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This can’t be fun for Border Express and it would not be fun for our clients either. Makes me think twice about selling third party services to clients because of the trust loop and possible risks. This isn’t a Seek is bad thing it is a we are responsible thing. Sorry if it just sounds like more anti-service provider talk. I am aware we could be hacked in a similar way so we need to look more deeply at our Patching and Security processes and stay up to date as always. The register had a link to a...
I blogged a while back about how Some social media Facebook in particular are helping me engage in a way that I hadn’t expected. But I do have difficulty staying with the plan or regularly checking the site, (sorry I missed the Mikey notice, congrats Mark, Alex and Ethan) imagine my surprise when I saw Fishbowl a Facebook client built in Silverlight that lets me see things in a nicer way even attribute an interest level to people in my network. Suppose Wayne goes on a wild self promotion kick and...
A small part of my job is not to be so much well read but certainly widely read. Some times in RSS feeds I get there are some interesting titles come up and the one from techtarget.com was interesting as the guys in SMBiT Professionals Sydney are holding a Virtualization day today, and I’m fairly sure they might cover backup. Anyway the article by Eric Beehler made me think about how we do backup virtualised workloads for our SMB clients so I’ll explore that more deeply. Avoid the big mistakes when...
I’m reading the Technical Overview of Direct Access and wondering about what we do now and how this changes in Windows 7, using Direct Access. I think Direct Access has some legs but I want to look at the technology through the eyes of a highly sceptical critic the paper can be downloaded here. Technical Overview of DirectAccess in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Brief Description Covers the functional and architectural aspects of DirectAccess, a technology introduced in Windows 7 and Windows...
OK my wife Elizabeth has started a blog and has jumped right in with National Blog Posting Month Welcome to National Blog Posting Month! National Blog Posting Month is the epicenter of daily blogging! People who want to set the habit of blogging by doing it every day for a month, including weekends, can come here for moral support, inspiration, and the camaraderie that only marathon blogging can provide. Visit NaBloPoMo So in support and wanting to form a new habit I’m going to give it a go too,...
Funny that we have been discussing RFC 1149 quite a bit and particularly how use of RFC 2549 might in fact assist with some of our regional remote access projects. A pigeon has transferred 700MB at a faster rate than Telstra ADSL. A pigeon has transferred a 700 megabyte file faster than a car or a Telstra ADSL internet connection in rural Australia. The bizarre experiment, conducted in rural New South Wales, was prompted by a comment by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Parliament last week whilst attacking...
Wow so glad I saw this today not because of all the sites I may have kicking around GeoCities although there may well be quite a number but more because something we have pointed a number of people to over the years could well be gone with it. You see my son is a diagnosed Aspie and if you ran the list he probably has nothing on me :). So rather than risk the page being deleted with the other 10 TB of data I have copied the text here of course if oddizm has an issue with this then I’ll delete the...
I’ve said some dumb things in my life and sometimes even to the media, so with some trepidation about saying things I might regret, I was chatting with Sholto Macpherson Editor of CRN Magazine at ExpoTech in Canberra. A day or so later I asked him for some advice about the media, I posed some questions and he graciously agreed to let me blog it. Here is the whole transcript of the media relations topic… Good to talk with you on Wednesday, this can either be an idea for you to write or also happy...
Ouch One thing that is meant to secure systems disables another, sure this has happened before with other products, but does this point to the need for more monitoring? In this case I would think most folk would have set the email alerting to report failures, catch is that if the application is not running then no email generation, do we really need to report success or perhaps monitor the status of services we rely on with other management tools. None of my clients use McAfee but I'm now thinking...
OK just looked on Connect and I can’t find a way to get on this Beta so it would seem to be for TAP customers only which is what they said in MCPMag Microsoft will release the second service pack for Vista "to a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers" today. SP2 for Vista is being made available to selected testers for beta evaluation on Wednesday, according to Microsoft's Mike Nash, corporate vice president, Windows Product Management, in a statement released last week...
Robbie Upcroft has posted a bit about the keynote speaker for the SMB Servers Pre-Day @ TechEd Australia this year. Meet Lingan Satkunanathan, our keynote speaker for the TechEd 2008 SMB Servers pre-day on Tuesday, September 2nd. Lingan is the Senior Program Manager for Essential Business Server 2008 meaning he knows the thing inside out, backwards, upside down & every which way. Before working on EBS, he was Program Manager for SBS & so rest assured that we're flying in a big-gun...
A little while ago I was talking about "Community Content" and the fears some community members may have when they create that content, will the content they create cost them consulting engagements? Today on one of the lists there was some discussion about a product to solve a problem I think it was a third party POP Connector for use with SBS 2003, and the guy looking for the solution reported back with… I elected to go with … because, well, they had a nice little presentation on their...
Since I have been making the trip up to the SMBIT Professionals Sydney (where I have just been elected to the committee, yes be very afraid!!) monthly meetings I have a revitalised interest in the “Energy Drink” market particularly on the return leg home. I used to be a big fan of V Berry flavour but yesterday found it to be harder to find as they seem to be phasing in the Lemon version, not good if you ask me. Having said that it is still WAY Better than the original Mother (the one in the glass...
After some time wondering if Project Thieving Weasel would get legs I am happy to announce that this morning, I have signed up to SMB Buddy . So I could rabbit on about what SMB Buddy is and not tell you anything that you will find useful or I could just let you see what the site says: About SMB Buddy SMB Buddy is networking site dedicated to connecting SMB technology partners. In a nutshell, it is a web site that helps consolidate information and resources from all over the web with SMB technology...
I often get asked about training my competition or letting out the secret sauce formula. I really think this is a BIG fear especially for guys who are coming from Integrators and Consulting firms who service the enterprise. Some of it also comes from the misconception that they have some secret sauce in the first place. I thought big companies had great methodologies, standardisation, project management, risk mitigation you name it they had it, I thought they made money by reducing variation and...
I've been holding this one for a little while so I could be clear of Alex's wrath before getting this one out there. While at the Sydney SMB IT Pro Group earlier in the month the guys from Bright Point demo'd some HTC Phones, and it got some of us to talking about what makes a phone cool: Naturally running Windows Mobile because all SBSers get the full integration out of the box with SBS 2003 R2 and soon SBS 2008; Boys might like a big enough screen to remote a server and reboot it; Nerd...
Well I have had some great things to say about Phil Patelis (in the foreground) from XCentral of late, particularly where it comes to his business acumen. I caught up with the guys at CeBIT, and I bet Phil has been dreading this ever since. Just before I took this picture Phil was looking at the 3D Monitor at the Altech Stand, but he was squinting, moving his head and looking generally confused. Meanwhile 4 of us are screaming across the show floor "Put the glasses on". So Business - Tick...
I have been to a few meetings of late where someone has invoked Chatham House Rule and there were blank stares around the table so here is an explaination of the rule. I have essentially said that the [ANZ-SMB-ITS] group could run under the same kind of basis if it helps with openness. Chatham House Rule The Chatham House Rule reads as follows: "When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity...
Today I came along to the Dell Future of Computing day in Canberra. The big takeaway today so far is around green computing. The session I am in right now is Virtualisation and being delivered by David Allinson from VMware which will be great from a catching up perspective. From a learning things standpoint there is a cool set of integrations between Openmanage and V3i which does nice fault automation. This is starting to look like the rationalised level of Core IO. So this far, value is provided...
Earlier today I wrote .... So today I feel like a bit of a Partner Group Fan-boy but I am hoping to eradicate any negativity this year and this really has helped with the positivity today. So how am I going to eradicate negativity?? With one of these Bracelets!! OK more explanation required. I was told by someone who's opinion I respect that I can always be relied on to be negative. Bloody Hell what the ...... So I filed that away as an unthinking comment and to not get too negative about it...
This afternoon we went out for some frozen custard at GOODBERRY'S now this is a great store and has been around for quite some time, and as far as a treat for the kids pretty damn good. Today I noticed an "all about GoodBerry's" sign, I only took a picture of part of it. I'm sure you will get the message. I wonder at what percentage 100% air in Ice cream allows us to just call it air, Hmmmmm?? Of course it got me thinking about what we say about our competition to make our products...
So on Partner TV tonight I saw an interview with Wendy Smith conducted by Ryan Spillane from Correct Solutions and Alexandra Day (Giles) from Phrixus about Small Business; Ryan and Alex seem to be doing great things to raise the profile of their companies AND the SBS Community in Sydney. I think they are leading the way for many smallish companies in Sydney and Australia Wide. Video: Partner-TV: Wendy Smith talking about Small Business I thought the Interview was a great little fireside chat and...
So on my way back from the Trend Micro / SBSFAQ Security Summit, I started to think about secure authentication to not just mine but my customers networks. I thought about password change frequency and complexity issues and how I might ensure a suitable compromise for the level of risk. Now many of my customers have their own accounts but set to the same password, and some all use one account because they used it that way when they were peer to peer and when the risk is explained they don't feel...
With some of the traffic I have seen on some of the Email Groups I get these days, some of us just need to take a breath before sending, but sometimes the urge to push send is so strong. So to save embarrassment and eating of Pies so Humble, how about creating a rule which enforces a 30 minute send delay? The one I describe here does it for all messages but you can set rules for only some recipients or lists. Go to Tools, and ‘Rules and Alerts', and a little window will open. Here's where...
So I was surfing around the net and found this, now just looking at me says I luurve the fried chicken but that is not what made me think long and hard about where we have gotten to. You need to SMS a number to get a coupon back, now 0415coupon has your mobile number and your permission to send you stuff via SMS. So KFC gets a new customer for a twister and maybe 0415coupon gets access to opted in Mobile numbers I don't know. Now look at the fine print you agree that you don't have an unsubscribe...
This guy says he is only afraid of three things Electricity, Heights and Women This is his job http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tzga6qAaBA Then after work he goes home to his wife
Everyone knows how I love companies bringing events to Canberra - NO I don't go to them all but really feel that vendors who are not solely focused on numbers but being a little community focused should be supported so go along if you can. Join international SQL Server expert Kevin Kline for an informative no-cost seminar on SQL Server. Kevin is the! Technical Strategy Manager for SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software and the President of the International Professional Association for SQL Server...
Some times I feel sorry for Vlad only from the perspective of the amount of pressure he must get from people wanting him to attend, support, whatever... events that others consider his duty as a community leader. Oh the joy of being an SMB Rockstar. Today he blogged further about the SMB Nation Conference and how better spent some peoples resources could be. I am not paid off to tell you to give my friends money after they screwed you, I do not have an alterior motive, I do not have a competing event...
Hmmm I must be strange, I'm hearing folk say they use Blogging as Profile, resume. Profit, connection to Influencers in web 2.0 Seams I soap box about what burns me at the time or ways to quickly Document things as I go but too many times I become the angry Dude then the appologetic Dude. I might Need to refocus. How do I keep a blog with all content? Great session to make me think didn't expect to be provoked more internally Worth my time you bet.
So the top 5 are Microsoft Products and the IPoo'd, but more interesting to me is that of the top ten most influential technologies three of them are devices and mobile devices at that. BlackBerry, Palm Pilot and iPod. I wonder if my UMPC will be as revolutionary as I think, it is starting to change how I do things already and it is only day 3 for me. "Microsofts Internet Explorer , the most widely used Web browser on the market, is the most influential technology product of the past 25...