gets updated either infrequent basis or is forgotten.

Now, think about the harm in leaving outdated information online.
An inconsistent message is created.

It is more than just an inconsistent message. The information in a old profile may not be accurate. For most of us this probably does not matter much until you enter the job hunting arena. People search about people when looking for a job, considering someone for a promotion, considering doing business with you or your company, or people are just, frankly, nosy. How comfortable would you be with a prospective employer finding a five or ten-year-old online profile that they just happen to come across? Does it have huge amounts of missing information that might lead them to a negative decision regarding your qualifications, experience, or character?

Personally, I do not think it is worth the risk, so I spend one evening a quarter trying to roll through all of my profiles to keep them updated. In reality, I probably get about 75% to 80% of my profiles updated because I have done a poor job in documenting all the sites that create profiles.  This is incredibly sad state of affairs for our digital age. On the positive side, the authentication mechanisms of Facebook and twitter have made the process simpler by pulling information from these highly popular sites.

What I really want is a single online identity managed from a single website that is pushed out to all websites that I use. This might be a great business for someone to develop, or heck, I will just login with Facebook and be done with it…

They wanted to subdue the Internet and its users…all they did was make them angry.  Not wise to mess with the Internet collective. Did they not learn from how many recent dictators deposed due in some part to the communication vehicle of the Internet and social media?

Check out the twitter feed on SOPA.

A little more background on SOPA / PIPA, and Please let Congress know how you feel!

Technology is art when done right!

I am sure it will be back up before I post this, but all Internet users have very high expectations for service availability. Look at how dependent have become on the tools and services that are provided via the Internet and associated connected devices for daily life.  How easy is it really to unplug these days?

Noise to Signal Cartoon

One of my resolutions is to become more understanding of service disruptions and roll with it a bit more. Technology is a tool, and I can step away from it anytime that I want. ;-)

Good day all…

==Update==
Up then down…capacity issues?  I feel for their IT teams and the challenges they must have with that massive infrastructure. Might be time for twitter to steal some Google or Amazon talent in this area.

Guess what!! The modern-day mobile phone can do a ton of things! For example, I am creating this blog post from a phone. Think about how close we are to have a full computer in our pocket! All you have to do is add a projected keyboard and screen on to flat surfaces, and you would have an awesome mini computer.

Minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but the WordPress app does not support setting a featured image.

I was on at the airport today and had a great conversation with a student studying information security. Our conversation made me think, and I took a few notes as we were talking.  This post is a partial result of our chat – Thank you Mark for the conversation, and I wish you the best in your studies!

I am no conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination nor do I have my head buried in the sand. I do not believe that every corporation is out to get your information, every government is monitoring every mouse click, or there is a fleet of hackers trying to steal your specific identity. That being said, a digital trail is real and anyone’s actions on a computer or network, including the Internet, is subject to monitoring. Yes, there are a lot of bad people online, and they do very bad things if given the chance.  So, I work not to give them a chance wherever and whenever possible.

Exercise good judgment is the first and foremost consideration. If your digital life was presented before you would it be a comfortable experience or would you start feeling a little squeamish?

The Internet is not anonymous so don’t treat it that way. Always expect that your identity can be revealed.  Accidents happen, either by the digital service providers revealing information that may not have intended to be public or by the user’s own mistakes in using the service.  This one happens more often than most people realize.  Once information gets out into the digital ether, it is very tough to get it back. Always remember, that someday someone might come looking…

Know where you are going and stick with brands (sites, applications, search, and services) that you trust.

Complete a Personal Digital Security Review regularly.

Clean-up after yourself and don’t leave digital scrapes behind if you can help it.

It is all about minimizing your risk for being digitally hurt. Some good common sense will go a long way to make sure that no unpleasant surprises pop up when you least expect or afford it.

Donating your computer to a school, charity, or friend is awesome, but you must make sure that your information is securely erased.  I am sure most people do not realize that deleting files or running a quick format of a disk does not prevent the contents of the disk from being recovered!  There are very inexpensive applications that will complete this type of data recovery for even a novice user.  Never, ever, give a computer away without first wiping the hard disk completely.  Remember, deleting files does not actually “delete” anything.  It simply tells the computer that area on the storage media is available to be overwritten by another file when needed. 

There are many applications that can complete a disk wipe, but the one I use is called CCleaner.  In the tools’ section of CCleaner, you will find an option called “Drive Wiper.”  Select the hard disk that you wish to wipe, and then choose the entire drive and the security level of complex 7-pass overwrite.  This will make sure that even an IT professional cannot recover information from the disk.  For the truly security concerned person, you can use the very complex overwrite feature, which uses a 35-pass overwrite.  It is very important that you do not accidentally select a disk that has information on it that you wish to keep (like your “C” drive)!

I cannot stress the importance enough of wiping your hard drive before giving your computer away.  Your personal identity is too important to trust to anyone.  Remember that these rules apply to all forms of storage media and not just internal hard disk drives.  Think about USB “thumb” drives (USB sticks if you prefer) or even CD/DVD discs that you burned with backed-up data.  How many people a day lend others there USB drives, but is that safe?

Make sure that everything that has any of your personal information on it is wiped or destroyed permanently.  Keeping your information safe and out of the hands of nefarious individuals is your responsibility so do not give them easy access.

(Note: I have no affiliation to CCleaner or the developers of the application. I receive NO compensation or consideration for this post.)

They returned home with a small container that reports to contain over 1,500 ladybugs or Coccinellidae. A local expert advised this as an initial course of action in ordered to control garden pests without unnecessarily exposing us to harmful chemicals. So far, it seems like a great idea, but  will it actually work?  That answer remains to be seen as I have my doubts, but I am willing to give anything short of full-scale chemical warfare a try.

We followed the release instructions to encourage these hungry critters to make a new home in our little garden beds. frankly, which the kids got a great kick out of and was certainly worth the cost of the container of ladybugs. I hope these bugs enjoy their new home and dine on all the pesky undesirable critters that are turning the leaves into Swiss cheese. I am actually looking forward to the next few mornings and evenings when I go out to our tiny garden and see if I can actually find any of the 1500+ ladybugs still on the plants.

Eat well my little friends, eat well.

Thanks for allowing us to play with the EC2 Micro Site for Free! I am having fun time playing with it. I am amazed how bad my Linux skills have gotten, but at least I have a new server to play with and learn more about.

I think I am going to move this blog to the Amazon EC2 cloud, so I can learn more about it in the real world. For those looking to do it, I would recommend that you look at the below links.

• http://aws.amazon.com
• http://gregsramblings.com/2010/09/22/my-dive-into-the-world-of-amazon-ec2-and-the-new-crazy-cheap-micro-instance/ (start here!)
• http://gregsramblings.com/2011/01/31/how-and-why-i-moved-my-blog-to-amazon-ec2-from-wordpress-com/ (this one is a very good resource!)
• http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_debian_lamp_server
• http://www.lavluda.com/2007/07/15/how-to-enable-mod_rewrite-in-apache22-debian/

Site Speed is a feature that I am most excited about as it offers us Google’s perspective on the average time it takes to load various pages on our websites.  This is not blinded aggregated benchmarks but the actual load times for various pages on our websites.  Google has given us this powerful and amazing feature.  No more will we have to guess or beat our collective heads into the wall by using various small or inconsistent players in order to help determine page load times.  Do not get me wrong, there are good services that help with this determination, but Google will quickly become the de facto standard for its broad-based consistency and ease of use.

A simple change is required in your Google Analytics Tracking code.  You need to add “_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);” to your tracking code.  Please see the below example for placement.

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER GOES HERE']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

  (function() {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();

</script>

Shortly after adding this code, you will begin to see values for page load times in your Google Analytics account under Content / Site Speed section.  You may need to move over to the beta version of Google Analytics to use this feature.  I did not check the original version of Google Analytics to see if it exists there, as I am delighted with the new beta release of the Analytics site. You can access the Google Analytics beta site by logging into your regular Google Analytics account and then clicking on the link on the top right-hand side of the page.

As noted in the Google blog posting about this feature, you will need to change your date selection to include today; otherwise, you will need to wait until tomorrow to view some results.  This is really a piece of cake to add to your site to give you some solid feedback on how well your site is being loaded on the net. Additional information can be found on Google’s help page for Site Speed.

I have been a huge fan of Google Analytics, and for us small site operators, you cannot beat the analytics for the price point (it’s free – yea!).  Google really has an amazing product here that you can use to enhance your website performance.  After all, nobody likes going to a slow and poky website.

After looking at some of the results for my website, I made a few changes and cut my average load time from 7.1 seconds to 5.2 seconds.  I will be making changes this weekend that I hope will get me into the 4-second range.  I am not sure that I will be able to do much better than that without changing my host and leaving WordPress.  Neither of these two options is highly likely for me to embark on to save another second.  As with many things in life, site performance is always about trade-offs between features/functions, hosting providers, time investment in recoding, and the almighty dollar.  We all need to find the proper balance to ensure our users get the best possible experience from our websites.

Therefore, every day I have to close this little annoying pop-up window that often comes with an advertisement to purchase something that I am already buying from Skype.  I am sorry and do not wish to nitpick, but I am already a paying customer.  Please give me the ability to turn this off.  I have scoured the net and only found numerous people complaining about the same irritation and multiple step work around that are more trouble then closing the window.  See I am not the only one upset by this “feature” and not really that crazy after all.

I regularly update the application hoping beyond hope that there will be a feature or function that will allow me to turn off this annoying and failed integration point to social media.  Skype should focus on being the best VOIP computer-based application and give up trying to integrate with social media platforms.  Sorry for the rant, but it is just really bugging me tonight, for some strange reason.

If you know how to disable this function, please share it!  You will have my eternal gratitude.

I love the “Give Feedback” icon at the top of the pop-up window – okay, let me try this.

Dear Skype, please allow me to disable or remove the Skype Home functionality.  Also, please consider responding to the 200+ pages of feedback (multiple threads now, but I linked to the first one I found) in your community support forums expressing the same frustration and request.

Feedback given… I feel a little better.

I found a small Facebook community (Disgruntled Skype users who hate the ‘Home’ popup) about this as well.  We all need to let Skype know that the users should have the option to use the feature or not.  People, fire up those Twitter, Facebook, “Feedback” and forum accounts!!

Everyone loves a success from scratch story, and I am no different.  I have been reading about authors that are beginning to self-publish.  This trend has traditional publishers nervous to say the least.  I can completely understand publishers’ concerns about losing their authors and book sales.  For the authors, I completely understand why they are beginning to push into the self-publishing space.  Why give a majority of the proceeds away from the book sales to the publisher and deal with the creative differences between the author and the business side of publishing when the Internet and e-books are readily available.

A case in point to consider is Amanda Hocking.  She is a twenty something author that has successfully published several e-books and generated more than $1 million in personal revenue from her book sales.  She is making a serious name for herself and has her own author page on the Amazon bookstore.  This is a true success from scratch story, and I love her approach and tenacity to pull off what, just a few years ago, would have been impossible.  She has broken into that small select group of published authors without a traditional publisher.

Amanda Hocking has also recently signed a book deal with a traditional publisher according to her blog.  I am sure some of her readers question this decision.  I have read several blog posts and comments that have been less than flattering with her decision to work with a large publisher.  In her blog post, she outlines the reasons for her decision, and I agree with them as do most rational people.  I think Amanda has a bright future as an author, and businessperson, and is demonstrating good decision-making to bring her work to a wider audience.  I believe that she will continue to be a successful self-publishing author as she says, but she will also have projects that use the power of a major publisher to reach greater audiences and commercial success. This should be admired and not criticized. I will actually be purchasing a few of her books for my daughter to read.

EDIT: I am late to this game.  I found a few of her books on my eldest daughter’s Kindle.

Another author I admire is Penelope Trunk.  She has a very successful blog and has founded three Internet startup companies.  She is a published author in newspapers, magazines, and books.  I thoroughly enjoy her blog as she writes exactly what is on her mind with minimal filtering.  I find this style of writing to be refreshing and unabashedly honest.  It also goes greatly to her strength of character and personal fortitude.  When someone lays bare his or her entire life for the world to read, and comment on, it certainly takes an immense amount of inner strength.  That or they never read any of the comments people leave.

Penelope has distilled much of her writings about careers into a self-published print version.  It is one thing to digitally publish a book and make it available via Amazon and other e-book retailers with minimal personal capital at stake, but when you have to outlay personal investment to go to print it takes the publishing experience to a new level.  Penelope sold her book through her blog and had her book printed and bound.  Again, this is a leap considering she could have gone back to her original publisher who printed her first book for a deal on her current book.  Penelope would have certainly maximized her revenue potential with a traditional publisher being the publisher would put marketing efforts behind the book and paid her an upfront fee.

EDIT: Please read her March 28th post on self-publishing. It is excellent and insightful.

I find the traditional book printing. but not publishing, process increasingly appealing.  I am a very, and I mean very, big fan of e-books.  I buy almost no traditional print books anymore.  The value of having all of my books on various electronic devices is incredibly valuable and liberating.  Not to mention, I have gained substantial bookshelf real estate.  Recently, I have gotten to the point where I am beginning to miss a printed book.  I do not know if I would ever swing back to purchasing mainly traditional print books, but I have ordered a print book this month that I would have normally just bought on my Kindle.  I am sure I will find a happy balance between print and eBooks over time like most other consumers.

I love the idea of self-publishing and not beholding to the filtering and editing of a publisher who is interested in maximizing sales. Self-publishing authors, whether digital or in print, have the ultimate gift of creative freedom.  They can literally write whatever they wish and put it out there for the world to read.  My hat is off to them, if I wore one, and the strength and courage they have.  I hope to see this trend continue and more authors that are independent emerge onto the literary scene.  Look at Amanda, she would have never been able to bring a literary work to the world had she not self-published.  Look at her results now after taking that drive and initiative.  If that does not get you stirred up to take a little more action in your life then you may have is water in your veins and lead in your posterior.

This weekend I tried to complete a MySQL upgrade but ran into a glitch.  Luckily for me, my excellent hosting provider, Media Temple, resolve the issue in short order.  This update also corrected a problem I had with one of my favorite plug-ins called “Better Related Posts” by Nicolas Kuttler.  Nicholas is one of my favorite plug-in authors as he is so responsive to his user community.  These two quick wins got me a little more excited about seeing what else I could be update on my blog.

I swung back over and saw that the fine folks at ColorLabs had updated my original theme.  This was a completely unexpected as I thought they considered this a dead theme.  The current update fixed all the glitchy problems I have been fighting with for the last couple of years.  I still look at my blog theme, and I like it as much today as the day I bought it.  Maybe one day in the future I will become bored with this theme and decide to replace it.  Now armed with the update I will not be forced to consider a replacement in the near-term.

Some of a few challenges I still have to work out are the large images that now need to be resized and compressed down based on rolling back to my original theme.  This theme is really the third iteration of my blog, and I have never gone back and corrected the layouts of the prior 200 posts.  Unfortunately, I am not motivated enough to do that even now so I will only correct about the last five posts.  Older posts are going to have to live with the less than optimized layout for this theme.

Cruising through the WordPress plug-ins list, I found JetPack by WordPress and Twitter Widget Pro by Aaron Campbell.  Both plug-ins are excellent, and I consider them great additions to the blog.  The Twitter feed seems to be flaky at best.  I tried four or five different Twitter feed plug-ins before settling in on Twitter Widget Pro.  I would love to see the Twitter plug-ins developers come up with a caching methodology to help reduce the amount of times a messages like “failed to contact Twitter” are displayed to blog visitors.  When you are Twitter and slammed by millions of users per hour, I guess you can understand some of the congestion problems they must experience.

I received a couple good retreats on some of my blog postings and blog traffic is up even considering how much I have neglected it over the last several months.  All good things to report with nothing for me to complain about; how often does that happen?  You really have to appreciate when unexpected good things happen.

As IT leaders it is important to take the time to select our review team carefully.  I prefer to have representation of each of the core IT areas and include active IT team members, key vendors, and consultants in the mix.  I select individuals that have differing view points and come from varying backgrounds.  This is no place for “yes” people. The idea is to get a broad range of opinions to go through assumptions, initiatives, and high-level tactical plans that cover the next 6 to 36 months to see what was missed, review new technology trends, provide feedback on the direction of the department, and keep IT ambitions realistic.

It is rather amazing that the last phrase is the most challenging part of the process.  We all want to build the best IT departments we can build to help move the business forward.  However, IT can become overambitious and develop plans that are unrealistic and thereby doomed for failure.  I ask my “brain trust” to challenge each other and me on the overall direction of the IT department, the proposed initiatives, and high-level timelines.  I want to be sure the initiatives will deliver on the needed business value and are achievable when taken into the greater context of all major works streams proposed. This really can be incredibly humbling when you see your plans chewed up and morphed right before your eyes. Once the ego is brought back into check, we end up with a solid outline for the next three-years that has been sanity checked for realistic implementation and the promise to deliver the required business value. And in six more months we will do it again.

Next we move into plan consolidation and budget planning. This is where it starts to get very interesting and the IT cog gets fit into the context of the greater corporate machine. Time will tell what makes it, and what will be cut.  The one thing that I can tell you is that doing this process will make you prepared to have those meetings where the budgets are made and cut. This preparation and vetting have made huge differences during the budget phase as I am able to speak about various proposals, alternatives, business impact, long-term direction, and budgets.  Golden.

For example, I have been reading about the horrific tragedy that has recently befallen Japan with the massive earthquake and tsunami.  I have read several stories about the situation unfolding in Japan and found them to be engaging and compelling.  This created a bit of a quandary for me.  Do I “like” them?

By “liking” something, am I endorsing the topic, tragedy, or the ability of the author to write a very good article?  I really must admit that I feel awkward when I “like” an article about a tragic event or anything that is not positive.  Am I completely missing the boat on the concept of “liking” something?  How do I show my appreciation to the author or the website for the content they are providing without seeming to endorse or supporting a topic that I am in strong opposition to or is related to some tragic event?

I do not think I am the only person who has a hard time “liking” an article about a tragic event simply based on the amount of “likes” that I see on so many recent articles.  Maybe on these types of articles, we should start a new craze that instead of liking something we could show our support with a button that says, “Like the article, but not the event.”  I know this is not very practical, but you get the idea.

So is what you “like” clear in your mind?

By no means am I suggesting that you should not “like” this posting or blog ;-)

I do find it crazy to see some of the comments that people make and the pure hate and discontent that are expressed.  Most sane and rational people would agree that moderators should control the insanity and purge the unduly harsh comments.  I was in this camp for a long time but have now come to the opinion that it is the community’s responsibility to control the antisocial types and not the various website operators or content creators.

NPR is instituting a “be polite” policy that will result in comments from “trolls” that do not respond to the website standards to be removed.  On the face of this, it seems like a rational action to help maintain the website standards for all community members.  This line of thinking strikes me as the homeowner association approach to online content.  I am sure most of us can express our “pleasure” in dealing with homeowner associations.  I do not believe the community members will receive this type of active policing by website operators ultimately any better.

The challenge that will arise is the subjective nature of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  There is just too much fuzziness in standards such as “being polite”, “do not ramble”, and “stay on-topic”.  One moderator may read the comment and considerate it is rude while another moderator may consider the same comment as poignant or witty.  I do not like the idea that my thoughts are potentially being censored or policed by someone else.  Hence, this is why I have my own blog, and I get to police most of my own thoughts.

Ultimately, the community will have to respond to website operators and the standards that they are hopefully applying consistently.  Due to the very subjective nature of this type of moderation, this will ultimately create as much controversy as the inappropriate posts that they are trying to control.  I agree that nobody likes a flame war inside of a comment forum, but the community is ultimately responsible for the standards by which it operates and not the website operators.

Recently, the events surrounding Wiki Leaks prompted the Pentagon to ban removable drives from classified networks.  “The Pentagon said data transfers “routinely occur,” but didn’t disable removable media due to logistics problems” as reported by Barry Levine of CIO today.  Later the article goes on to note, “Users will experience difficulty with transferring data for operational needs, which could impede timeliness on mission execution.”  Even inside large and complex organizations information security and user productivity are often at serious odds.

The dividing line between productivity and security is never fixed and swings back and forth between increased productivity at the cost of sacrificing some information security and then a breach occurs where the pendulum swings back the other way for lower productivity and increased information security.  Personally, I have found this to be one of the most difficult mediums to find.  99.9% of all users are responsible with the information they access.  Unfortunatly, a few disruptable people with duely authorized access to systems abuse the trust placed in them.  The actions of these small few result in increased restrictions on all users.

For most small to medium size companies, it is easier to side on higher levels of productivity and lower levels of security based on the demands of the business.  However, this is a myopic view of the situation and even departments with tight budgets need to take time and resources to complete a competent review of the information security requirements of the business.  If they fail to engage in a reasonable review, they will swing from one extreme to the other and flop between security breaches and overly restricted environments both of which result in lost opportunities and unnecessary hard dollar costs to the company.

In my career, I have sided slightly more on the increase productivity rather than increased information security.  That slight slant towards productivity is never extreme, and I make sure that I have an outside reviewer to act as a sanity check of my information security practices.  This is an area where the stakes are so high that every company should have some outside entity that will help guide and act as the security or productivity mediator.  The debates will sometimes rage on but the result is a good balance between user productivity and information security.  If any one side becomes too dominating, the business will pay an unfortunate price.

I discovered this is an important difference.  My actual needs are very different from what I thought they were.  My iPad met almost all of my computer needs.  This was fundamentally shocking to me as I am a core Microsoft user.  The iPad meet all my computer needs except for those times where I spent an extended period of writing.  Even with an external Bluetooth keyboard, I found the iPad an impractical device for doing extended periods of writing.  For e-mail and calendaring the iPad and my mobile phone was more than enough to meet my needs.  The web browser and other applications I have loaded on the iPad and phone were sufficient to meet all of my other computer needs.  It also gave me the time to realized just how much of the web and web-based applications I use in my daily life.

When my computer crashed, one of my big concerns was the ability remotely to administer our corporate network.  I really do not have to do this very often, but it is always nice to know that I can manage things on the weekend or evenings if an issue arises.  The remote desktop application on the iPad worked perfectly, and I could be nearly as efficient on the iPad as I am on my desktop.  The only time I had to go to my laptop was when I needed to do some extended e-mail composition that involved several rewrites.  Again, I found the iPad’s ability to work with longer written material to be challenging.  I am confident that with some additional efforts, I could have gained sufficient comfort with writing on an iPad that I could say that it was a “gimme” as well.

I realize now that I really do not use my desktop computer for much except out of habit.  I am still more comfortable working on that computer when I write.  I do not fully understand if Microsoft Word and Outlook are just more conducive to writing or is it purely habit that I write better while working on my desktop computer.  I have taken my iPad out and completed some longer writing sessions while mobile.  From a creative writing approach, the work was acceptable, but I still had to edit, edit, edit it on my desktop computer before I was comfortable with the work.

In the final assessment, I think the days of the desktop computer are numbered.  The netbook, tablet, mobile phone, and notebook form factors have relegated the desktop computer nearly obsolete.  The gaming industry will keep the powerful desktop computer around for a while, but for most consumers the desktop computer has outlived its usefulness.  I am fully aware there will always be some subsets of users that will have needs that require a large and powerful desktop computer.  For example, I could not see photographers and video editors ever giving up their mouse for stylus or finger.  That being said, tablet computing has arrived and is changing the way we interact with computer systems and the web.  I do not believe this is hyperbole or an oversimplification of the impact of mobile computing.

Now that my desktop computer is happily raising my electric bill again, I can get a little more writing done and maybe play a game or two.  However, in all reality, I could make do with a tablet and smart phone and be as productive as I am today with a desktop computer.

Thinking of it in a slightly different way, has the tablet or slate computer arrived, or has the state of web applications progressed farther than everyone has even realized?

How many times have you lent a single book that you purchased? I must say that I am not a very big lender of books and have only lent a few books in my entire life. I am protective of my books, and I like to keep them in good condition. I always fear a book will be damaged by some careless recipient of my lending generosity. Well, with the advent of e-books, I no longer have to worry about damage to a physical book, but now I am still highly restricted on what I can do with a book I purchased. The publishers have complete control in the Amazon program and can prevent their content from participating. In traditional publishing, they could never exert this kind of control. From a business model, it still seems as if the publishers are only coming to the e-book market reluctantly while kicking and screaming just as the music industry did. One day, I wish somebody would sit me down and explain why e-books and liberal lending policies are bad for the publishing business.

The other good news coming out of Amazon is the expansion of its Kindle applications to support periodicals. The lack of periodical support in the Kindle applications was a serious shortcoming that I am shocked was not addressed many months ago. The periodical publishers have been flocking to the iPad and Amazon might be seeing their subscription rates being impacted. Amazon completely owned the e-book market and could have built a complete iron fence around the industry. Unfortunately, visionaries do not always execute well. Looking back at the record of Amazon’s Kindle, we can see a lot of business that was left on the table because of bad business decisions, design challenges, and overly restricting consumer usage rights.

Why don’t we have a single e-book or digital rights standard by now? If I buy a book from (insert company name here), I cannot use it on a competitors’ device. This is still the biggest fundamental failure in digital book publishing and one that must be resolved to promote industry growth and protect consumer choice.

While I wait for this reality to enfold over time, I will just have to curl up with my Kindle and read a good book.

Admit it, you know a few people that picked up and moved right across that boarder. You wave at them from time to time, that is, when they are not ranting about some site that is messing with their customers or other such nonsense.

I work in IT, so I understand what managing infrastructure is like. It is a thankless job where the only time you hear from anyone is when there is a problem, and the users are chanting for your head on a stick. I have now become one of “them,” the complainers, and I am currently looking for my pike and torch to join an angry mob. My current gripe is with a site that I use frequently, but it will not allow me into my profile settings page, so I cannot integrate it with another site. Can you believe how annoying it is when you cannot access one site’s content from another site? Seriously, I know this is trivial at best, but it is indicative of where I think we are heading.

The demand for perfect uptime is getting ridiculously high. When the maximum acceptable system downtime is 1/10 of 1%, things start to get complex to say the least. My hat is off to all the great engineers out there who work their tails off tirelessly to maintain the crazy uptime percentages that we users demand. The truly sad part is the demand for perfect uptime is only gaining momentum. Which you could say, is great for the cloud and the broader adoption of virtualization and distributed computing of sorts.

See, every dark cloud does have an unseen benefit for some enterprising company.

So now I am sitting here wondering how best to get started again. A long-term writer’s block is never easy to conquer especially when you add procrastination into a busy life and career. It took some time to catch up on the fair amount of reading that has stacked up, but I realized through the process just how much good content there is on the Net. It truly is staggering to realize the sheer volume of information that is at our fingertips. The unfortunate side is that it forces us to undertake the challenge of finding and figuring out what is quality from the voluminous garbage. It is sad to say that one cannot simply rely on the reputation of the website or sources for good decisions on content quality.

Therefore, I think it best that I start slow and slide my way back into the habit of reading and writing nightly. I will bounce from Facebook to twitter and then onto the blog but write something each day. So this I pledge, I will be leaving more comments for authors and reading more to get the brain rolling again. I found just this little journey of the last few nights to be almost therapeutic and relaxing from the stresses of the day.

I have a call to action for everyone to take a few minutes to read some of the great content on the Net and leave the author a comment or two. Trust me all authors greatly appreciate the comments left by readers, and you might just find yourself a little more relaxed and exposed to some new lines of thinking.

To my very pleasant surprise, I did not burst in flames when I first entered an Apple store. However, many of the customers did “weird me out” a bit. The world is a wonderfully diverse place, so stop by an Apple store to see a single location that can have business people in suits, grandmothers, rockers, artists, and every other cultural subgroup possible in a single location.

While browsing through the store, and trying not to look like I was trapped in an enemy’s camp, I observed customers actually talking with other customers. Many of these people would not have said two words to each other outside of this setting. Typically, you do not see a person in a business suit often chatting to a punk rocker with green spiked hair. Nor do you often see an older senior citizen chatting with a fellow shopper that resembled the stereotypical gangster. The experience was interesting to say the least. These people were communicating with each other and seeming to be enjoying themselves in the process.

Can one technology bring people together? I think it can. The right device can bridge chasms and generations. Apple hit it out of the park with the iPad and this device will change rules. I am confident that both business and social interactions will change because of this device. I am certainly not an Apple fanboy. The iPad is not perfect or the end-all be-all device. New competitors will come into the market and drive all market players to further innovation. This will be good for consumers and technology. And who knows, maybe it allows a few more people to interact with each other as they never would have before.

I know the cross-generational and cross-cultural group interactions I witnessed were fleeting in the context of a single shopping trip, but changes to the way people think and interact has to start somewhere, so why not here and why not now?

(My wife was kind enough to pick me up an iPad. I will talk more about it in another post or two.)

Since then an aftershock has hit and a couple of smaller quakes in northern California.

Hope everyone is safe…

I am not sure that humanity, with all of its achievements, will obtain more than a minor footnote in the universe’s final history; there is so much we do not understand or even realize that is in existence today. However, think about what we will learn tomorrow, next week, or in another century. We are fortunate as a species to be alive and not have killed ourselves off long ago. Much of the world is locked in a century old battle that prevents them from moving forward; for them time stands still. Eventually, we all hope that they will be able to move into the modern era and contribute to the global good. Greed, power, and envy still rule too many hearts.

The opportunity for the future is beyond imaging, and each day I wake up, I know we have a limitless potential for growth. This may seem idealistic, but look back at the achievements of the last thousand years and then look at the last fifty years. The pace of discovery is increasing, and even though we are in hard times now, they will not last forever. We will wake up to the dawn of a new day and continue to work towards making the world a better place for our children and our children’s children.

My family went to the Fish Market located on the harbor of San Diego near Seaport Village. It has great views of the harbor when sitting on the patio or near the large windows. As much as we love the view, we prefer to eat at the Oyster Bar in the front of the restaurant because the food is superior and the staff is very personable. Unfortunately, we were not able to sit at the Oyster Bar this time because seating was not available for our six member party.

We ended up sitting in the center of the restaurant with a view of the kitchens on one side and the harbor on the other. When we ordered dinner, we asked for an item to be substituted on the children’s menu to accommodate my daughter’s preference. Our server told us this change required an up-charge. We commented this was done many times for us in the past and without prompting our server went to speak with her manager about our request. Shortly thereafter, the manager stopped by the table and informed us that the substitution was impossible without an up-charge and the other staff was wrong for making the substitution. She told us that she would be speaking with the staff to remind them that such activities were not permitted.

The problem was her attitude and how she communicated her decision. Her tone, demeanor, word choice, and body language all strongly conveyed her disapproval of our request. The encounter made us feel like we were trying to cheat the restaurant out of an up-change. This cast a negative tone through the remainder of our meal. We have been going to this restaurant about twice a month for over 10-years and have never been treated so abruptly. I cannot think of another time that I have had someone try to make me feel like a cheat for asking for a meal modification. Because of this experience, we will be taking a break from the Fish Market.

This manager, while trying to protect the profits of the restaurant, effectively alienated a customer. She took a too narrow view of what was in the best interest of the restaurant and failed to look at the potential long-term impact of her actions. We were not trying to take the money out of her or anyone else’s pocket. She could have simply informed us that the policy had changed without the condescending attitude and skipped informing us of her intent to reprimand the other staff members, which made us feel terrible. She forgot that she is the highest representative of the restaurant to the customer and should lead by example.

When people become too engrossed in their work, they develop an inflated view of their job responsibilities. They personalize interactions and lash out, even unknowingly, at customers and employees that commit perceived violations against “their” company. In other words, they lose perspective.

Effective people must take ownership of their work. This sense of responsibility should be encouraged but not allowed to crossover to territorial attitudes and beliefs. In reality, management is more susceptible to falling into this mode than any other group in a company. As management, we invest much of ourselves into the companies we work for that we can easily lose our perspective. When we take work too personally, we end up damaging the very company we work so hard to protect and grow.

Recently, I fell into this trap. In an effort to move several personal and professional projects forward, I slid back into an old habit of trying to make a little progress on each project every day. This resulted in little progress on many projects but nothing ever getting completed. I started to watch timelines erode as time cushions were eaten up. Luckily, I regularly take the time to assess my performance, and I have good people in my life that provide honest feedback. Long before any project was in jeopardy of being late and over budget, I course corrected.

• Prioritize and then execute on those priorities
• Stay on that highest priority task until it is done, or it reaches a predefined stop

I went back to my core time and task planning approach that is a hybrid of the GTD and Covey approaches. I am getting back the lost time and starting to see things move over to the completed side of my perpetual to-do list.

This problem is common; people strive to be more productive in higher-stress periods and unknowingly slide back into a firefighting approach that is ineffective and costs more time then stopping and following a solid planning system that priorities what needs to get done.

I have enjoyed being able to pop open the book that I am currently reading whenever I have a few minutes to spare. It is a lot more productive than staring off into space or reading whatever is lying on the table while waiting to get your haircut or sitting at a doctor’s office. I have been surprised how many times over the course of the last two weeks that I have found 5 to 10 minutes to spare and get through several pages in the book I am currently reading. When I go home and open up my Kindle at the house, it is aware that I have advanced in the book and updates accordingly. This is probably my absolute favorite feature.

I have found that reading on my Blackberry is enjoyable but not nearly enough to replace my Kindle or a traditional book. It is convenient and that is its biggest selling point. The flipping of pages is quick and easy on the Storm2. The small screen means you spending significant time flipping pages by pressing on the side of your Strom2 screen and keeping your backlight on so battery life will take a hit.

Over all, the application is a solid offering by Amazon and should make many Kindle users even bigger fans.

9QNJHCF3ZJFF

While having lunch with some colleagues today, I had my hand tapping the download link every minute or two, but to no avail. Timeout after timeout was all that greeted me. A little frustration was beginning to build. Before I left the office parking lot to head home, I tried a few more times. When I was stopped on the freeway several times, as is the ritual of the afternoon commute, I tied again. No luck whatsoever today; I am glad I am not heading out to Vegas anytime soon.

Tonight my luck has not improved, and now I am really glad that I am not going to Vegas. I must have clicked that download link a hundred times or more, but all I get is the browser scoffing back at me with more timeouts.

I love my Amazon Kindle and have been a big advocate of the dedicated ebook reader for the last couple of years. I really do wish I could get the Kindle reader application downloaded so I can use it on my BlackBerry. There are many times that I end up waiting around for something when I do not have my laptop. I look forward to being able to read a book during that downtime. I am disappointed that Amazon has not dedicated more resources from its huge cloud infrastructure to make sure the roll out of this application went smoothly. After all, they are no longer the only game in town. As a mater of fact they are late and now slow to offer a BlackBerry ebook reader.

Update 02/19/10 @6:18 p.m.
I was able to get the software installed on my Storm2!  Yea!  I am going to use it for the next couple of days and then write about my experience.  So far, so good.

It is why I go to work each day; I am grateful that I am able to provide them the life that I so very cherish (Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and the people I work with, but it is not exactly why I sit in traffic each day). My wife is doing some cooking and daughters are playing around while trying to help here and there.  The littlest one trying to imitate the eldest while the middle daughter is dancing and singing.  These are the times in my life that I will value to the end of days. It is not about money or status…it is about family.

I am done for the day…time to play for a while.  Life is short so don’t miss it.

If you are a young professional fresh out of school and entering the work force, you have some stiff competition from displaced workers that have more business experience and who have also recently updated their professional skills. If you were lucky enough to have kept your job through the downturn, you have competition from displaced workers who will do your job for less money and took some of the unemployment downtime to update their professional skill sets. It is a tough world right now for both those currently seeking and those who have secured employment.

It is critical that we do not allow our skills to become out-of-date. Working professionals must continue their education throughout their adult life, even if that means taking a class a semester at a community college, attending vendor training, or setting up a “home lab” and buying a book or two. Professionals must stay competitive in the job market. In the IT world, there are hundreds of service companies regularly calling department heads and proselytizing the benefits of outsourcing various positions for considerably less money than they are paying internal employees.

As a professional, you must provide your boss some great reasons not to listen to these calls by keeping your skill set growing and delivering more value than an outsourced company can provide. This is advice that I have taken to heart, and to that end, I have returned to school. I want to be at the head of the pack so it is my responsibility to keep my professional skills in-line with the current job market demands. This is not the responsibility of my employer. Unfortunately too many people get sucked into thinking that their employer should be reasonable for keeping their skills current by providing training. This is a trap that should be avoided. My career, My responsibility.

When does education stifle or retard technical and usage innovation? I am not sure, but it is something that I have been thinking more about over the past several months. The United States has been a hotbed of technical innovation, and many people I speak have a growing concern that we are losing our edge. Have we become over confident and lost the burning desire to innovate or does a generation simply need to absorb the changes and prime society for another creativity and innovation burst?

I recently finished reading a book (Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning) that makes the case on why we need to educate people of how to use online social media tools in order for them to effectively participate in the modern online culture. The book is thought provoking especially when you understand the usage differences among various groups of young adults.

After reading the book, I started to agree that we should consider the formal education of students in the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter services of the world. Then I started to get that nagging feeling that it may be a mistake. If by educating people in the “proper” use these tools, we place them in an artificial “box” that stifles their creativity. I know that my thoughts have been influenced by the educators that I have studied under, and while they did their best to remain neutral, they did impact how I use and see technology.

I understand that the opposite can be said as well. That without a base level of understanding people cannot effectively use technology or improvise new uses and enhancements. This is a very sad but real situation of the modern era. I have worked with many people over the years that know so little about computers or the Internet that they could not participate in an online community. They are effectively locked out of participation and completely bared from being able to contribute to an online innovation.

Where does this leave us, or me? Why, I am still pondering the issue of course. Personally, I have limited my instruction that I give my children on social media and online technologies so as not to influence their usage, one way or another. I am available as a resource should they have questions, but I have opted for a more “play with it” educational approach. I am aware of my own biases regarding an online culture and do not wish to taint their views. Still, I cannot allow them to go into the wilds of the Internet unprepared so neutrality or ignoring the online danger is not realistic either.

We need to find the minimally effective education level for social media and online technologies. Give the youth of the world an understanding of the basic functions and then get out of their way. The younger generations will lead the way with new innovations provided, we do not muck up their thinking with too many rules about what can or should be done with social media and other online technologies.

The future of tech is very exciting, and I cannot wait to see what the next twenty years will bring.

Its amazing just how many so called IT support companies are out there right now. It seems as though anyone with access to a computer at home can suddenly call themselves an IT expert.

Almost every day it seems, another one man band support company is set up offering its services, usually at a dramatically decreased price and amazingly, people buy from them! I really don’t understand how a business, one that may have taken years to get into a profitable situation and build up a good database of clients and customers would trust their livelihoods to a complete novice. All in the name of saving a few pennies. Let me assure you, if you are one of those client customers, that the phrase “you get what you pay for” isn’t just a phrase to make you spend more money. It’s a simple fact that if you pay for cheap support, you are going to get someone unqualified or new to the industry, and sooner or later you are going to end up with trouble.

Think about it as in your own business. The most senior and experienced people get paid more don’t they? The juniors, usually with little or no experience, get paid less. Why is that? Because they don’t know as much as those that are either qualified for have been “around the block” a few times. So let me ask you the question. Why are you leaving your precious data in the hands of these people?

If you have a disaster at work and you need to recover data or if you have a major security incident which requires immediate attention, do you really think that these guys are going to be able to help? Especially as quickly and diligently as you will need?

Every day there are calls from new client who have suffered these problems and want us to help them fix whatever the issue is and get them back up and running again with the least possible amount of fuss.

Even clients that have been with us for a while, still, even now get extremely excited when their internet doesn’t work, or their PC doesn’t start up, even though they KNOW that within minutes of a call to us they will be back up and running.

Imagine if we didn’t know what we were doing. How stuck would they be then?

Now, don’t get me wrong, we all started somewhere and I applaud those that get the bit between their teeth and give it a go, however, start small! Look at the home user market first. This is a place where you can hone your skills before tackling anything bigger. Get qualified and certified, show that you are serious about support corporate networks. Don’t learn on the job all of the time. Know your stuff before you break something.

IT support doesn’t need to be expensive; you can get all in contracts that will cover your entire networks for a small monthly fee. Certainly a lot less than you will have to pay if someone with no certification makes a mistake and you need it fixed.

Small Business Owners, do yourselves a favour and get serious about the IT support that your company needs. Look for a company that:

• Is qualified and certified
• Has multiple staff that can help you.
• Has a long-standing reputation within the area.
• Has worked with clients like you before.
• Can supply testimonials.
• Has a guarantee in place for all of the work that they do.

Jason Lydford MCP SBS MCNPS
Director | Computer Rescue Ltd
http://www.computerrescueltd.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Lydford

“I think writer’s block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.” (Roy Blount, Jr.)

To battle a bout of writer’s block, I have found my outline is one of my greatest allies. The outline helps me focus on the purpose of my writing, and it resolves the issue of not being sure what I am writing about in any particular sentence or paragraph. I also incorporate some basic tactics into my writing process such as taking breaks to read other materials, changing the location and time of where I write, distraction elimination, and just doing some free writing to get the flow going. For some reason, procrastination just loves to rear its head when I am struggling with writer’s block. To keep me on track and battling writer’s block, I follow a writing schedule. Lastly, I have recently found the idea of writing for shorter blocks of time to be appealing. In the past, I believed I needed to write for long periods to get into a creative mind frame. By working in frequent, but shorter periods, I am able to maintain a lower stress level and stay in a creative mind frame longer.

What is your approach for breaking through a writer’s block?

This has bothered me for some time now. Being in the Information Technology sector, I am “supposed” to understand modern Internet and social-media technologies and their usefulness…I should “get it.” Like I said, I do understand the basic premise and application of services like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, digg, StumbleUpon, etc., but I have never been sure that I “get it”. It is somewhat funny where the epiphanies of life happen. While slowly driving down Interstate 5 on way home from the office, I regularly contemplate many things. It finally hit me; I already have my voice.

My struggle for understanding of the usefulness of many of these social-media applications is predicated on the fact that I have already found my “Internet voice.” While this blog is certainly no screaming success, it is my Internet voice. For me, these other social-media applications become noise and clutter. This is why I have been struggling with the “get it” factor of social-media applications. When a person can say or write what they want, whenever they want, then additional applications that allow them to do essentially the same thing present minimal value.

This realization actually made me a little giddy and has reopened up the world of social-media applications to me. I no longer feel stress or pressure in trying to understand how I should be using these platforms in my life. I can rest easy knowing that it is fine for me to experiment and understand these applications for what they are without feeling as if I need to bring them into my regular usage zone.

I know this is a strange post from me, but heck it is my blog, and it was an important realization for me.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of KPIs for individuals and departments. After all, “if you do not have a good baseline and understanding of basic performance metrics, you will not know when you are slipping into mediocrity or worse.” I received several e-mails asking what KPIs I would track in a small IT department. Since I received several requests, I thought I would do a short post on the topic.

In a small IT department, you do not want to burden the team with a bunch of new tracking activities. These should add a minimal amount of time to daily activities and take only a few hours a month to document in a report format.

Individual and/or Team KPIs

1. Average Technical Support Tickets Closed Per Day by Month
   Current Year Verses Prior Year
   This graph should show the average number for technical support tickets your team closed each business day by month. I would graph current year and prior year. You will need consistent rules about what is entered as a support ticket. If you do not have a technical support ticket tracking system, you can look at one of the open source solutions or use Outlook task folder in a common Exchange mailbox, folder, or public folder.
2. Total Closed Support Tickets Verses Helpdesk Hours
   Current Year Verses Prior Year
   If you outsource this function then this graph will be very insightful and valuable when it comes time for annual contract renewal. I also use it to help me manage the support hours by making sure that we maintain productivity standards and not just adding billable hours.
3. New Support Tickets Created or Open Support Tickets
   Current Year Verses Prior Year
   I like to track open technical support tickets over time. This helps to see the general open workload over time. If I see this number heading north then I know it is time to add team members providing that my average close rates are holding steady or increasing slightly.
4. Average Time to Close a Technical Support Ticket per Month
   Current Year Verses Prior Year
   I simply want to know how long on average it takes us to close new technical support tickets. This goes to my service level commitments to the users we support. Are we getting the job done timely? We have to know.

Systems KPIs

1. System Up-time Percent
   Rolling 12 months
   We have identified our core systems and targeted a 99.5 percent up-time. Any time one of these core systems is off-line unexpectedly the amount of time is logged. At the end of the month, we simply divide the total number of failed hours by the total number of operational hours in the month to see how we did.
2. Production Storage
   Rolling 24 months
   The goal here is to help justify the purchase of additional storage when needed. Being able to show how storage demand has increased over time enables me to more easily acquire the new assets when the time comes. Obviously, we have policies around data storage and purging, but the reality is that is never enough to keep data from eventually exceeding current capacity.
3. Production Load
   Rolling 12 months
   Here I would want to track the total number of users utilizing the server environment and the average peak CPU load. As the user base increases and becomes more demanding on the infrastructure, you should see the peak load on the servers steadily increase or hold higher levels for longer periods. Having this type of graph over time showing the increased pressure on the core server environment allows for easier acquisition of capital equipment. Be very particular on what servers you choose to track for this KPI.
4. Bandwidth utilization
   Rolling 12 months
   In the small environment, I have never been able to get close to capacity of a modern Ethernet network. Therefore, I am really tracking just Internet bandwidth. I use a utility like MRTG to log and generate the charts based on the information it gathers from our router.

This is not a comprehensive list of all possible KPIs for a small IT department to track. These KPIs should give a good insight into the operational efficiencies of the department while not being administratively burdensome. I would have no problem taking these KPIs along with a decently written 1 to 2 page monthly report and send them off to the CFO or CEO for review. I would also be sure to review this information on a monthly basis with my team and even post the charts in a common IT work area.

What are some of the KPIs that you track for your team or as an individual?

Verizon Wireless

I have been a longtime supporter of Verizon, and I use them as my preferred wireless carrier. However, I still feel they are wrong in this action. If Verizon Wireless wants to target hardware resellers then it certainly can charge a termination fee that is equal to the retail list price of the hardware device minus the amount paid at the start of the contact for all contracts canceled in the first six months. If the contract is canceled after the first six months, then the hardware cost should prorate to the end a life of the agreement. Alternatively, they can simply collect the hardware from the consumer and not charge any termination fee. This would give them additional hardware to certify and resell at a discount.

It certainly seems to me that Verizon Wireless is looking forward milking the consumer for more money and is using the hardware resellers as an excuse to do it. Maybe the model of subsidized hardware sales through wireless service contracts is fundamentally broken and the wireless carriers need to develop a different business model to meet the needs of their business and consumers. The wireless carriers need to stop punishing their customers and start delivering on quality service and treating the consumer with respect.

Legacy systems are the bane of most IT organizations. They handcuff us to the past and burden of our staff and budgets. The only problem is that we cannot ever seem to let them go. Do IT organizations suffer from some strange variant of the empty nest syndrome?

Let us face it, Windows 2000 is very old in the computer world. I know many of you still have an old Windows NT box still hanging around. It is not easy to get historic systems out of the production environment. After all, if it is not broken then why fix it. However, the modernization of legacy systems must be done before it creates a serious burden on the organization.

The mainline hardware manufacturers are not making the drivers for the older operating systems. We all have older systems operating just fine and meeting the needs of our users, but what happens when the hardware dies? I know some friends have purchased spare servers from eBay to self insure against hardware failures. This is not a good long-term solution. A self-supporting hardware depot may work for another year or two, but companies need to develop real plans for the regular upgrade or replacement of legacy systems. I would encourage my IT brethren to take an inventory of their systems and look at how they would complete a full hardware replacement if required.

I helped a friend complete a review a few months back, and we were both surprised that he had a single system that was not upgradable to Windows 2003 and had a peculiar hardware requirement. He went to eBay to make sure that he had parts for the next year, and is now making the case to management for a replacement platform.

Hardware changes but legacy systems rarely do. Make sure your assets are not hanging out to dry when that old system will not turn on one morning, and you have no plan.

Email as a medium of communication has leaped from purely business to a social communication vehicle. Corporations must deal with excessive amounts of spam, personal and business related e-mail that all directly impact employee productivity. A study found that ”nearly a quarter of all corporate e-mail is personal in nature“.

Frequently checking new email messages breaks concentration, changes focus, and elevate new e-mail messages to the highest priority task regardless of what is, or should be, the actual highest priority task. Under most circumstances email should be checked once an hour to once every other hour.  Making this change will have a huge impact in employee productivity.

Most people should not fear making this change. Email is a tool and should not become the master of employee days. Management should set an acceptable response or review time for email throughout the organization. If issues are critical in nature, then colleagues can contact one another by phone or in person.  For critical issues this would be the preferred communication method anyway.

A research study, “Case Study: evaluating the effect of email interruptions within the workplace“ authored by Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University found that 70% of arriving emails were reacted to within 6 seconds. Once the email was addressed, it took an average employee 64 seconds to resume working at the same rate they were before the interruption.

Think about how many messages are sent and received in a company each day. It would not be uncommon for the  multitude of managers, middle, and senior management to receive hundreds of messages each day. This can be a dramatic draw on managements time and attention.

If an employee has set up the email application to check for email every 5 minutes then it is possible, if (s)he is a heavy user of email, that there could be 96 interruptions in a normal 8-hour working day. However, if the email application was set up to check for email every 45 minutes then the number of possible interruptions is reduced to 11 per day.

Think of all the lost productivity with 96 interruptions in a day. Did all those interruptions warrant an immediate response? Were they the highest priority task that should have been addressed or did they reduce employee effectiveness? Changes in email habits are never easy in the age of instant response expectations, but setting a regular schedule of checking e-mail can increase employee productivity significantly. For a company wide change to be successful the full management team must be supportive of the new standard. If it is implemented correctly, the company should achieve higher levels of productivity and better communication between employees.

Noise to Signal Cartoon

I have yet to be impressed with any blog editing software that I used. Most blog editing or authoring applications do not see to offer much in the way of new or additional features that is not contained in the  default WordPress. However, my opinion may be changing now that I have been playing with Microsoft Live Writer. Microsoft Live Writer is not perfect, but in several ways Live Writer is better than the default WordPress post editor.

Live Writer connected fine to my self-hosted WordPress blog and downloaded my tags and categories. I edited  an old post as well as create a new post and page. I liked that I could save posts and pages as drafts both locally or directly to my blog to finish of with the WordPress editor. Live Writer supports scheduling posts for future publishing and posting live to the site. The built in spell check worked well and allowed me to add words to the dictionary. The post images were uploaded correctly to the server and Live Writer allowed me to change, and standardize, the size of my blog images. The application supports plug-ins to extend the functionality, and it appears to have a decent development following with over 100 plug-ins available for download.

I had some display problems with right justified images, but they posted correctly to my blog. This was my only gripe with the software so far and may have more to do with my theme than the application. That is saying something.

So far, so good on the basics.  Now for the more challenging features.

One of the challenges working with the default WordPress editor is html tables. You need to use  a plug-in or code tables by hand. Microsoft Live Writer makes working with tables a snap. You enter the number of rows and columns you wish in your table, and you are done. You can customize the table with boarders and spacing as you need from the table properties. For me, the easy of working with table is the single greatest advantage of the application and why I will be using it for a while.

Microsoft Live Writer will not make you a better writer, nor will it save huge amounts of time, unless you are working with tables, but it is a solid blog editor. It is feature rich and easy to use. Live Writer is an improvement over any default blog editor that I have ever used.

Do you have a great blog editing application that you use that I should check out?