Gmail Calendar – Where do you live?

Posted: 11:29 pm
March 8, 2006
Google, Web 2.0
6 Comments

There are more than a few screenshots over at TechCrunch talking about Google's new calendar software. Ajax based, integrated into gmail, portable, yada, yada, yada. I'll spare you the tech details, suffice to say its yet another web calendar. Nothing new here, all portals have had sucky web based calendars for ages. What is more interesting is the amount of interest and need people have for a Google-delivered calendar software. This is, by far, the most expected and desired feature since Outlook Web Access back in 2003. I have never seen more people look forward to a product this much and desire it so bad. Now if Google is smart enough to build in sharing to this calendar it may be a defacto winner on the day it launches. Why? Full integration. Look at Gmail. It integrates (albeit sucky) chat client, file storage, pop3 access, group subscriptions, tagging, flagging and no advertising on outbound or inbound mail (unlike Yahoo). So basically with a calendar this is a lightweight Outlook Web Access with more features and pesky side-text ads? Now as a standalone this is no match for Outlook or OWA. But if it gets any level of management, sharing and policies…. Well, it becomes a fight over the desktop (yes, again) and where you spend your day. I spend more time in Outlook than any other app. If that app suddenly becomes a web page does it take a lot of people away from the Office suite by default? Thats a big question. What is interesting is the amount of people that say "Hey, check out Google *.*, I use and love it." – Thats what everyone was saying about Outlook 2003 when it launched and now those words are associated with Google. Would you switch? or have you already? And yes, sucky is my new word of the day.

Lamborghini Laptop?

Posted: 4:39 pm
March 8, 2006
Gadgets, IT Culture
2 Comments

How much would you pay for a $1200 laptop that has a shiny coat of paint on it? If your answer is "about three times that much" I have some great news for you. Asustech will be making a new Intel laptop in collaboration with Lamborghini. This is great news for rich idiots everywhere, but it also marks a day in which Intel departs for obsolescence and starts following not just good but also bad AMD ideas. We're seeing a big change of guard here. Google. Apple. Linux. AMD. IT is certainly a lot different today than it was even four years ago.

Hands off my youngin’ Microsoft!

Posted: 11:18 pm
March 7, 2006
IT Business, Microsoft
8 Comments

My Golden Boy has a very interesting post of Microsoft going around him to reach the client he nominated for a promotion. Ouch. So not only are Microsoft partners completely abandoning the hope in Microsoft of ever developing secure software, combatting piracy, direct competition on ISV and service fronts but we must now even filter out the promotions we participate in? Bad PR move guys, very bad PR move. You can play dirty with your customers all you want, but if you go against your partners they just might find alternatives you so desperately do not want them to see. But why a bad PR move? Well, if you're going to mess with someones business I'd expect you to pick on JimmyBob Budlight, the Action Pack pirate. I would not expect you to go after an influential Gold Certified Partner that reaches over 20,000 partners a week. Update: Now I wish this person had left their name so we can follow up on this, so at the time I am going to call this BS. But anybody else with experience similar to below:

I had the SAME thing happen and my client conferenced me in. Apparently they wanted to make sure that the work they needed done was taken care of by a partner with the most competence in that field. They were going to take my customer and send them over to another partner. Great.

SBS & Mobility Whitepaper

Posted: 11:08 pm
March 7, 2006
Mobility
Comments Off on SBS & Mobility Whitepaper

The SBS & WM5 whitepaper has been released earlier this week. Download it here. I was on the edit team and was not paid so if you don't like it…. $245 to answer questions. Really its quite good, the only missing thing is the part about the ISA 2000 paper. I guess they were really aiming for the sales-side and ground-level technicians and assumed people didn't use ISA 2000 in SBS which is why you won't be able to use this document to get push mail to work. As a slightly higher end resource, check out the Inside SBS podcast on mobility which aired recently. Peter was also on the edit team and was the first one of us to get MSFP so if you've got $245 he is the man to call. I'm installing the new PBX so I probably won't pick up the phone 🙂 Update: Apparently I did not get the final published doc, in which the stuff bounced between me, Mike, Vanitha and Lawrence ended up in the doc. Thanks to Michael Cocanower for bringing this up to my attention.

Inside SBS Podcast, en Espanol?

Posted: 10:27 pm
March 7, 2006
Podcast
5 Comments

Okay, I must admit the PSS guys have beat us up on this one. Despite our strong world-wide audience at the SBS Show even we are not cool enough to have a SAP telecast, check this out: http://blogs.technet.com/sbs_esp/archive/2006/03/06/421330.aspx Yes, thats a hispanic link to the Inside SBS Show podcast. Imagine my surprise. When I got off the floor, cleared the bump on my head and emailed el jefe of the Inside SBS I was given the following feedback:

El español no es el más dificil de las siete idiomas que hablo. ¿Pues, cuando vas a enseñar HappyFunBoy alguno de las lenguas slavicas y hacer un podcast que es merecedor de tu nombre? – El Guapo

So for all of you bitching and whining about the sound quality (which they fixed by the way), it could be worse. They could be doing this thing en Espanol! Check out their podcast which will be taped live, tomorrow, on client best practices. They are going to talk about licensing. Load your shotguns gentlemen! Here is a recent picture of Mark and Damian receiving their SBS Show shirts at Microsoft PSS @ Las Colinas (thats actually what Texas looks like for some of you that have never been): On a side note, SBS Show #18 will be out tomorrow. Amy Babinchak talks about ISA 2004 for you and your clients. If I had a penny every time I've had to explain what a firewall is, what is the difference between hardware and software, and how to sell it on more than security.. well, Amy knocked it right out. P.S. They are NOT doing the show in Spanish, its just a Spanish blog. Just to clear that up because Susan just forwarded this post to like 8 million people.

Vladville: Nastier than ever

Posted: 12:10 pm
March 5, 2006
Misc, Vladville
5 Comments

Vladville is back and its nastier than ever. Early Friday I went to Dallas to work on a few systems and do major overhaul of Vladville. Thanks in part to the SBS Show this site now sustains the kind of traffic that makes my customers cry when I show them a quote proposal. Seeing how everyone is paying so much money for this content, I decided to stop the bleeding and move Vladville onto Cogent. Cogent is the 6th biggest network world-wide, tier-1 bandwidth carrier (meaning they don't pay for peering) and most notorious for hosting porn sites. So expect nudity! Cogent is something you usually would not give to your worst enemy. It had such a bad track record of routing packets on its own network through some 20 routers before it reached its destination nearly 20 feet away. It also had a shady past with PSI net and more recently for not agreeing to a peering arrangement with Level 3 where for a good part of a week if you were on Cogent and your customer was on Level 3 (or vice versa) your packets were not getting there. In data center talk its almost a profanity to mention its name, some even advertise under "NO Cogent" flag. Very amusing. But in January Marc Urchin was giving me a tour of the expansion one of our Dallas DC's was undergoing and I asked about the Cogent plans. Same usual laughs and potshots but when I asked about the reliability he told me it was out for five minutes in 2005. Five minutes? I've floored Vladville for a day and didn't notice. I forgot to close an XML tag on the SBS Show feed which knocked it out for almost two weeks. I can handle five minutes! Whats a little interesting is that Vladville is no longer capped and provides no QoS at all – meaning when you hit this site is goes at 20 Mbps if I got it! Costs slightly less than what I paid for even 1Mbit of sustained traffic on Internap. Plus you gotta love the neighbors. Now how do I abuse this bandwidth?

Off to Dallas

Posted: 8:41 am
March 3, 2006
Misc, Vladville
Comments Off on Off to Dallas

Off to Dallas to do some work. Hopefully this place will be a LOT faster when I'm done on Saturday. Look for a bunch of blog posts as I'm bored to death in the data center.

First public MSFP distro in the wild!

Posted: 9:35 pm
March 2, 2006
Mobility
1 Comment

The subject line says it all: Microsoft (well, iMate) finally delivers on the promise of push mail. Blackberry, R.I.P. http://msmobiles.com/news.php/4983.html

Best Buy vs. SMB IT Consulting: Part 2

Posted: 10:45 am
March 2, 2006
IT Business, SMB
12 Comments

Following up on the previous post from John Holmblad of Televerage International, here is the callback that was promised. Scared yet?

I received a return call this A.M. from the Business Technology Consultant (BTC) who serves the BB for B stores to which I referred in my earlier post on this subject. We spoke for about 10 minutes and I learned the following: * He is "on the road" for all but, in his estimation, 10 minutes per week * Each customer gets a written proposal for equipment, software, and services, based on the customer's needs * He obviously had been trained in Microsoft marketing speak because he used the term "customer pain points" * For expertise in a particular product/technology they always try to find an expert from within the BB for B "family" first and only go outside in cases where there is nobody from within BB for B who is a) competent and b) available to contribute * All of the BB for B BTC's and Business Technology Professionals are trained on SBS and by now they should all have earned their SBSC. I am not sure that this is an enforced condition for continued employment however. * They do offer customers the option of a level price maintenance agreement with quarterly payments. Currently they do not provide remote Network/Server Monitoring and Management services but BB for B is starting to work with a provider of such services and may roll out a new service component that includes this in the not-to-distant future. The BTC thinks that BB for B may be offering it on an ad hoc basis in some other areas of the country. I mentioned the names of three of the larger ones I am familiar with but those names did not ring a bell with the BTC.

Paris Hilton vs. Nano-technology

Posted: 11:38 pm
March 1, 2006
Gadgets
3 Comments

The cure for an obnoxious loud blonde is a'comin in a form of nano-technology laced paint. Supposedly, painting your walls with this paint will block cell radio signals but allow other signals used for emergency. According to Engadget, this was one of the biggest obstacles to mass adoption of cell-blocking paint (that it blocked all radio transmissions) and then there was that cancer thing.