Software inventory is one of the most important steps in migrating desktops to Windows 7. This video — posted on ITexpertVoice.com — shows you the promise — and limitations — of Microsoft’s Software Inventory Analyzer.
http://itexpertvoice.com/ad/microsoft-software-inventory-analyzer-comes-up-short/
While Windows 7 has all the sexy TV commercials (who knew so many good looking people “invented” the new operating system?), Microsoft has been busy updating Windows Server, with the 2008 R2 version released last year and an upcoming SP1 planned for sometime in the next few months.While Windows 7 has all the sexy TV commercials (who knew so many good looking people “invented” the new operating system?), Microsoft has been busy updating Windows Server, with the 2008 R2 version released last year and an upcoming SP1 planned for sometime in the next few months.
You can read the entire article posted here on some of its latest networking features.
I have begun doing reviews once again for eWeek, and this is a link to both a series of screenshots and my written text on Hushmail for Business, a low-cost email and forms encryption product.
Ken Auletta writes in this week’s New Yorker about the complex world of eBooks, the iPad, and the relationship among authors, computer vendors, and book publishers.
He got me thinking of a radical plan to save my favorite bookstores around the world. To cut to the chase, here it is:
• Sell at these three digital book readers, such as iPad, Kindle, and Sony.
• Sell various add-ons to these readers, including covers, lights, skins, car power adapters and other stuff.
• Pre-load these devices with eBook “staff picks” and have the staff member show off their picks at various times of the week.
• Beef up store Web sites to sell this gear online as well.
I know, it is probably unworkable, but a bold plan. Indy booksellers are my trusted advisors to acquire new titles. I confess that I have gone into these stores looking for new books to read, and sometimes walked out having bought them on my iPhone at Amazon’s Kindle store. Shame on me! But if they adopt the Strom plan, they will bring me back in, and not just for the lattes that they don’t have.
Out of my five favorite booksellers’ (Dolphin Books in my former home town of Port Washington, NY, Left Bank Books here in St. Louis, Powell’s in Portland, Elliott Bay in Seattle, and City Lights in San Francisco), only Powell’s sells eBooks on their Web site. Dolphin doesn’t even have a Web site. None sell the hardware eReaders or any accessories. Admittedly, this isn’t a very scientific sample.
Yes, Barnes and Noble sells their Nook eReader, and Borders has the Sony eReader in their stores. They also sell overpriced coffees and baked goods too. Both chains have some in-store gimmicks to get you interested in buying some etitles, but they are about as impersonal as the rest of their miles of aisles. I want to go up to that multi-pierced bespectacled androgynous 20-something sales clerk that has plenty of ‘tude to tell me what I should be reading next. I want to hold the hardware in my hot little hands and get the contact rush that I have visiting that technologic temple, the Apple Store. I want to develop a relationship with my store, not just shop there for stuff. And I want them to start making some money so they will still be around in a few years, unlike record stores and encyclopedia salesmen and daily newspapers.
All five of my stores have sections in their stores where they display the titles that the staff recommends and typically a 3.x5 index card with a handwritten description of why this book made the cut. Let’s get better than that and use digital marketing techniques. Pre-load the eBooks themselves on the eReaders and let me take them home right then and there.
Sure, I know this is a pain. You need someone who is a refugee from the Apple Store, who has some software smarts, who can do the customer service kinda thing. And the wholesale margins on the hardware are slim. And you have to carry and stock and deal with returns on something that costs more than $35. But would you pay a small markup to get the units with, say, ten titles already to go? But think of the in-store debates about which device is going to be better for your situation. Yes, you can go into Best Buy and look at several different units, but do you really trust their salesperson to sell you anything other than a TV? (And that might be a stretch too, come to think of it.)
It is ironic that the three biggest vendors in the eBook space (Google, Amazon and Apple) are all organizations that are difficult to nearly impenetrable for authors and the general public, late night personal emails from Steve Jobs notwithstanding. It is time for some brave eBook VAR to package my plan for the indy booksellers and dominate this market niche.
(In interests of full disclosure, I have written three books, two published. None have made back their advances. Were I to write another book, I would do it as a self-published eBook first.)
My column on Google v. China (here) stimulated an interview with John Jainschigg of IBM’s SmarterTechnology.com site that was held in Second Life. It has been a while since I have been “in world” as they say, and I found the mechanics of getting a lecture setup as inscrutable as ever. John and had an hour-long chat about the ways that Google has gotten into this mess, how far behind the US is in terms of cyber defenses, and other topics that I covered in my blog post.
While Windows 7 is getting all the attention, especially here at ITExpertVoice, Microsoft has a few other irons in the fire and has been hard at work updating its rather extensive server line. Some of new technologies in its latest desktop are slowly finding their way into its Windows Servers series of products. Let’s give you a roadmap to understand what is new in the server side of things and how they all fit together and make use of Windows 7.
Microsoft provides five dizzying ways that you can take a closer look at their servers. Many of these products have free trial versions that you can download, some for 30 or 120 or even 180 days before you have to purchase a real license. Others are set up on Microsoft-hosted sites that you can experiment with using just your Web browser to try them out. And some even have Virtual Hard Disk images (VHDs) that you can download and then run on a HyperV server to set up your own test network of virtual machines. There are also a series of “Virtual Labs” where you can watch videos and be guided through the product here on MSDN. There is no membership required, but you will need IE and XP to run the lab software. Finally, Microsoft is also beginning to make Amazon Machine Images available on Amazon’s cloud-based services so you can set up your own test networks there.
I was talking to Paul and Dana Gillin about their new book, called the Joy of Geocaching. I would urge you to buy this book, even if you aren’t interested in the sport. You’ll see why in a moment.
Today’s column isn’t about finding small objects hidden in plain sight across the landscape. (It is actually more interesting than I make it sound.) It is about how online relationships can fuel and shape how we interact with our colleagues in the real world. You know, that environment that exists outside our desktops?
Our newspapers and Web sites are filled with stories about how the nature of friendship has become devalued as we go about connecting on MyLinkFaceSpace et al. But what few have covered is how the online world creates new kinds of communities, and builds trusted relationships that carry on in the real world of face-to-face interaction. And that is where the Gillins’ book comes into play. In it, they tell stories of geocachers and how they have come to enjoy finding and hiding these objects.
There is one story of a woman who travelled to Toronto on a business trip with several colleagues. She left them at the airport, and was picked up by a stranger – with the only thing in common being that both were cachers. How many of us would climb into a car in another country with nothing more than exchanging a few emails? That involves a certain level of trust and comfort that just doesn’t happen in the real world.
Other examples are people that use the Meetup.com site to find people of similar circumstances. And of course there are the online dating sites, too. Crowdsourcing is another. I am sure you could think of other examples.
This use of online connections to prime the pump for a face-to-face meeting happens more and more frequently because we are doing more than just sending emails, or friend requests, or linking to others via online sites. We are sharing a common bond, a series of interests. We are building an authoritative source of content, context and identity. And along the way, we start shaping these micro-communities one person at a time.
Yes, there are people who pride themselves on having thousands of “friends” or who can connect with celebs and CEOs alike. But that isn’t what today’s Internets are all about.
Yes, it takes a village. But increasingly, our villages are formed online and with hyper-specific interests – not just because we share a common street block or elementary school classroom of our children. This is nothing new. The early bulletin board systems were great at this. But what is new is the potency of these relationships, and how quickly they can come to fruition.
Sure, I belong to lots of different communities, some based here in St. Louis, some that include people from all over the world. And my biggest community is you, the Web Informant reader. Or I hope so. Do share some of your own online/offline relationship stories with my readers on strominator.com if you feel so inclined.
Self (and other) promos dep’t
If you want to buy Paul and Dana’s book, click here.
I will be on the Tim Taylor Digital Nation radio show this Saturday at 1pm Central, talking about Windows 7 migration tools and methods. This uses some of the research for articles and screencast videos that I have done for the Dell-sponsored site ITexpertVoice.com. If you are interested in having me come speak at your next group meeting about this topic, email me.
Finally, if you are going to be in St. Louis next Tuesday, do stop by and say hello at the Gateway to Innovation Conference at the Chase Park Plaza. While I won’t be speaking, I do think the conference organizers have put together a great program.
Microsoft has some new additions to its Windows 2008 Server line, but sadly it needs to have a better naming convention to make it easier to keep track. If you haven’t looked at this operating system since it was introduced in February 2008, now is the time to get closer and try it out.
This article in ITworld reviews the latest R2 SP1 version of Windows Server 2008 as well as previous versions, and what is new and notable.
In these tight economic times, businesses need all the help they can get to cut overhead and improve processes. There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of business process improvement (BPI) software vendors, but knowing where to get started is difficult, and implementing the technology can be expensive.
You can read my story for this month’s Baseline magazine, Getting Started with Business Process Improvement, here.
You would think I would be all over Geocaching – the hobby that involves searching for hidden treasure caches around the world by using a combination of your own wits, a portable GPS receiver, and a lot of persistence. It involves solving puzzles and rather obscure clues to find the caches, check. And hiking in the great outdoors, check. It has a Web 2.0 component, with the site geocaching.com that keeps track of caches and finds, check.
But for some reason geocaching has passed me by. Maybe it is because I just spend too much time doing geeky things already. Don’t really know, but if you are game to try it and don’t know where or how to start, then you want to read this book called The Joy of Geocahing Paul and Dana Gillin.
Paul is my podcasting partner behind the MediaBlather.com series that we have done over the past several years on various social media and public relations-related topics. The couple have been caching for several years, including on their honeymoon in France. They relate some wonderful case histories of power cachers (people that try to find dozens or hundreds of caches in a given period), tools, tips, techniques and jargon to get even the greenest cacher started in this hobby. For example, a “nano” cache is one so small that it can be hidden anywhere, while FTF means “first to find” a particular cache once it is hidden. The chance to be the first to find one is motivation in and of itself for many cachers. Then there are the obstacles, such as weather-related accidents or “Muggles” who are ordinary humans that disturb caches or question why someone would be rooting around in the woods looking for an ammo box that has a logbook and a bunch of plastic toys inside.
Maybe it is for the same reasons that I didn’t last long with the post-Myst follow-on computer games: it just seemed like too much work. But there are millions of cachers out there, discovering new finds. This book accomplishes both being a how-to and also a travelogue of sorts. If the idea is appealing, buy the book and give it a whirl. There are lots of caches nearby — a quick look at my own zip code in St. Louis found close to a thousand of them.
You can also listen to a podcast that the Gillins and I did for MediaBlather.