The storage space comprised of NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices is an interesting one. It appears to be growing in multiple ways – companies are downsizing away from the server they didn’t need, gamers are looking for that home data store, and businesses are increasingly using them for backup applications. I’ve seen great many of these devices, and today I was able to look at the Drobo FS, a five drive NAS device with one and two drive failover capabilities aimed at users and small businesses.
Some people think Microsoft releases so many products that when the information about them is needed, it’s impossible to find it. I tend to agree with that assessment, and finding information about the server product named Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 is a perfect example of this problem Microsoft has with releasing so many product versions and communicating little about them. So, let’s take a look at this and see what’s out there.
In a recent event, Rogers and CIBC have jointly announced (read the release here) a mobile payment solution based on NFC (Near Field Communications). This announcement is apparently a first in Canada (contact-less payments are already possible by way of other solutions – but generally not with smartphones).
I run a small business. I handle customer service and I’m also a customer to other businesses. Often, the phrase “The customer is always right” is mentioned in passing or sort of in jest when someone talks of a customer/business disagreement. There is actually a history to this phrase that dates back to the early 20th century. But I wanted to talk about whether, as a consultant and a business owner, is it really true that the customer is always right?
To many, electronic mail seems to be the last thing they look forward to. In a typical day, I might see and hear so many people gripe about email that it starts getting to me too. There are “email zero” movements and people that help you manage email clutter – but what’s wrong with this picture? Email has to be one of the most perfect forms of communication we have. Proof of that is on it’s enduring longevity, but also in the many ways we use it today.
You could use Bitlocker on Windows, or you could use an incredibly useful and versatile open source tool called TrueCrypt. Over the course of this article, I’ll show you why you’ll be telling others that TrueCrypt is a CWL best utility.
With what I do, you’d really think I would love trade shows. As an IT Consultant and a writer, you might imagine the trade show is like the “perfect storm” for a guy like me. Well, it’s actually the opposite. I’m somehow endlessly bothered by trade shows and fairs. In fact, I find trade shows to be a mind numbing process of marketing, sales tactics and walking in circles. I’m not one to be overly negative about things, and I really don’t want this to be like that – but if you’ll indulge me, I can show you why these events an really suck.
I wanted that sleek, thin, light, fast (?) machine in my hands for use as a daily device over all these other clunky laptops I’ve had to use in the past. Thanks to the wonders of patience, I found a Macbook Air (original model) that I could use on a daily basis.
It’s here! Today I received the wonderful gift of a brand new GLIF+ from Studio Neat. Being in Canada, I wasn’t sure how well this order would go – but, I’m happy to say it was just as simple as paying for it online and waiting for the US Postal Service shipped package to arrive. As advertised, the hard-to-spell GLIF+ comes with the actual mount, a stabilizer bar for more rough use, a ligature for using it in a key chain and a box that can double as a tripod on it’s own. Excited to use this with my iPhone 4S, I went out and picked up a tripod and started to test it out.
One of the difficulties with great new features is when other features don’t get updated or created to accommodate the new usefulness. In Blogger you have the ability to “Schedule” a blog post. This is not the newest feature, but new enough that other features are downright missing. One of the features they should have included, was a way to determine the URL (Universal Resource Locator or the full link to your article) of a scheduled post before it’s posted.