2009 March « wendy gauntt’s tech zest

Archive for March, 2009

Geeks are no fools: techie pranks for everyone

Published March 31, 2009 Gadgets , Personal Leave a Comment
Tags: april fools, Gadgets, pranks, thinkgeek, tv-b-gone, annoyatron, phantom keystroker, airzooka, office dog

tv_b_gone Need a good April fools’ joke? Technology comes to the rescue once again…

“TV-B-Gone” has been around for a while, but it’s still a classic. Press the button and nearly any TV will turn itself off within a matter of seconds. shocking_pen Spouse won’t pay attention to you? TV-B-Gone. Sports bar getting too rowdy? TV-B-Gone. Any time you want a little peace and quiet, TV-B-Gone is there for you.

You can also try the “shocking pen” which is not a pen at all, it’s simply a pen-look-alike that shocks the unwitting victim when they hit the button at the top. Eeek!

For more stealth pranks, check out the “Annoy-a-tron 2.0,” which puts out your choice of annoying sounds. This tiny device can be hidden nearly anywhere and programmed to randomly emit beeps, buzzes, chirps, and more. Because of the random timing, it can be very hard to pinpoint the source of the noise, and the geeky folks at ThinkGeek assure us the noise truly lives up to its name.

phantom-keystroker This tiny little device looks like a regular flash drive, but it’s actually a “phantom keystroker” which will randomly move your mouse and type garbled phrases. For someone unaware of its presence, it will seem like the computer has gone crazy.

Lastly, who could pass up the “airzooka“? This baby blows a ball of air up to 30 feet. Really. Recommended applications for this device: ruffle a co-workers’ hair, blow papers off their desk, or startle the office dog.

Need more? Check out all the geekie toys at ThinkGeek. I always find things there I never knew I wanted.

Small business network support: the coming revolution

Published March 27, 2009 Computers , Servers Leave a Comment
Tags: amazon, cloud computing, data center as a service, Google, microsoft, network support, small business network, virtualization, vmware

In technology, you get used to constant change. Every year, month, week, day…new technology, new products, new ideas. Whatever. It’s the norm.

But in the last few years, my piece of this world – in particular, small business network support – has gone through radical changes. Anyone in our trade who’s doing things the same way they’ve always done them is missing out on huge opportunities to increase efficiency and provide more stable, reliable services for their clients.

Sorry to say, any of you business owners out there who are comfortable with the status quo are also missing out. You may want to ask your tech how he keeps current on industry trends.

We’re working hard to stay ahead of the curve, by investing in tools, training, and infrastructure. I’m part of an industry mastermind group with colleagues from all over the country, where we continually evaluate and share the latest best practices. As a result, we’re making the most of these opportunities, and our clients see the benefits. We receive alerts to problems so we can be proactive and prevent serious issues, we can handle about 90% of the work remotely, our tools allow us to make network-wide updates in a fraction of the time others can manage, we have sophisticated systems to track client history…I could go on but you get the idea.

It’s nothing compared to what’s coming.

Cloud computing, virtualization, data center as a service…these trends stand to revolutionize the industry even further, providing network infrastructure as a utility that’s paid for on a usage basis. In many cases this will eliminate the normal investments in hardware and software. The business ROI is enormous.

Whether it’s computing power, help desk support, application software, or storage space, major players in the industry want to bring you these services on a subscription basis. When I say major players, I’m talking about the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

We’re seeing these services hit the mainstream already, although it will be a gradual transition over the next few years. The way you handle technology in your business will change radically as we all move ahead with these new choices.

We’re already looking towards the future to see how we can better serve our clients. So here’s my question to you: are you already falling behind, or are you ready for the coming revolution?

Mobile broadband: the best thing since cell phones

Published March 24, 2009 Gadgets , Productivity , Smart Phones Leave a Comment
Tags: cellular bill, data card, microsoft, mobile broadband, sierra wireless, sprint, st louis business expo

sprint-sierra-usb598-modem A few of my friends have invested in data cards from the cell phone company, otherwise known as mobile broadband. For months, I’ve heard about how handy they are, and yet I resisted because I didn’t want to add another $60 to my monthly cellular bill.

Last week, at an all-day conference, a friend shared his wireless access so I could get work done even though I was away from the office. Finally all the comments got through. Days later I placed an order for the Sprint Sierra Wireless USB modem. We’ve had it less than a week and I already see the productivity boost.

At the St. Louis Business Expo, we were able to schedule tickets for clients who stopped by without having to invest in the expensive Internet services provided by the conference center. In my all-day partner meeting with Microsoft the next day, I was able to keep in touch with the office via email and instant messaging. That evening, at yet another vendor partner meeting, my senior tech kept tabs on a server migration that was currently in progress.

Best of all, since we’re set up with tools to take care of our clients remotely, the wireless card makes on-call support a lot less painful: during evenings and weekends whoever’s on call can easily address any client issues that may arise, wherever they may be.

Installation is a snap – plug it in and it installs itself. Click a button to connect. Speeds vary depending on your location – just like cell phone coverage – but so far we’ve seen pretty fast response, broadband speeds.

If you live out of a mobile office and your time is precious to you, this is a device you should definitely check out.

Three best resources for online images

Published March 13, 2009 General , Online Marketing , Productivity , Websites Leave a Comment
Tags: flickr, google images, graphics, images, istockphoto, photos

If you are working on a blog or a website, you may be in need of good-quality graphics to liven up long paragraphs of text.

Fortunately the Internet is full of great resources, and thanks to technology it’s all searchable.

Resource #1 is Google Images. Type in what you need, hit search, and then browse thousands of results. However, be cautious in reuse of these images, especially for commercial purposes. Most of these are likely to be copyrighted. If they were obtained from the stock photo vendors, like Corbis or Getty, they were purchased at no small cost. Likewise if your competitor paid for a photo shoot they probably would not approve of you “borrowing” what they spent good money on. However they can help you locate appropriate images, and in many cases you can ask and obtain permission to reuse.

Corbis and Getty aren’t the only sources for stock photography. Resource #2, istockphoto.com, is an excellent source for inexpensive stock photography. Small low-resolution images, appropriate for most web needs, cost little more than $1. Freelancers world-wide contribute their work so the selection is vast and the quality has improved dramatically over the last several years. Their images are royalty-free which means once you purchase it, you have rights to use it as you see fit.

The third resource is Flickr. Most people think of this site as an online shareable photo album. However, many choose to allow others to use their photos via the Creative Commons license. This reserves some rights but allows a wide variety of usages up to including commercial use and creation of derivative works.

Are you sure your backup is working?

Published March 10, 2009 Computers , Servers Leave a Comment
Tags: backup, backup logs, external hard drive nas, tapes

In this economy there’s a lot of uncertainty. Here’s one more thing to ponder: are you sure your network backup is working?

What’s really scary to me is how many people aren’t even bothering with backups, but I assume you’ve got that covered. Maybe you even get some sort of report each day that indicates success or failure. But have you ever tested the recovery process? Murphy’s Law is alive and well in the technology arena. I hesitate to assume anything when it comes to computers, especially when it comes to something so critical as a backup system.

One company we spoke with had “a bad feeling” about his backup. When we reviewed his systems we found his backup hadn’t run for well over four months.

Another company…the backup was working, somewhat. About half the backup jobs finished successfully. But occasionally there was a full week of failures. Imagine if they’d had a server outage during one of those periods.

And then this one horrific situation we ran into…someone had sold this poor business owner on outdated tape technology, and the recovery portion of the software was never installed. When their server crashed, between software issues and slow tape reads, recovery took nearly two weeks.

As bad as that was, the best proof of Murphy’s Law was a story another tech shared with me. This company had a very well-organized backup regimen. Tapes were stored in the basement on a dedicated shelf. Everything was well-labelled and happened exactly on schedule. The jobs ran smoothly. There was no reason to doubt that they had a solid process in place…or was there? Unfortunately, there was. Turns out that shelf backed up to the elevator. You may or may not know this: elevators generate a magnetic field, and magnetic fields erase tapes. Sadly they didn’t discover this problem until they tried to recover old data from a demagnetized tape.

May I suggest you test your backup today?