April 2008 - Posts
As a Tablet PC user with Vista Business, I am stoked about this!!!
http://research.microsoft.com/InkSeine/
I came across InkSeine through the Channel 10 Podcast on my Zune. Check out InkSeine if you are a TabletPC user. I just loaded it up, and it's great!!!
From: https://www.microsoftincentives.com/
Free copy of automatic network mapping plug-in for Microsoft Visio 2007 for all Visio 2007 customers. Plug-in retails for $499, but is free until June 30, 2008.
Building the right technology foundation is easier with the right IT partner. At Level 2 Technology Consulting, LLC, we specialize in solutions that help you safeguard your data, collaborate using shared information, and work productively wherever you are.
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http://www.vladville.com/2008/04/i-earned-my-mvp-wings-today.html
Vlad touched on it in his usual frank manner, but I too have watched it happening for a while now. A shift is starting back to Information Systems or IS from Information Technology, IT. Somewhere around the late '90s people stopped referring to the computer guys who sat in the basement of the corporation and ran the stuff nobody else knew how to run as IS and started calling them IT. It is far more than a shift in nomenclature, it really captures what happened. Companies and people stopped thinking about information systems and started concentrating on technology, a subtle but important distinction. I fed on it and made lots of money in the process.
I do see the shift back from technology for technologies sake back to systems that align processes and data with business goals or objectives. And isn't that what MIS was doing, back in the day?
Add it to your iTunes here…
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=278752099
I tried searching for it, but it's not in the search index yet…should be soon though!!!
Google is really pushing cloud computing and good for them, but it looks to me that the idea of SAS is not yet ready for prime time…I saw this thread from another blog and had to keep it going…
http://groups.google.com/group/hosted-the-basics/browse_thread/thread/1f2efbc075a69e08
The long and the short of it is, that something happened to Gmail's IMAP functionality that crippled many many users. And while the core of the whole solution may not have been affected, it does point out that even a standard, almost utility, feature at one of the more widely respected internet services providers is not yet ready for primetime. I will not go on too much about Google or Gmail, I am keenly interested in it and its success. I am curious exactly how they or other SAS providers support their end users. Given that email is soooooo business critical, one might think there is a way to generate support issues personally or even corporately… Some users and VAR types were really in a lurch…
Finally it was fixed. By most standards the outage was not that severe, and probably falls within whatever SLA Google provides. It does illustrate (37 postings in roughly an hour) that there are companies out there that are highly dependent on this and other SAS providers, and they are at the mercy of someone else. They do not control the situation and can only trust that the Service Provider has their best interests in mind at any given time. How many technology companies have come and gone through the years, especially during the dot com era that folded under the weight of the internet? Too many! I am sure this will be chalked up to growing pains and normalcy, after all, who has not experienced down service situations in their corporate networks? The difference is that now, companies, businesses not just individuals are entrusting others, outside their control, with the control of possibly their single most mission critical application or service.
Next time you think about how cheap Google apps is, consider the hidden costs or actually the Total Cost of Ownership or Total Investment. I make the same ask of companies who consider any technology. What is hidden here is the lost productivity and more importantly the appearance of lost availability to what seems to be EVERY GOOGLE APPS IMAP USER. They had no notice before it happened and no publication of the outage, so far as I could find, during the outage.
We have recently switched to audioacrobat.com for creating, publishing and hosting our Podcasts…So please update your feeds accordingly…
I have submitted the url to both iTunes and Zune Marketplace and should be available through those services soon.
For now though the podcast url is:
http://wattersbill72.audioacrobat.com/rss/l2tcpodcaster.xml
You can add that to whatever you are consuming podcasts on and it will download posthaste!!!