Tech Op/Ed

The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks

j.ello — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:30:00 +0000

This article was published on ComputerWorld on September 8, 2009 - I can sum up every article, book and column written by notable management experts about managing IT in two sentences: "Geeks are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business-challenged, victim-prone, bullheaded and credit-whoring. To overcome these intractable behavioral [...]

Reddit Alien fun…

j.ello — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:32:00 +0000

For the non-Reddit folks out there, this pic http://imgur.com/UhZqz.jpg of the Reddit Alien was lovingly rendered by redditor "3danimator" (Iâ€™ll update when I find out the name/site). I had an hour to kill so I thought I’d have a little fun. Hereâ€™s a reddit alien autopsy; horrifying and adorable. Click for a (not much [...]

VirtualBox 3.0 Beta: Finally something exciting in desktop virtualization

j.ello — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:01:30 +0000

Sure, but can it run Excel? - The 3d animator in me appreciates big iron, massive compute clusters and grid computing. As my compatriots at Pixar and LucasFilm will attest, there is NEVER enough computing power for what we want to do. But my day job is to handle the computing needs of a [...]

Finding oneself, lost, in plain sight: Distress calls for satellite imagery

j.ello — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:10:47 +0000

News, Movies, and The Life Random – A little about how my brain works: I was watching the news, hearing about those football players lost at sea, and I saw how big and obvious the overturned boat looked from the video. Then I thought of the movie Cast Away, wondering just what I would do [...]

The real meaning of Comcast generosity

j.ello — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:15:38 +0000

In the old days - 10 years ago, I entered the "broadband" world as a DSL customer with GTE. I started at 768 kbit/s service, and it was about $35/mo. A lot has happened since then, GTE spat out Verizon, and eventually offered more speed for the same money. Cable modem service was pretty [...]

8 Things We Hate About IT Critics

j.ello — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:00:54 +0000

The last thing an opinions writer wants is to be discovered by their least “defendable” post. But sometimes a little unvarnished opinion leads to a moment of clarity that objectivity would otherwise muddle. Such a moment was provided to me a month ago when I was doing one of my (many) daily digg and reddit [...]

Two Weeks Touching It (The Sprint Touch)

j.ello — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:07:44 +0000

Six months ago I got a sneek peek at the iPhone. A beautiful piece of machinery lacking only in 3 critical places: It is a 21st century network device tied to a stone-age cellular network. Its on-screen keyboard is clumsy (though far better than others up to that point). It is a new OS and [...]

ID Theft, Good for Business

j.ello — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:48:11 +0000

On their web site, the FTC estimates that "as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year." There are 300 million people in the US… you can do the math. On average, they say, you will likely be impacted by identity crime several times during your life. In the IT world, we’ve [...]

The iPhone is Great! (For Everyone Else)

j.ello — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 02:26:42 +0000

Stephen Colbert may not be able to get his hand on an iPhone, but yours truly can. :) (Sorry Stephen, but you’re still our #1 American). I spent some hands-on time with the iPhone a couple days ago and came away with the same general impression that most have had up to this point, except [...]

Reddit sends more, Diggers read more.

j.ello — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:46:32 +0000

As any start-up blogger knows, no matter how great (or poor) your content is, getting people to read it is the big trick. Tech Op/Ed, for example, is here for general technology editorials, but I wanted to get some IT management topics off my chest first, and these articles appeal to a certain niche of [...]