JT Tech Blog

“I am not a Microsoft hater”

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:46:57 -0500

Every now and again, you come across people who give you such an interesting perspective (on any given subject) that it causes you to take pause.... to really think about the insight that person shared with you. This weekend I had just one of those moments. Now I must predicate this story by telling anyone reading that ‘Yes....there is a point to all of this’ or more importantly ‘Yes, this will somehow come back to the topic of small business and how this knowledge can help you with yours’.......Trust me.

This weekend, I spent my Saturday moving stuff. No my stuff.....but stuff. I started my day taking a Ford 1 ton pickup loaded with old computers and electronics to a local recycling center to purge a virtual graveyard of dead equipment. A project I had been dreading for some time and as it turned out, a lot less painful than I had anticipated. I followed this project up with an unanticipated trip to moving a large hutch from Minneapolis to my sisters place. The move itself was relatively painless and unexpectedly gave me the topic to this article you are reading right now.

My brother-in-law arrived to pick me up for the trip up to Minneapolis. He and I are never really short on topics to talk about. We are both techno-geeks... love home theater stuff.. both love video games... movies... and the list goes on. On this particular trip what we both had in common was a little frustration at being surprised with moving furniture on an afternoon we had planned to relax. After a couple of minutes of mutual grumbling we settled into our favorite topics of discussion... computers and gaming. The trip up was spent talking about games. Now this topic is a perfect example of our relationship....as it is, at times, a bit adversarial. He is a PS3 guy. Hardcore. In the months before its release, I had purchased an XBox360. My first gaming console in over 10 years. Probably more as the last one I owned was a Sega Genesis. The funny thing about us....is that we seem to end up on opposite sides of formats almost uniformly. He’s PS3, and I am 360. He’s Blu-Ray...and I was HD-DVD......he’s country.....I’m rock and roll. (Ok I’m kidding....he is so not country).

As we rode to furniture pick up, we began talking about my new experience with Apple. I was telling him about the stability, the power, the interface..... his response left me curious. He began talking about a couple of people who he knows who have begun the path of open source apps and alternatives to Microsoft. During the course of our conversation he made an observation I found interesting......

“.......a lot of the people using Apple and Linux are Microsoft haters......”

I found myself really wondering about this statement. The truth is, this stigma is true....has been for a long time. BUT....that is changing. Microsoft has hurt themselves with Vista. People are changing......

Microsoft releases Server 2008

Wed, 2 Apr 2008 11:51:02 -0500

Yesterday I attended the release event for Microsoft Server 2008 here in Minneapolis. Over the past couple of days the software giant has brought in, with great fanfare, the new edition of their server software to match up with their struggling release of Windows Vista. At this point I don’t have much to say about the release. I honestly have not had that much time to mull through the different releases of beta’s I have and was not all that enthused to begin with. Now before I go further, I have to clarify a couple of things. If I sound a bit scorched toward Microsoft, that is probably accurate. BUT, I do need to make sure everyone understands that I am not anti-Microsoft in anyway. In fact, I am pro-everything. I like all of the platforms for different reasons. I think to restrict yourself from options only hurts your chances of finding great solutions. I learned this lesson myself by never giving Apple a chance. And now look at me....desktop, laptop, ATV, network, iPhone....I think after letting my prejudice down I opened a lot of doors....but I also see how I limited my options prior to that......stupid, stupid, stupid.

Anyway.... my issue with M$. Their products have lacked a lot of luster lately. They have tried to pack a lot of flash.....and tried to compete with everyone. They continually use their strength and size to squash out their competition and don’t seem to have good focus on their own products. Vista is a perfect example.....although XP was too in its first release. Maybe it is just the nature of their company. They are a software house. Their stuff needs to run on hundreds of thousands of individual pieces of equipment. They are trying to be everything to everyone. With todays technology track moving so fast, it might actually be what topples this massive giant. I digress. My point is I am not anti-Microsoft. I am a partner with them and happy to be so. I think they have a lot of great products and a massive amount of people to serve. I just feel the past 18-24 months have been rather reckless on their part.

Attending this event was somewhat anti-climactic. The good news about going was that they did hand out a good amount of software including a full copy of vista ultimate, a 1 year license to Server 2008, a Sequel Server 2008, and a various amount of trial-ware. It was funny however to see this bundle up on Craigslist before the day was out.

It was clear that this was a presentation geared towards enterprise users. There was nothing ‘Small Business’ oriented around it at all. The presentations were about server clusters, heavy virtualization, and data centers. There was nothing about the single server environment and only a mentions that Small Business Server was slated for the later part of this year. The presentations that I sat through had that same M$ arrogance to it, however it seemed to do so almost as a cloak to cover up the concern. They have clearly adapted an “If you can’t beat ‘em...join ‘em” mentality when it comes to Linux. Incorporating things like PHP and AJAX into their environment to try and combat the ocean of open source servers in the technological sea. It was clear that M$ no longer wanted to fight this fight.

Given the overall plague of problems Vista has endured in its first year, it is hard for me to say how the new server will play out in the coming months. After all, they are built upon the same basic structure. Time will tell.

I will try and post my initial observations once I have managed to get it installed and running.

Apple TV - More than Just Entertainment

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:36:54 -0500

In my last post, I wrote about the new found love affair I had developed with Apple and their products. My affinity for the Apple brand has only increased in the past few weeks as I have had three new additions into my network family... an Apple TV, Airport Extreme Base Station, last but certainly not least a brand new MacBook Pro.

First, the Apple TV. When I picked up this device (again another gift from the woman who spoils me) I have to admit there was absolutely no business application I was thinking of in incorporating this device into. I did not see this as anything more than an entertainment device and that was that. I will say that I was moderately impressed with the ATV in it’s first couple of weeks of use. The 2.0 software had not yet been released and while the device was ok, there was really nothing all that special that had captured my attention. I could only wait until they released the all new, heavily hyped, second coming of the ATV interface with all its cool new features before I could draw an accurate conclusion to the unit. Well that day arrived and as promised....I was impressed. The introduction of HD content was good, but in all honesty I felt like saying “it’s about time”. I mean the mighty Microsoft had been delving out HD content for quite some time on the Xbox360. It did not really provide a huge ‘WOW’ factor for me. At least not right away. Dolby Digital Audio again made the Apple TV a much better product. The sound was rich and made the experience of watching HD content all that more enjoyable. I watch some previews, a couple of podcasts. It was all really nice. I smiled with pride at my ATV. Again, I found myself saying (que the Apple Cliche) “It just works”.....but this time I threw a “dammit” on the end at the suggestion of Jennifer and thought this seemed like a good time to try it out.

Now, as I said before. This was all cool but by no means unique. There are other content providers out there. I mean after all......pay per view content has been around for years. One of my biggest gripes about the PPV content from Microsoft Live was how long it takes to download a movie. HOURS !!!!
The first time I discovered this I was really angry. I wanted to watch a movie now. Microsoft promised me I would be able to....let’s go here. To no avail it took ....and this is no exaggeration....days to get this movie in to playback. Days. Frickin’ Days. Granted it was HD so the file was much bigger than a standard definition file.....but I had not signed up for watching the movie next week. I wanted to watch it now (and if not now, at least some time that same day !!!!!) Days......it took frickin’ days. I soon came to realize that if I were to use this medium to watch movies it would require planning and while the mighty software giant had made improvements. It was still a sluggish service at best. A model of things to come ...... when they work all the kinks out. Then I tried on the ATV.

I sat down one night thinking I would prepare to watch a movie on my new entertainment medium. The update had been installed, HD was available and I wanted to give this thing a good run. Thinking I was going to get similar issues to what I had with my 360, I decided to give the ATV a fews hours of download time for a buffer. I had a couple of new Blu-Rays to watch and it seemed reasonable given that HD files were large that maybe I could catch another flick before starting the one I had chosen. I selected the movie, started the download, and got up to make some popcorn. Three minutes of time pass and I am back on the couch ready to switch to my BR player when I notice something on my screen completely unexpected. “Press play to watch movie”. I thought to myself “This cannot be. There has to be a mistake.” So I pondered for a moment if the ATV could have buffered a cache large enough to handle this and keep up in this short amount of time. Only one way to find out......and the ‘Play’ button on my remote was pushed.

The movie started and it was as I had hoped. Great picture, awesome surround sound...it was as I had hoped. The video filled my 60” plasma with a crisp, clear picture and the sound was in no way disappointing at all. My only problem was my distraction on when it was going to fail. When the buffer would lose ground to the download and I would be stuck waiting for it to catch up. It never happened. In fact I have tested this often now. I have never had a problem watching a movie within minutes of the selection. Sometimes I even start it within 60 seconds. No problems. Again Apple has devised a great device for entertainment and it strongly competes with any other service out there. It took some time for them to figure it out.....but in the end they have once again done a great job.

But that isn’t really the point of this article. I mean when it comes down to it. This blog is not about reviewing entertainment devices. 360’s, PS3’s and ATV’s are nice and all.....but what the #%$&@# are you going to do with an ATV in your small business ????? I am glad you asked. You see....it took me a little bit of time to figure that out as well, but I think I have come up with a few great ideas...and these don’t just apply to small business. Truth is I am a little surprised this is not being used more wide spread.

First of all you have to fully understand the way this device works to get a grasp of how it could be used for business. It can be used as a stand alone device or married to either a PC or Mac to stream from and populate from their libraries. It also has Apple’s Airtunes capability in that you can stream through your network to multiple devices to get a global sound through out your property. In the consumer market, this works pretty cool in that you could have multiple devices in various places of your house all playing your software library from your computer. OR....in your business inexpensively piping in music or more specifically promotional pieces (remember that usage rights can come into play here) to be heard by clients visiting your place of business.

The one idea I had however dealt with presentations. I think, with the proper mindset, this device could be used by a sales staff that would bring effective presentations to clients at an inexpensive price. Now this is not an exact science and ABSOLUTELY there are better ways of doing this. But this site is about bringing inexpensive solutions to the small business marketplace. The concept would be to take a Keynote or Powerpoint presentation and convert it to a video file. Transfer it to the ATV and bring it with you to your meeting. It could easily hook up to a projector, tv or most other video devices allowing for component input to display the video. In a mobile workforce, you could have someone in your office design the presentations and updating them would be as simple as syncing your iTunes library. The best part? An ATV costs $229 for the low end model which would more than meet this type of need.

The bottom line? This is a great media device. One that could be used for training, sales presentations, in house office media.......or watching a movie. Harnessing your creativity is what is key.

“It just works !!!”

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:12:06 -0500

I am not a fan of Steve Jobs.
Like most who have ever had the misfortune to cross his path (I have not by the way), I think he is abrasive, rude, and all around an unpleasant person to be around. For example, you can find posts all across the net about how Jobs snubbed the notorious blogger, Violet Blue, at this years MacWorld.... just for coming up and asking for a picture. Anyway, let’s just let it be known I am not a fan of Steve Jobs.

About two years ago, I found myself really noticing Apple computers. More specifically the iMac. Now my experience with Mac’s had been limited at best up to this point...and the one thing I knew is that any experience I did have jumped way out of the norm for what I was used to in the windows world. In fact, all of the laptops needed a special cable dongle to hook up to projectors there were very few compatible formats between the two....all in all they seemed foreign and strange. It wasn’t until I had my very first iPod in my hands did I start to understand the marvel of Apple.

For the record, I’m a lucky guy. My future wife is fun, beautiful, and happens to spoil me. (don’t worry I haven’t fallen off topic) For my first birthday with her, she gave me a 60 gig 5th gen iPod. This thing was awesome. I had video, music, podcasts.....all in my little iPod. Now I had owned a couple mp3 players before this.....but this was my first Apple product. It rocked.

I used this thing everywhere. I mean everywhere. In the car, working, playing, going to bed, with friends, alone......this baby got some use. The truth is, I started to get a bit curious. Is this the path of all Apple products? Up to this point, I knew of only two people who were Apple users in a veritable ocean of PC people. Both swore by their Mac’s. Neither made fun of Windows users but rather felt pity for them. One actually moved to San Francisco and currently works for Apple computers today at their main campus as a coder.

Well as I said, I’m a lucky guy. This year, for Christmas, I was given an iPhone. Now I have to tell you I love this device. It does not do everything....there is all kinds of room for improvement...but what is does it does well. There is no need to rehash any of its capabilities. If you are reading this you know about the iPhone already.

After a few weeks of using both Apple devices my curiosity got the best of me. I went to my local Apple store....for the first time to look at their computers. I met one of their sales people named Mike and we struck up a conversation.

Me - “Why’s it so great?”

Mike - “Blah Blah Blah (insert Apple sales pitch here)”

Me - “What about.......?”

Mike - “Worried about your windows stuff? Ever heard of Parallels?”

This went on for about an hour. Mike carried me through my bias and prejudice about the Apple platform. He did an awesome job explaining things to me and while he did have his trained Apple pitches here and there (not pressure....just pitches....he is a salesman after all) he brought my curiosity level to an all time high. Within two weeks I purchased my first iMac.

Bringing it home was quite an adventure. It was almost like introducing a new pet in a household that already had three dogs and two cats. I decided to set it up in the dinning room before moving to my office. I figured I could let it get used to its surroundings. We could get to know each other a little bit before tossing it into the quagmire of PC’s running various versions of Windows and Linux that is my office. It took some time.....we both felt a little awkward not really sure how to take the other.....but within two days we were communicating like we had known each other our whole lives. I’d walk into the dinning room and Mac would look at me giving me the “What’s up dude?” and I’d respond with my “It’s all good”. We’d go exploring together....He’d show me some of the stuff he could do.....I’d show him how I’d like to use those skills. We were building synchronicity unlike that I have ever experienced before.

After about a week, Mac wanted to know if the dinning room was really where he was going to live. I told him I hadn’t let the boys know he was going to be moving in....I hadn’t been sure myself. Finally I went to my office. My main desktop was sitting there with a confused look on his monitor. Up to that point he had been the big man on campus. Confident....hell arrogant.....cocky....a custom built powerhouse running the latest and greatest of everything. Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, Studio 8, dual 22” monitors.....this system felt no fear.

I looked around the room. Three Linux machines. A windows laptop and the Vista big dog.....and my Small Business Server. All of this in a 10x10 office with my desk, bookshelves, a 360 with 27” monitor.....As I said.....it was a quagmire of PC testosterone. I made the announcement that there would be some changes....a reorganization if you will. With that....I shut it all down.

Within three hours the reorganization was complete. Mac now sat at the head of the table. All but one Linux machine and the monster PC had been moved to a small room in the basement. MAC had been equipped with both Remote Desktop and a VNC client to control all the other machines both upstairs and down. Everything was powered back up...and although a bit confused.... seemingly understanding its new place in life.

Since then I have come to rely on ole’ Mac for everything. The other machines, while still in operation.....mostly gather dust these days. I even have a MacBook Pro on order to replace my very capable, although now disappointing, Windows laptop. It all seems to make sense now. These Apple machines are awesome.

I still dislike Steve Jobs.....I just can’t abide by the way he treats people and honestly the arrogance of some of Apple’s business practices just slay me.... but the truth is....on almost a daily basis I find myself saying...

“It just works.”

Microsoft releases IE8

Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:13:50 -0600

In a surprise move, Microsoft announced the release of IE8 at the end of its demo at the MIX08 conference today.
Early features include integration with Facebook and Ebay as well as its own Live Maps website. In todays demo, the new browser demonstrated the ability to highlight an address, right click on it and utilize Live Maps from one of the options.
One of the other highlights of the new release is its ability to work better with AJAX oriented websites.

To download the public beta of Microsoft’s IE8, follow this link.

Comcast manipulates Net-Neutrality meeting

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:22:11 -0600

This is rapidly becoming a hot topic for high-speed internet users. First, I’ll explain what the issue is and then I’ll get into how it can affect you and why you should care.

In today’s world, internet service providers (ISP) have begun to control the traffic running through their networks. They do so in a number of ways but the two most common are called packet analyzing/throttling and port blocking. It’s important to understand what these two processes mean so I’ll give a brief explanation of both, but check out JTPC RADIO for a more in depth explanation of this subject. Don’t worry...I don’t intend to have you glaze over right out of the gate. I’ll keep this pretty simple to understand and save the technical mumbo jumbo for me and the geek’s down at the geek saloon.

• Port Blocking - Internet data travels along different channels depending on the type of traffic it is. Website traffic (HTTP) uses Port 80 in most cases and it’s secure counterpart (HTTPS) uses port 443. A typical outgoing mail server uses Port 25 while an FTP server uses port 21. Even if you have no idea what any of these things mean, it should be simple to understand that if the particular port on your internet connection is blocked by your service provider....the type of data that correlates to it is incapable of traveling through your portal to the world wide web.
• Packet Analyzing - Web traffic travels in small pieces (known as packets) with a signature embedded into it. Among some of the information in these packets is the type of data that is traveling. For example, one of the big issues at hand is torrent traffic. A torrent is a means to share data with other people on the internet. There are hundreds of legitimate ways torrents are used, and some not so legitimate such as pirated music and movie sharing. One of the common practices today by your ISP is to ‘throttle’ the speed of torrent exchanges across the web. They look at what type of traffic that is crossing their infrastructure and then will slow the speed of its travel in their network...ultimately meaning that your download or upload is only being given a small percentage of the bandwidth you have rightfully paid for.

Why you should care....
As a small business owner, or a hobbyist, or even just as a user you were sold a bill of goods from your service provider. Up until recently I know of no company that had disclaimers stating that certain types of traffic would be controlled or manipulated in your connection to the internet. In addition to that, most ISP’s deny that they do any of these types of practices...that is until recently. You may have heard in the news or read somewhere that ‘net-neutrality’ issues are becoming hot topics within our federal government. What the government is ultimately moving towards is forcing the country’s service providers to allow equal and unfettered access to the internet. They site that it should be available to all equally...of course under their regulation. While this sounds great, it really is a double edged sword. It will force the ISP’s to follow strict guidelines on how people access the web...it will also increase costs and incorporate government regulation into network traffic. In my humble opinion this is never a good idea....however the ISP’s are seemingly forcing the issue by continuing these tactics and this will hurt both themselves and their users.

Recently there was a meeting held at Harvard University on this very issue. The FCC’s broadband management division held an open hearing for people to come in and voice their opinions to the subject. It has been reported, and partially confirmed by Comcast that money was exchanged with people to stand in line and ultimately take up space in the hearing auditorium preventing legitimate people from entering the process. For Comcast’s part, they admit to paying people to stand in line holding spots for their representatives until they arrive, however pictures posted on the web show many seats filled with people sleeping during the hearings.....not just a couple here or there.....but entire groups hunkered down.....taking a nap.

Now, as for why you should care...if you own or operate a small business....ESPECIALLY for the home business owner, the internet can be one of the biggest resources for your company. Be it for marketing, communication, data transfers to clients, venders, and employees or any number of other reasons that are completely legitimate for use.....ISP’s manipulating your traffic can have a very negative effect on your business. Government regulated Net-Neutrality is not going to do anyone any good.....but unfortunately it may be the only way to get the big ISP’s to give you what you pay for....unlimited, open access to the internet.