The iPhone now has most of the functions of the BlackBerry: Over-the-air push and sync of Exchange email, contacts, and calendars! This guide is intended as a concise walkthrough of how to get up and running with an iPhone and Microsoft Exchange server.
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Personal on 15. Feb, 2010 | Comments
It’s fun to bash Microsoft. It’s easy, too, with Apple solidly conquering the high end of the PC and mobile markets and Google’s command of the Internet. But how fair are these articles skewering Microsoft, such as “Microsoft’s chronic lack of innovation” published today at Techworld? I suggest that Microsoft innovates as well as, if not better than, any other massive company. But no one innovates like an outsider.
J. D. Salinger passed away January 27, 2010; he was 91. The famously-secretive author rose to prominence in the 1950’s for The Catcher in the Rye, a book that has resonated with every generation of youth since. He is more celebrated in literary circles for his shorter stories, many of which centered on the Glass and Caulfield families and explored deeper religious and philosophical territory than his sole novel.
Two stupidly-cool fonts in action: My normal DEC VT220-like terminal and a super-large terminal with super-tiny Tom Thumb displaying Hamlet. All of Hamlet. No kidding.
What does it mean for the community when independent bloggers go to work for vendors? The Internet has changed the old game of leveraging publications for PR. Can you still trust what you read?
The Mini DisplayPort connector on the 27″ iMac is bi-directional, so you can connect another device to its gorgeous monitor! I was eager to try this out, and sure enough my 2009 Mac Mini had no trouble taking over the iMac’s display using a $30 Belkin cable. But actually using the iMac in this configuration has not been pleasant.
Personal computer hard disk drive access methods have been repeatedly forced to adapt to ever-expanding capacity. But Western Digital is leading the change to larger 4 kilobyte hard disk blocks. Although this new “Advanced Format” includes mechanisms for backwards compatibility, buyers should be wary of these new drives for the time being.
Last week I bought my third (modern) Mac, a new Core i5-powered 27″ iMac desktop. My new iMac has become a video editing workstation, running Apple’s Final Cut Studio software to process the video footage from Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day. The massive display and speedy quad-core CPU and graphics continue to impress: This new iMac is a keeper!
Data Robotics has doubled the size of their product line, adding two new Drobo storage devices alongside the existing Drobo (version 2) and DroboPro, which I’ve previously written about.
Championing “open” and calling for standards has become the first stalling action by late-movers in technology spaces. They see opportunity passing by and try to hold back progress and FUD the market by yelling about proprietary solutions, vendor lock-in, and a lack of standards. Many well-intentioned IT folks follow along: After all, who doesn’t want openness, standardization, and interoperability?
Posted by Stephen in Apple on 03. Mar, 2010 | Comments
One of my favorite features of Apple’s Mac OS X is the clean and simple media players bundled within. But I often find myself wanting to watch a movie without my remote in hand, and was distressed to see that Apple implemented entirely different keyboard shortcuts for the transport controls in QuickTime 7, QuickTime X, and Front Row.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 26. Feb, 2010 | Comments
HP recently commissioned Tolley Group to benchmark their BladeSystem c7000 against the Cisco UCS 5100. The short report focuses on two results, and reads like so many competitive benchmarks in the IT industry: Tolley focuses on metrics that highlight the strength of HP’s solution and the weaknesses of Cisco’s. What’s the real value of pinpoint maximum-performance benchmarks like this?
Posted by Stephen in Personal on 22. Feb, 2010 | Comments
I really dislike non-disclosure agreements, but NDAs are a fact of life in the IT industry. Even folks like me that actively avoid NDAs sometimes have to sign the paperwork to gain access to people or information, and employers regularly require such an agreement as a condition of employment. I suspect most folks try to respect and uphold the agreements they do sign, but this doesn’t stop slip-ups. So let me take a few minutes of your time to pass along my top-10 tips to avoid violating NDAs!
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Personal, Virtual Storage on 12. Feb, 2010 | Comments
Although “don’t be evil” isn’t Google’s official corporate motto, the company and its admirers have embraced the concept implicitly and explicitly. But pride goeth before a fall, and the buzz around Google isn’t just about their new social networking feature: Cynicism and disillusionment with Google is growing.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage on 03. Feb, 2010 | Comments
In this video, I present the shortcomings of traditional tiered storage and propose a solution: Although merely using different disk types will never deliver the goods, adding flash and cloud to an integrated, automated solution will be truly revolutionary. I look forward to the day when all of today’s buzz-worthy technologies (flash, cloud, thin provisioning, automated tiering, post-RAID) are mixed together to form a really revolutionary storage system.
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Personal on 01. Feb, 2010 | Comments
With my Cardo Scala abandoned in a New York taxi and my Motorola H800 falling apart, I decided it was time to pick up a new BlueTooth headset. As luck would have it, I decided to buy on the very day that Aliph released their next-generation Jawbone headset, the ICON.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 01. Feb, 2010 | Comments
Only mature technologies are taken seriously and granted equal status when enterprise architectures are defined. That’s why I’m pleased to see today’s announcement that CommVault has completely integrated API-driven public cloud storage with Simpana, their impressive data protection and archiving suite. Now there are three equal backup targets: Tape, disk, and cloud.
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home on 28. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Drobo is adding support for 4K-sector “Advanced Format” drives across their product line, but others do not seem as responsive.
Posted by Stephen in Apple on 27. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Apple introduced their “magical” iPad today, demonstrating impressive updates to iWork but focusing on home and consumer applications. The company never mentioned business applications beyond Keynote presentations, leaving a question as to whether they support Exchange ActiveSync like the iPhone family.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 21. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Concluding my series on vendor bloggers, I present my own experiences wearing multiple hats and trying to remain credible.
© 2009 Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat. All Rights Reserved.
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