From the monthly archives:
September 2011
A chance to help someone achieve their dream, and a chance to really help a town rebuild!
Stepping away from a strictly tech related post for a moment ...
One of our members and long-time friends, Heather Samsa - on Twitter as @i_enigma - has been tirelessly and single handedly helping to rebuild the small town of Marysville - which Australians may remember as being utterly devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. She created the Marysville Cookbook, a combination of memories and recipes that is truly charming and unique. The initial print run was for the residents of Marysville, but others wanted to purchase it.
Heather started to sell the book, which costs around $20 per copy to produce, for $30. The $10 "profit" goes directly to Marysville through various community ventures, and so far Heather has raised $4,700 single handedly.
That's no small feat by any means! I actually bought the book as a gift for my wife, and it is simply gorgeous. The recipes are delicious, the photos are fantastic, and my wife absolutely loves it. The fact that it m ...
One IT Pro's travels in the world of Pre-Beta...
I am LIKING Windows 8 - everything I love about using Windows 7/Server 2008 R2, except all bright, shiny and new-like.
I'm also liking that the skillz are instantly transferrable, even with the pre-beta. So, I've been tooling around with a couple of IT Pro-related tasks, specifically deployment and virtualisation, and here are my shameless cross-posts to what I've found so far:
Sysprep/OOBE experience in Windows 8 Server
Deploy Windows 8 with SCCM 2012
As ever, there's more to come :-)
...
I can't be bothered standing on a streetcorner yelling my crazy ideas, so here's one I've typed up instead.
Hello,
Lying in bed last night, I had a revelation about where I can see us heading in the next few years. This is mostly reliant on better broadband though (hello NBN!) but regardless I believe my idea is where we are heading.
Firstly, if you use more than 1 PC/device then you'll know the frustration of having to either do multiple installs of applications you use, or re-do settings. A good example of this is your browser's favorites/bookmarks list. Sure you can type in the websites, but it's nice to have a full list to just choose from. To fill this void, services like Delicious http://www.delicious.com/ popped up - your bookmarks in the cloud! Now it doesn't matter where you are, you can access that same list.
Email went the same way - Outlook is nice to use, but it doesn't help you when you're at work and want to check your personal emails. Again, the solution was to have your emails in the cloud and sync all your devices/PC's to that single point, or even just use a web interfa ...
Every day, I get information in my inbox on this new release, that new company on the market. this is interesting to me. I will avidly read about new technology, new companies and news in general. What I have a problem with is the recent spate of IT articles about things that the government is doing, spending money here, making mistakes with tenders, etc, etc.
There seems to be a growing trend to publish articles that are of interest to a select few of the IT industry, and throw it out to the general population, in an attempt to sensationalise mundane events and occurences in the Australian Government.
Recently, I saw a new article talking about the recent tender release from a department where the brand was named. The journalist seemed to think that this was of the utmost importance, as they had contacted the department to advise of the error, and the department had retracted the tender, only to re-issue it without the offending brand. The thing is, regardless of whether the department re-released the tender, their preference was made known by the first document. How does an IT company respond effectively to the tender? they quote the product that the tender originally mentioned.
How does this effect the greater IT community? well, the department made a mistake. the journalist got them to re-issue the tender, the resellers quoted on it a ...
Will SMS be replaced by Facebook? Will Email be replaced by Google Plus? Read on for my thoughts on the topic, raised on Triple J's Hack program 21/09/11.
27/09/11 Update: Tommy Tudehope has written an article on his thoughts here: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2913064.html
Today I was listening to the current affairs show 'Hack' which airs daily on Triple J at 5:30. One of the topics today was from a Social Media Consultant Tommy Tudehope (on Twitter at @TommyTudehope), who was predicting that SMS would be dead in 5 years, and Email dead in 10.
For the audio of the broadcast: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/daily/hack_wed_2011_09_21.mp3
Webpage of Triple J's Hack: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/podcast/
Tommy's claims:
"... People think SMS is one to one, of course it is, but is it really private, who has access to it, and are you always relying on your service provider Telstra or Optus to connect you through."
"...A lot of businesses have trouble working/collaborating with other businesses so sending mass emails to different people who you're working with. Now with Google Plus, you can h ...
As I write this I am sitting here between a Windows 7 Professional x64 laptop and a Windows Developer Preview, aka Windows 8, x64 laptop.
There are literally hundreds of various tech blogs out there right now concerning the new Windows 8 with its radically different Metro User Interface and why it is either amazing or wonderful or why it sucks and people hate it. As such I am not going to go over that here.
I will briefly state that I do kind of like it. It’s amazingly fast. It boots in fewer th ...
As I write this I am sitting here between a Windows 7 Professional x64 laptop and a Windows Developer Preview, aka Windows 8, x64 laptop.
There are literally hundreds of various tech blogs out there right now concerning the new Windows 8 with its radically different Metro User Interface and why it is either amazing or wonderful or why it sucks and people hate it. As such I am not going to go over that here.
I will briefly state that I do kind of like it. It’s amazingly fast. It boots in fewer than 30 seconds which was previously unheard of for a Microsoft operating system. It’s pretty slick and radically different than every version of Windows that has come before it. It’s simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and ‘just works.’ (Aside from expected bugs since it’s not even Beta yet.)
“It’s simple, straight-forward, intuitive, and ‘just works’. ”
That statement is the reason for my blog ...
Windows 8 Developer preview has been released. Let's have a look at what's new, whats improved, and what needs to happen to make this new Windows OS a game changer.
Yesterday, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview to the general public - Microsoft's first public release of their new Windows operating system. We have seen hints of the new OS in screenshots leaked and posted on their blog, so naturally plenty of people jumped at the chance to grab a functional copy of the new Windows operating system. You can grab yours from here.
Lots has been made of Microsoft's new OS, including what it needs to do to stay competitive against Apple's OS's in both the desktop and mobile space. Microsoft has announced that Windows 8 will be the same platform across x86/64 desktop devices and ARM-based mobile devices - importantly, tablets and mobile phones, which Microsoft entered recently with the Windows Phone 7 operating system.
There's plenty to remember when reviewing any software that is essentially still in Alpha, or brand new Beta. Importantly, it's not complete software. Many people often review software at this stage as completed software, wh ...
The Cloud - Monkey (from Monkey Magic) had one, should you use it too?
Has your CIO/CEO/IT Manager done this?
Do you trust the cloud?
I would be surprised if you whole-heartedly said 'yes'. Firstly because you're talking back to a blog post which is quite strange behaviour, but secondly because there's a lot of media attention going on in this space.
Just to rehash the last week, there were two major events, one from Google and the other Microsoft.
Google:
Wednesday 8th September (ish, it's hard to gather what timezone they're all talking about) saw a Google Docs outage. The outage lasted 52 minutes: 23 minutes from being alerted to kick off a rollback proccess which then took 24 minutes to do. Add an extra 5 minutes - the time it took for "the additional capacity restored normal function".
The cause was due to a change they had implemented to improve real time collaboration, but the heavy load of the real world exposed a memory management bug.
Micr ...
Derek "@ozdj" Jenkins shares his hilarious tale of impulse buying woe ...
Cross-posted from my blog, ClubDUH!
WARNING: Contains rude words tweeted in anger; adult concepts and immature computer hardware. Sharing a few hours of my life that I’ll never get back in the hope that I’ll save someone else from enduring the same saga.
It was shortly after 6pm on Thursday night and I was about to leave the office. I checked my mobile and was excited to find a new gadget, that I hadn’t heard of before, was available at Officeworks, here in Australia. Wh0o0o0o!
I immediately went googling and quicky found a video of the LG LSM-100 in action. Naturally, I tweeted my excitement at what I’d found:
“
Officeworks has these in stock for $129 – #WANT (even if I don’t quite have a use for one 9 days out of 10) — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4LpLOx0j4
...
Run around with arms in the air and scream the sky is falling? Or think seriously about security ...
You've probably heard of the DigiNotar certificate authority compromise, which has led to the removal of their CA trust from most browsers (apparently Apple is lagging behind on this), and affecting their customers who rely on them for providing SSL to their websites and other services. Prior to that, it was Comodo, and now we hear of a possible GlobalSign breach. It seems that these may be all from the same person (or people) in all cases.
It's easy to observe a common principle in action with any given security breach. One breach occurs, and the floodgates tend to open. Another good example was the Sony Playstation Network breach. A classic example that still holds to this day is Windows, and even Mac OS X is starting to feel it as their uptake continues to increase.
A successful breach flags a company as a potentially easy target. You'll get a mix of followups - from the original attackers, the security researchers, other "interested" parties, and of course what we always called th ...
So finally, I finish up my rundown of the conference, with my thoughts on how it went. Looking forward to next year!
It always strikes me as to how many awesome people I meet at Tech.Ed - whether for the first time, or finally putting a face to a name.
This year was no different. Between the Microsoft people who live and breathe the event for months in advance, the delegates who are excited to be there, and the random people on the Gold Coast who stop and chat - it's one of the best things about the conference and one of the major reasons I really enjoy going. Networking is a big part of any IT conference, and Microsoft are pretty good at it.
The Fun Factory party at the close of Day 2 was great, and I really enjoyed it a lot more in contrast to last year, but I already touched on that. I used Day 3 to catch up with people and content - enjoyed catching @orinthomas in his Interactive Theatre session for DPM client backups - being an area I've not yet played with to the extent he has, I enjoyed it, and it was a great way to pick up even more tips for future presentations.
I also caught up with a bu ...
I was lucky enough to attend TechEd again this year and had a fantastic week. Like most people I’m heading back to work with tons of new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm in the technology I work with every day. If you missed it this year, this is my wrap up.
I was lucky enough to attend TechEd again this year and had a fantastic week. Like most people I’m heading back to work with tons of new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm in the technology I work with every day. If you missed it this year, this is my wrap up.
Highlight:
The most amazing part of this week for me personally was winning runner up in the Microsoft Women in IT Community Contributor Award. I was genuinely shocked when I was called up and I’m still really touched that people thought of me. For those of you that nominated me, a massive thank you. I meant a lot to me and has really inspired me to keep at it.
Of course the biggest thank you goes to Catherine Eibner (@ceibner) who does lots of hard work to help promote the WIT cause. I think she does a stellar job and deserves to be recognised for her hard work.
Speaker/ Sessions Highlights:
My favourite sessions were delivered by Rhonda Layfeild (@deploym ...
Once again I made the trek to Microsoft Tech.Ed this year and it was the best it’s been in a while.
I arrived on Sunday night and attended the Technical Pre Conference Training over Monday / Tuesday. I completed training in System Centre Configuration Manager 2012 and am extremely impressed with a number of the new changes in product. The shift in the product maps well to the industry shift towards any device and the user self service models.
On the downside there were a number of performance issu ...
Once again I made the trek to Microsoft Tech.Ed this year and it was the best it’s been in a while.
I arrived on Sunday night and attended the Technical Pre Conference Training over Monday / Tuesday. I completed training in System Centre Configuration Manager 2012 and am extremely impressed with a number of the new changes in product. The shift in the product maps well to the industry shift towards any device and the user self service models.
On the downside there were a number of performance issues with the labs which prevented a number of participants from completely the labs. This has been actively tweeted and blogged about and subsequently reported in the media. What hasn’t been said enough is the fantastic way Microsoft responded and handled the a situation with those effected. I personally want to go on record publically and say Thank You to Sarah Vaughn for everything she has done responding to the situation.
In terms of content I was really impressed with the ...
or "The Search for Molk"
There is no Tagly badge for "I presented 4 sessions and nobody died".
Another day, another blur. Once again, I remember delivering my sessions, and I most certainly remember the "Fun Factory" party!
As I've progressed with presenting the sessions, I've settled in and built confidence, and they've felt much better overall. I really enjoyed presenting the Exchange and "Making DPM Hum" sessions, and also enjoyed fielding DPM questions from people throughout the day. I'm glad to have had the opportunity, and I really appreciate the DPE team's support for it! I have a lot to take away and use from the experience, and it was a great challenge to take on!
Fastforwarding through the day to the party, it was great! I enjoyed it more than last year, and had a good time playing Star Wars Kinect (what, no George Lucas to kill?), posing with the 501st (with added Hodge), looking around and talking to people. I ddin't actually manage to get everywhere, but I did enjoy what I saw of the trivia!