A couple of weeks ago I reviewed WhatsUp Gold and liked what I found. Of course the topic of network management tools is one that is close to the heart of every network manager so a flurry of letters followed.
Every now and then you come across a product that is, what's the word I'm looking for, compelling? intriguing? Way cool? Today's topic is a product that is all of those things. It is the US$99.95 Eye-Fi Secure Digital (SD) memory card for your camera that has built-in wireless networking. Once configured, the card will log on to your Wi-Fi network and automatically upload images to one of a number of popular photo management tools or storage services such as Flickr and Picasa.
I have had endless discussions with all sorts of non-IT people about how to build their Web sites and it almost always ends with them giving up. The problem is that there are so many parts to building even a basic site, and what most of them want is the all singing, all dancing Web site with every advanced feature included and zero management overhead.
Last week I started to enumerate my phone numbers and I wound up discussing Google's GrandCentral telephony service with considerable enthusiasm. While some people, such as reader and fellow Twitterer Allen Clarkson, are big fans, not everyone is quite as enthusiastic.
In the IT world it is amazing how often you'll be presented with an idea that sounds good, seems reasonable and appears to fix a problem but in reality is a bad idea. I say this because a proposal that sounds good is being developed to address the "problem" of online music piracy, and not only is the idea bad for consumers, it also could be particularly problematic for enterprise networks.
Over the past 100 years I've been writing this column, readers have sent me several irate letters because they were enraged that I would dare to bring politics into a technically oriented publication. For those of you who feel this way, you might want to stop reading now.
Over the last few months it has become clear that you readers really don't like Microsoft Vista much. I have yet to get feedback from a reader along the lines of, "All my prayers have been answered." I haven't even received a comment like "it's not that bad." If your collective response to Vista has been unenthusiastic to date then I'm guessing it is not going to be getting better any time soon.
This week I was going to continue with my discussion of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 but, as is so often the case, I got distracted by another problem.
The Internet is just shy of its 20th commercial birthday. Given that, and the fact that the Internet is based on technologies that are open, well-documented, and well-understood, you'd think that all serious enterprises that connect their e-mail systems to the Internet would be capable of ensuring their security and protecting their assets.
Intellectual property, or IP, in the form of patents is, in theory, how we reward those who break new ground, explore strange new technologies, geek out new algorithms and new gadgets, and boldly go where no techie has gone before. In practice, the whole field of IP has become a complete mess with patents being awarded for things that no sane person would call "novel" -- once a key requirement for patentability.
The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines slavery as "submission to a dominating influence," while Wikipedia notes that "slaves -- are ... compelled to perform labour or services." I mention these definitions because I believe we have become enslaved by badly designed Web-based user interfaces.
Last week in I began to relate my quest for an online e-commerce solution, a saga that makes "War and Peace" seem short and pithy.
My wife and some friends have started an apparel business and, of course, I got roped in as cheap labor to do the IT stuff. I've discussed in this column some of the adventures my involvement has occasioned, but none have been so frustrating, so laborious and so labyrinthine as trying to get a Web-based shopping cart running.
Somewhere at the beginning of the 2nd century the poet Juvenal posed the question, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", which is Latin for "Who will watch the watchers?" Juvenal was actually riffing on Plato's "Republic" and with a good reason: The question was, and still is, profound because it concerns a basic problem with the machineries of government and governance and, by extension, applies to any authority that has little or no oversight.
Try resting merry IT men