For those of you who refuse to do Facebook, here you go!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Blogcast Update
This week was packed full of news, but it is easy to miss, so I will share some highlights.
Probably the biggest news of the week was Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, turning in his resignation, but remaining as chariman of the board. He stated that he would be the first to say when he was no longer fit to fulfill his duties, and that time is now. He recently was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, but it turned out they were able to operate and he is doing well today. Apple was reported as the most valuable business in the US sitting on $75 billion in the bank! Their stocks did slide 4-5% on news of Jobs' resignation however. I was sent a pretty inspiring speech that he gave at a Stanford commencement, you can read that here.
Wallstreet is quite a rollercoaster these days! I am not a doomest, but I still expect to see a recession as bad as 2008 in the near future. It is funny how emotional the DOW is, all you have to do is whisper and it may rise or fall. This week saw a big gain just on a rumor that Bernanke of the Federal Reserve was going to save the day again with a stimulus and start pumping out more money. Then of course we had a big drop the next day when nothing happened. After a steady increase all month in the price of gold, it actually took a big fall this week. It is still expected to possibly hit highs of $2500-$3000 in the coming years.
On another note, I believe it was Bachmann (presidential candidate) who challenged billionaire Warren Buffet to put his money where his mouth was and help pay off some of the growing deficit. While he didn't exactly do that, he did make a very interesting move. He dumped $5 billion into Bank of America, the largest financial institution in America who has seen stocks dive 30% just in August! Of course, he is a billionaire for a reason. He bought when stocks dove, and the next day he had already made around $1.5 billion of his money back - so I hear.
Obama has some rich friends, including Warren Buffet, to help get him through a tough compaign trail. He has lost a lot of support however with the failing economy. He continues to point the finger at bad politics in the Senate, and I don't totally disagree, but that is just part of the problems. There are some interesting candidates running for president on the GOP side, and everyone is still waiting to hear if Palin will decide to jump in the race.
The East is getting pounded, first by a big earth quake, now Hurricane Irene is about to land on the coast.
Russia had a rocket blow up over Siberia on its way to the space station earlier this week. It has been a very bad week for sure!
On the technology side - facebook has just hit 1 trillion page views! And Blogger, which I am currently using to write this post, has been listed in the top 7 sites to become like a ghost town. In fact, to get anyone to read this, I will have to first link it on Facebook! :) Everyone seems to prefer a short post on Twitter and Facebook these days. And who does MySpace anymore?
I thought this was pretty fitting for this week's news:
The Weather Channel says yesterdays east coast earthquake was caused by an unknown fault line running under D.C. and through Virginia. It is now being called Obama's Fault, though Obama will say it's really Bush's Fault. Another theory is that it was the founding fathers rolling over in their graves, but I believe what we all thought was an earthquake was actually the effects of a 14.6 trillion dollar check bouncing in Washington.
Wacky Newsflash:
Qaddafi seems to have a crush on Condoleeza Rice! Rebels found a photo album in his compound. He stated his love for her back in 2007. Ok, so now this is starting to sound more like Entertainment Tonight or something (is that still a show?). This post has gone downhill, I think I will retire!
That is the latest update on my blogcast, more to come!
Probably the biggest news of the week was Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, turning in his resignation, but remaining as chariman of the board. He stated that he would be the first to say when he was no longer fit to fulfill his duties, and that time is now. He recently was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, but it turned out they were able to operate and he is doing well today. Apple was reported as the most valuable business in the US sitting on $75 billion in the bank! Their stocks did slide 4-5% on news of Jobs' resignation however. I was sent a pretty inspiring speech that he gave at a Stanford commencement, you can read that here.
Wallstreet is quite a rollercoaster these days! I am not a doomest, but I still expect to see a recession as bad as 2008 in the near future. It is funny how emotional the DOW is, all you have to do is whisper and it may rise or fall. This week saw a big gain just on a rumor that Bernanke of the Federal Reserve was going to save the day again with a stimulus and start pumping out more money. Then of course we had a big drop the next day when nothing happened. After a steady increase all month in the price of gold, it actually took a big fall this week. It is still expected to possibly hit highs of $2500-$3000 in the coming years.
On another note, I believe it was Bachmann (presidential candidate) who challenged billionaire Warren Buffet to put his money where his mouth was and help pay off some of the growing deficit. While he didn't exactly do that, he did make a very interesting move. He dumped $5 billion into Bank of America, the largest financial institution in America who has seen stocks dive 30% just in August! Of course, he is a billionaire for a reason. He bought when stocks dove, and the next day he had already made around $1.5 billion of his money back - so I hear.
Obama has some rich friends, including Warren Buffet, to help get him through a tough compaign trail. He has lost a lot of support however with the failing economy. He continues to point the finger at bad politics in the Senate, and I don't totally disagree, but that is just part of the problems. There are some interesting candidates running for president on the GOP side, and everyone is still waiting to hear if Palin will decide to jump in the race.
The East is getting pounded, first by a big earth quake, now Hurricane Irene is about to land on the coast.
Russia had a rocket blow up over Siberia on its way to the space station earlier this week. It has been a very bad week for sure!
On the technology side - facebook has just hit 1 trillion page views! And Blogger, which I am currently using to write this post, has been listed in the top 7 sites to become like a ghost town. In fact, to get anyone to read this, I will have to first link it on Facebook! :) Everyone seems to prefer a short post on Twitter and Facebook these days. And who does MySpace anymore?
I thought this was pretty fitting for this week's news:
The Weather Channel says yesterdays east coast earthquake was caused by an unknown fault line running under D.C. and through Virginia. It is now being called Obama's Fault, though Obama will say it's really Bush's Fault. Another theory is that it was the founding fathers rolling over in their graves, but I believe what we all thought was an earthquake was actually the effects of a 14.6 trillion dollar check bouncing in Washington.
Wacky Newsflash:
Qaddafi seems to have a crush on Condoleeza Rice! Rebels found a photo album in his compound. He stated his love for her back in 2007. Ok, so now this is starting to sound more like Entertainment Tonight or something (is that still a show?). This post has gone downhill, I think I will retire!
That is the latest update on my blogcast, more to come!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Favorite Technology Resources
Here are some of my favorite resources when it comes to buying computer equipment and other related items.
- BUY.COM - this site seems to sell everything! I have only bought computer equipment from them however. And there are some great deals to search for! A couple of my favorites:
*Norton Antivirus - when it comes time to renew my antivirus, instead of paying $60 to renew another year, I simply go here and buy a new copy of Norton Antivirus for use with three computers. If you buy just antivirus, it may be as cheap as $10! If you get the 360 version with a lot more protection, you will pay more, but half the cost of renewing.
*LCD screens - they are getting cheaper all of the time, but BUY.COM seems to have the best deals. The problem is, there are too many to choose from! I would recommend this one. This is definitely the best deal for the price - $150! A little bit more and you can jump this 22" LED up to a 24". And if you are like me, you will have to buy two - can't work with just one screen! - NEWEGG.COM - While you can get some items at a really good price at BUY.COM, it can be difficult to get specific computer parts. If you are searching for specific parts at the best price or even building your own computer, NEWEGG.COM is your one stop shop. This site has every computer part you can imagine at the best prices. We have been building some nice computers at work for right around $600 (6 core processors, 8-16GB memory, mirror'd 500GB drives, and more...). I purchased two car stereos for nearly half price through newegg!
- DELLAUCTION.COM - Are you searching for a computer or laptop but you don't have much money? This site may be for you! I think I may be the biggest customer on this site, I have probably bought hundreds of computers here, dozens of them for friends and family. I must add a disclaimer here: THESE ARE REFURBISHED COMPUTERS. This is where Dell sells their off-leased and refurbished laptops, desktops, and monitors. I can't tell you how long your computer will last when buying from this site - some do have problems. You can win a laptop for as cheap as $200 if you are patient, and desktops for even cheaper! It would be a good idea to watch it for a few days to get a feel of the pricing - it works similar to ebay, with a few minor differences. I find it easiest to find what I am looking for with the specs I want (Latitude or Optiplex with at least 2048mb memory and an OS, dvd-rw a bonus, bigger harddrive a bonus), and I don't bid until there is just over 10 minutes left. That is your best chance to sneak a bid in without someone noticing until the last five minutes. Any bid under the 10 minute mark will put the auction timer back to 10 minutes. If you figure the system out, you will get some great deals! The desktops come in "used" condition, but run great. The laptops usually come in "like new" condition! I even won a nice projector for half the cost of a new one that we are still using at our church.
- Laptops - Being in the technology field, I get non-stop inquiries about buying laptops. I can only tell you what I am familiar with, and I am not always up on the latest. In my experience, Dell, HP, Toshiba, and IBM are the top runners. HP is the most affordable, and everyone that buys them seems to love them. I have never liked them in the corporate world however. I don't particularly care for the Inspiron line of Dell laptops either, but I think they have replaced this line with Vostro. The Latitude should do great! Toshiba is more expensive, but one of the highest rated consumer laptops. IBM is like buying a Mac, they are top of the line, but you pay for the name! If you have twice the amount of money, go ahead, buy a Mac. Costco and Staples actually carry pretty good deals on some of these laptops. You can usually do well on the web also. The best time of the year to buy is right after Thanksgiving on into Christmas. If you are really tight on the budget, go back to my 3rd item in this post.
- EBAY.COM - If you know what you want and have priced it out, take a minute to look it up on ebay and you are sure to find a cheaper price for it. You may even be willing to take a used item that is in great shape for half the cost.
- B&H Photo - There are some great resources for photographers out there, but unfortunately, there are a lot of black market dealers too. I realize there are more resources than I will mention, but I found B&H Photo to have great prices and customer service for all of my wife's photography needs. They even have the option to buy "Made in USA" vs items made elsewhere.
- CNET.COM - There are so many devices to choose from - phones, cameras, tablets, laptops, desktops - how do you know what to get? Well, a lot of it becomes preference in the end, especially when you are considering all the different variations of Droids vs an iPhone or Blackberry. I have stopped trying to keep up with this stuff, if I have questions, I can go to CNET.COM. They have some great reviews of just about every device you can think of.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Interesting news this week
1. Google is buying Motorola. This will give them a huge edge in the cell phone/tablet market. It will probably hurt Apple the most. The talk is "Will Microsoft step up to the plate?" That would most likely mean they buy out Nokia who they already partner with. Ironically or not so much, Google's credit rating dropped with the purchase of Motorola. Motorola's stocks have come down in value, which is probably the cause of this, and also the reason Google has jumped in to buy them while they are down.
2. HP is throwing in the towel. The #1 consumer computer in the world, but their phones and tablets are losing big and they are even thinking of selling their low profit personal computer business and investing in the more lucrative corporate server, software, and services business. I would hate to see them go that far - Dude, I guess you get a Dell, the next most widely sold computer. HPs stocks took a dive (-20%) on the news they were selling out their market in the pc world. They were the worst performer by far on the DOW today.
3. Wallstreet is still really struggling. I have been expecting this, so I personally think it will keep falling down as bad or worse than 2008. Gold is gaining by the hour! The economy is certainly not in good shape. We are just going to keep hearing more stories like HP and Bank of America who has had stocks tank over the last couple of weeks and expects to have massive job cuts over the next two months. Europe's economy is also a big player in the DOW's performance, but the jobs and economic confidence seem to be the big players in its downward spiral.
4. CNBC did a survey on the most hated jobs in America. Of the top 10, 5 of them were technology jobs, with #1 being the Director of IT. The reasons for hating their job was working after hours, not being appreciated, working with "ignorant" people, everyone hates the IT dept, and working with old and failing equipment because they don't give you a budget to buy good equipment. As a friend pointed out on this subject, it is bitter-sweet, love-hate. Love the field of work, but it is not easy. I guess I should look for a different line of work since the statistics show I hate my job. :) [Article linked here]
2. HP is throwing in the towel. The #1 consumer computer in the world, but their phones and tablets are losing big and they are even thinking of selling their low profit personal computer business and investing in the more lucrative corporate server, software, and services business. I would hate to see them go that far - Dude, I guess you get a Dell, the next most widely sold computer. HPs stocks took a dive (-20%) on the news they were selling out their market in the pc world. They were the worst performer by far on the DOW today.
3. Wallstreet is still really struggling. I have been expecting this, so I personally think it will keep falling down as bad or worse than 2008. Gold is gaining by the hour! The economy is certainly not in good shape. We are just going to keep hearing more stories like HP and Bank of America who has had stocks tank over the last couple of weeks and expects to have massive job cuts over the next two months. Europe's economy is also a big player in the DOW's performance, but the jobs and economic confidence seem to be the big players in its downward spiral.
4. CNBC did a survey on the most hated jobs in America. Of the top 10, 5 of them were technology jobs, with #1 being the Director of IT. The reasons for hating their job was working after hours, not being appreciated, working with "ignorant" people, everyone hates the IT dept, and working with old and failing equipment because they don't give you a budget to buy good equipment. As a friend pointed out on this subject, it is bitter-sweet, love-hate. Love the field of work, but it is not easy. I guess I should look for a different line of work since the statistics show I hate my job. :) [Article linked here]
The technological paradigm shift
There has been some major paradigm shifts happening over the last couple of years due to technology. If you aren't advancing your business in some cases, you will sink! Many industries have made this mistake and paid dearly.
1. Netflix and Redbox have ended the days of video rentals and put the rental stores out of business. And after just a couple of years of this shift we are already seeing another big shift - Netflix is raising their prices and changing their subscriptions in such a way that they will lose millions of customers (including me). Walmart is jumping in the streaming business now as a big player with vudu and no subscriptions, just pay as you go. And hulu.com is also moving up in the world offering free streaming of movies and tv shows as long as you don't mind advertisements (otherwise you pay). Many people are choosing to shut off their satellite, especially now that all of these new TVs have Netflix and other apps built in! In my best estimate, Redbox will be out of business also if they don't change their business to streaming. Gone are the days of dvds - streaming is becoming more and more available (except in North Idaho of course where you find the slowest internet in the nation).
2. In much the same way, recording enterprises are losing tons of money. They thought they were losing with pirating (and they are), now they are losing because no one buys cds! Everything can be purchased through iTunes - just buy your favorite songs for $.99, you don't have to purchase the entire album. Download them directly to your iPod, iPhone, Droid, computer, xbox, wii, playstation, TV! Even better, just use Pandora or Last FM and many other streaming apps and stream your favorite music everywhere you go. I recently purchased two stereos for my cars, why? CDs are a pain and never work. Now I simply plug my phone into the stereo and either play my favorite playlist, or stream my favorite tunes with Pandora. So you can also say good-bye to satellite radio, drop your Sirius account and stream for free!
3. Along the same shift in technology as the two examples above - Borders is going out of business and shutting down all of their stores. Why? To start with, I need only say "Amazon". I think what may have driven the nail in is everyone buying iPads and Kindles (admittedly, that is my assumption). You can now download books to your devices and read them at your leisure everywhere you go. I have even read a few books on my iPhone! There will always be hardcopy book lovers like my wife (until I buy her an iPad that is), but with Borders closing their doors, it is obvious that things are changing drastically. When I prepare my devotions, I am using digital Bible references as the search pulls the information up instantly!
4. My wife didn't know where her phone was today and the boys had my phone, so I couldn't call it to help her find it. Within seconds, I pulled up my Google account on my laptop, hit the "call" button, dialed her phone number and her phone began ringing. Wow! Say good-bye to long-distance, get a Google account.
5. We are even seeing some great advances in the corporate environment. One being what they call "Unified Messaging". This would be difficult to explain. Basically, your "presence" is everywhere you go and is known at all times to all of your colleagues. You can be reached at anytime if you choose to be by many different means - phone, email, instant messaging. It all works together. You can listen to your voicemail from your inbox, you can answer your phone from your computer, you can instant message from your cell phone - on and on.
6. Another advancement in the corporate IT world is virtualization. This is really cool! You buy one BIG server, install a host operating system, then the fun begins - you start building virtual guest servers on top of this server. The end user can't tell any difference, still accessing data and resources as normal, but in IT you are dealing with one piece of hardware and paying for power to one box, but running possibly 10 servers on that one box! It gets better! You can assign harddrive space, cpu, and memory allocations dynamically to these different guest servers as needed! We recently ran out of diskspace on one of our virtual servers, so I simply configured the settings and added 100GB - no added hardware, no downtime, all virtual settings! If you have some catastrophic failure of a virtual machine, no worries, just restore the last snapshot you took and you are back up. (of course it is not that simple when you need the latest data restored, but it is that simple when you need the server up and running!)
7. Cell phones! Say good-bye to your land-lines if you have not already done so. This has been a huge shift in today's culture. I still remember waiting for the neighbors to get off the line so I could make a phone call on a rotary phone (what is that? my kids say). Unfortunately, I think Frontier invested in a dying business when they bought out Verizon's land-lines - I could be wrong. Verizon has recognized the paradigm shift and they have invested heavily into the wireless technologies. Wow, this technology is impossible to keep up with. New phones and technologies are coming out every month. Some people are set in their ways and refuse to "get with the now", which is fine, but it doesn't take long to realize how too convenient this becomes. My wife is a perfect example. We dropped our land line and got her a cell phone at little more cost so I could reach her even when she was not at home. This didn't work so well for the first year and a half; she was not so good with her cell phone. Then, I got her one of these "new" phones (iPhone) and now I can email her, text her, or call her to reach her. This doesn't fix the problem of her leaving her phone in various locations, but it does help a lot. Three ways of communication, and a lot more features on her phone which makes it more likely that she has it with her at all times and I will reach her. There are so many more examples - having turn by turn directions everywhere you go. Losing your phone is not a problem, just jump on your online account from any computer and it will show you exactly where your phone is. Within seconds, you can be calling your local restaurant to make a reservation for your arrival in 20 minutes - yes, say good-bye to your phone books as well! The apps are endless - tune your guitar (or play a guitar for that matter!), play games, watch movies, stream music, read books, or if you are like me you watch the PGA tour while the wife is inside shopping at Target. On the new iPhones and iPads, you have "Facetime". You can do video calls! One of my favorites - I have downloaded hundreds of podcasts for my listening pleasure to and from work. And of course there is texting. No need to even comment here, some people would not be able to survive on a plan that only had 2000 texts a month. In the IT realm, we have software that will alert our phones when servers go down, when they get too hot, when someone enters the server room. We usually know there is a problem before someone calls our phones to tell us about it.
8. Facebook - I included this because it really is a culture change. Facebook, email, instant messaging, texting, and blogs have done away with endless phone calls to your friends. Of course if you are stuck in the past, you think this has really ruined society and no one knows how to communicate or be personal anymore. I am not sure I would argue this, but one thing I will say that this new technology has done - it has made us more connected then we have ever been. Like I said before, there is texting, email, blogs, etc, but Facebook has really taken this to a new level. I have connected with hundreds of people I would not have otherwise. I can see their various comments, activities, pictures, status whether I like it or not. I know more about them now than I ever would have. To make it worse, I see it everywhere I go because I have one of those fancy phones that keeps me connected 24/7. This is not always good, I admit.
***Yes there is more. I will not even get everything, these are just some of the technology changes off the top of my head. I am not even going to get into cameras and photography!
9. INTERNET - this may well be the biggest cause of all the changes we are seeing today. The ".com" world changed everything many years ago, then Yahoo and Google opened our eyes to a world of information at our fingertips. Google is an IT guy's best friend! I have heard it said recently that Google has made us dummer. We don't have to know anything anymore, just search for the answer on Google. But now with increasing bandwidth and information overload, the way we access this information is changing by the day. As stated before, with the latest cell phones, we have access to this information everywhere we go. Consider this though - until recently, you have not had the bandwidth to support all of this new stuff. Now that bandwidth is increasing (faster internet speeds to your home and to your cell phone), you are able to watch movies, stream music, access emails, watch youtube, download books - and one of my favorites streaming March Madness! It is this kind of access that has put the movie stores, the book stores, and music industries in a downward spiral. And it is just going to increase. You may or may not realize what is on the horizon. As I stated before, Verizon is investing billions into their wireless technology, as is AT&T. In the very near future, you will begin to see the new "4G" networks going up. If you live in a metropolitan area, this is not as good of news as it is for the rest of us. Yes it is good for everyone who does everything from their high-tech cell phones, but now for those of us in the rural and beautiful landscapes of America, we will finally have high-speed internet like we have never seen before. Yes, the wireless internet your cell phone uses will now replace your home internet! If you are lucky, you might get 6mb download speeds in Sandpoint. They are boasting up to 20mb+ with this new 4G! In fact, a friend of mine is currently installing AT&Ts 4G in Sandpoint...hmmm.
10. Ok, so I will stop at ten technological advances. And for this one I will not pull a Steve Jobs and keep this technology a big secret. Computers are constantly changing. I will soon have a six core processor in my computer and some day add a third screen. However, this is not the latest technology I am referring to in this last description of advancements. I am sharing my next innovation of a computer. It is much more cost effective, and much easier to upgrade or repair. We call it "TheBox". As you can see, I have gutted a computer and simply set it on a cardboard box - all the airflow it will ever need now. I may need to upgrade to a bigger cardboard box, but that upgrade is most likely going to be free - now that is technology I can afford!
It's a crazy world out there, and if you come from the big corporations, you are expected to be present 24/7, and it IS possible. I am writing this from various locations in my house - the couch, the kitchen while I make popcorn, quite possibly finishing up on my hammock outside. At any moment I can access everything I need to at work to maintain our systems and keep our users productive. For now, I think I will enjoy my popcorn and technology, and stream a movie for my lovely wife and I to enjoy together.
1. Netflix and Redbox have ended the days of video rentals and put the rental stores out of business. And after just a couple of years of this shift we are already seeing another big shift - Netflix is raising their prices and changing their subscriptions in such a way that they will lose millions of customers (including me). Walmart is jumping in the streaming business now as a big player with vudu and no subscriptions, just pay as you go. And hulu.com is also moving up in the world offering free streaming of movies and tv shows as long as you don't mind advertisements (otherwise you pay). Many people are choosing to shut off their satellite, especially now that all of these new TVs have Netflix and other apps built in! In my best estimate, Redbox will be out of business also if they don't change their business to streaming. Gone are the days of dvds - streaming is becoming more and more available (except in North Idaho of course where you find the slowest internet in the nation).
2. In much the same way, recording enterprises are losing tons of money. They thought they were losing with pirating (and they are), now they are losing because no one buys cds! Everything can be purchased through iTunes - just buy your favorite songs for $.99, you don't have to purchase the entire album. Download them directly to your iPod, iPhone, Droid, computer, xbox, wii, playstation, TV! Even better, just use Pandora or Last FM and many other streaming apps and stream your favorite music everywhere you go. I recently purchased two stereos for my cars, why? CDs are a pain and never work. Now I simply plug my phone into the stereo and either play my favorite playlist, or stream my favorite tunes with Pandora. So you can also say good-bye to satellite radio, drop your Sirius account and stream for free!
3. Along the same shift in technology as the two examples above - Borders is going out of business and shutting down all of their stores. Why? To start with, I need only say "Amazon". I think what may have driven the nail in is everyone buying iPads and Kindles (admittedly, that is my assumption). You can now download books to your devices and read them at your leisure everywhere you go. I have even read a few books on my iPhone! There will always be hardcopy book lovers like my wife (until I buy her an iPad that is), but with Borders closing their doors, it is obvious that things are changing drastically. When I prepare my devotions, I am using digital Bible references as the search pulls the information up instantly!
4. My wife didn't know where her phone was today and the boys had my phone, so I couldn't call it to help her find it. Within seconds, I pulled up my Google account on my laptop, hit the "call" button, dialed her phone number and her phone began ringing. Wow! Say good-bye to long-distance, get a Google account.
5. We are even seeing some great advances in the corporate environment. One being what they call "Unified Messaging". This would be difficult to explain. Basically, your "presence" is everywhere you go and is known at all times to all of your colleagues. You can be reached at anytime if you choose to be by many different means - phone, email, instant messaging. It all works together. You can listen to your voicemail from your inbox, you can answer your phone from your computer, you can instant message from your cell phone - on and on.
6. Another advancement in the corporate IT world is virtualization. This is really cool! You buy one BIG server, install a host operating system, then the fun begins - you start building virtual guest servers on top of this server. The end user can't tell any difference, still accessing data and resources as normal, but in IT you are dealing with one piece of hardware and paying for power to one box, but running possibly 10 servers on that one box! It gets better! You can assign harddrive space, cpu, and memory allocations dynamically to these different guest servers as needed! We recently ran out of diskspace on one of our virtual servers, so I simply configured the settings and added 100GB - no added hardware, no downtime, all virtual settings! If you have some catastrophic failure of a virtual machine, no worries, just restore the last snapshot you took and you are back up. (of course it is not that simple when you need the latest data restored, but it is that simple when you need the server up and running!)
7. Cell phones! Say good-bye to your land-lines if you have not already done so. This has been a huge shift in today's culture. I still remember waiting for the neighbors to get off the line so I could make a phone call on a rotary phone (what is that? my kids say). Unfortunately, I think Frontier invested in a dying business when they bought out Verizon's land-lines - I could be wrong. Verizon has recognized the paradigm shift and they have invested heavily into the wireless technologies. Wow, this technology is impossible to keep up with. New phones and technologies are coming out every month. Some people are set in their ways and refuse to "get with the now", which is fine, but it doesn't take long to realize how too convenient this becomes. My wife is a perfect example. We dropped our land line and got her a cell phone at little more cost so I could reach her even when she was not at home. This didn't work so well for the first year and a half; she was not so good with her cell phone. Then, I got her one of these "new" phones (iPhone) and now I can email her, text her, or call her to reach her. This doesn't fix the problem of her leaving her phone in various locations, but it does help a lot. Three ways of communication, and a lot more features on her phone which makes it more likely that she has it with her at all times and I will reach her. There are so many more examples - having turn by turn directions everywhere you go. Losing your phone is not a problem, just jump on your online account from any computer and it will show you exactly where your phone is. Within seconds, you can be calling your local restaurant to make a reservation for your arrival in 20 minutes - yes, say good-bye to your phone books as well! The apps are endless - tune your guitar (or play a guitar for that matter!), play games, watch movies, stream music, read books, or if you are like me you watch the PGA tour while the wife is inside shopping at Target. On the new iPhones and iPads, you have "Facetime". You can do video calls! One of my favorites - I have downloaded hundreds of podcasts for my listening pleasure to and from work. And of course there is texting. No need to even comment here, some people would not be able to survive on a plan that only had 2000 texts a month. In the IT realm, we have software that will alert our phones when servers go down, when they get too hot, when someone enters the server room. We usually know there is a problem before someone calls our phones to tell us about it.
8. Facebook - I included this because it really is a culture change. Facebook, email, instant messaging, texting, and blogs have done away with endless phone calls to your friends. Of course if you are stuck in the past, you think this has really ruined society and no one knows how to communicate or be personal anymore. I am not sure I would argue this, but one thing I will say that this new technology has done - it has made us more connected then we have ever been. Like I said before, there is texting, email, blogs, etc, but Facebook has really taken this to a new level. I have connected with hundreds of people I would not have otherwise. I can see their various comments, activities, pictures, status whether I like it or not. I know more about them now than I ever would have. To make it worse, I see it everywhere I go because I have one of those fancy phones that keeps me connected 24/7. This is not always good, I admit.
***Yes there is more. I will not even get everything, these are just some of the technology changes off the top of my head. I am not even going to get into cameras and photography!
9. INTERNET - this may well be the biggest cause of all the changes we are seeing today. The ".com" world changed everything many years ago, then Yahoo and Google opened our eyes to a world of information at our fingertips. Google is an IT guy's best friend! I have heard it said recently that Google has made us dummer. We don't have to know anything anymore, just search for the answer on Google. But now with increasing bandwidth and information overload, the way we access this information is changing by the day. As stated before, with the latest cell phones, we have access to this information everywhere we go. Consider this though - until recently, you have not had the bandwidth to support all of this new stuff. Now that bandwidth is increasing (faster internet speeds to your home and to your cell phone), you are able to watch movies, stream music, access emails, watch youtube, download books - and one of my favorites streaming March Madness! It is this kind of access that has put the movie stores, the book stores, and music industries in a downward spiral. And it is just going to increase. You may or may not realize what is on the horizon. As I stated before, Verizon is investing billions into their wireless technology, as is AT&T. In the very near future, you will begin to see the new "4G" networks going up. If you live in a metropolitan area, this is not as good of news as it is for the rest of us. Yes it is good for everyone who does everything from their high-tech cell phones, but now for those of us in the rural and beautiful landscapes of America, we will finally have high-speed internet like we have never seen before. Yes, the wireless internet your cell phone uses will now replace your home internet! If you are lucky, you might get 6mb download speeds in Sandpoint. They are boasting up to 20mb+ with this new 4G! In fact, a friend of mine is currently installing AT&Ts 4G in Sandpoint...hmmm.
10. Ok, so I will stop at ten technological advances. And for this one I will not pull a Steve Jobs and keep this technology a big secret. Computers are constantly changing. I will soon have a six core processor in my computer and some day add a third screen. However, this is not the latest technology I am referring to in this last description of advancements. I am sharing my next innovation of a computer. It is much more cost effective, and much easier to upgrade or repair. We call it "TheBox". As you can see, I have gutted a computer and simply set it on a cardboard box - all the airflow it will ever need now. I may need to upgrade to a bigger cardboard box, but that upgrade is most likely going to be free - now that is technology I can afford!
It's a crazy world out there, and if you come from the big corporations, you are expected to be present 24/7, and it IS possible. I am writing this from various locations in my house - the couch, the kitchen while I make popcorn, quite possibly finishing up on my hammock outside. At any moment I can access everything I need to at work to maintain our systems and keep our users productive. For now, I think I will enjoy my popcorn and technology, and stream a movie for my lovely wife and I to enjoy together.
Welcome!
Welcome fellow blogcasters! I decided with all of the changes going on in today's world, good and bad, I would begin posting my thoughts on these events from time to time. I hope you enjoy!
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