Where the Gibbs elite meet to eat (and blog).
Mark,
It's been a while since you posted this article. Ceedo has changed a lot since then. Before I go into that, though, I'd like to point out an error that you made in your article. You said "Once installed, Ceedo can be configured to launch when Windows starts."
Read more
After reading your article about Jott, I decided to sign up a give it a try. I loved it! However, on the fourth try, I sent myself several messages in a row - probably around five. When I got to my destination to check my Jott's on my email, I had instead recieved a message that my account was flagged for suspected fraud. It would be investigated and reinstated. As of yet, it has not been. Several emails to the company's email address has returned no results. I cannot log in to the account and there are no phone numbers to talk to a person to help me. There is nothing I can do. Any suggestions?
Setting aside the success point of view, I do not see how Whyville and Small Worlds are any comparison to Second Life. Check out HiPiHi and Novoking. Those two are much more similar in style and substance to Second Life. {:D
try looking into SPF, which applies to people sending email as your domain. it would be nice to see you write an article on that topic, as it is similar in nature. and altough I do not read all of your articles, you are one that I look fo when i have time to read some of the 300 subscriptions that I receive. I will look in hopes of your future SPF article! thank you! Have A Great Day! m.
Found on Reuters.
reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews...oddlyEnoughNews
I hear ya, I think!
Read more
What's in this for the Scribd people?
Perhaps a scripted access to an open-source CVS or Subversion site could serve just as well, what with the commit, update, import, and export capabilities.
SnapYap also offers free video conference calling, and has a great user interface with no storage limits.
http://www.piclens.com/site/firefox/win/
Amazing picture viewer.
Most of this 'stuff' (distributed vendor software and services) is an assembled mass of hype and hoopla, and acronyms, lots and lots of acronyms. Once purchased and attempts made to implement, the hype and hoopla become anomalies, which translates into much American dollars. The computer rooms are now larger than they were in 60's and 70's, need more environmental controls, and power, lots and lots of power. The distributed platform predecessor, the mainframe, is now housed in the computer room closet, guess the lights actually did go out for that platform! I can't figure it out though, it was suppose to go the other way! Have we re-learned anything yet?
Regards to the Curmudgeon.
uh, have you checked outhttp://snappville.com/ which does the same thing and part of google. Google even let's you add your ads from your account. Just a thought.
An odd review, to say the least. Somehow it seems that the reviewer is at controversy with himself as to what he really expects from his ideal of an ebook.
On one hand, it should be "as simple as a real book" (hence the sixteen buttons, ten of which are used to pick page numbers attracted the merciless verdict: "This is a mistake."). On the other hand, it is supposed to have "more functionality", most notably the infamous Search Button.
Read more
I concur with the observation about multitasking as a reason why people won't turn cameras on. Starting in the late 90s I noticed people (myself included) who started staying in cubes/offices and calling into meetings even if they were only a few steps down the hall from the conference room. Reason: Internet access. (Checking/sending email, browsing web, IM, etc.) No one wants to be observed while they are not paying attention to the meeting they are supposed to be in. Whether we are suppose to be writing code, designing circuits, writing product requirements, reading specifications, calling customers, etc. we are all now being constantly interrupted with trivial communication events.
Read more
Go to http://www.amazon.com and search for Aliph Jawbone, select one of the models, scroll down to the user comments section. The ratings are all over the map from fabulous to really stinks. I normally shy away from products where there is that little consensus. If this had been a really good bluetooth headset, most users would have agreed, giving it 4s and 5s for the rating.
Any other software that puts you in violation of your license terms. Not just any other software, right?
One reason to ask for City/State and ZIP is that some ZIP codes cross city boundries... For example, is 94610 Oakland or Piedmont, CA? Both.
It is a real shame that, with so many FREE [opensource] and true standards-based products of all sorts and categories available, that you seem to only promulgate Microsoft[MS] based-type products. It could lead the lesser initiated masses to think this is the only way to go!?! So, . . when might I begin to see more articles in the direction of where things truly work as advertised, not Microsoft-tized?
Read more
I think there is a little too much hand wringing here going on by Mark. My understanding is that these are tools that are widely available either in exact code or in similar functionality. Mark, the hackers are smarter than you think, they have their own version of COFEE, and in all likelihood it is much better.
Quote from the article:
"Active interference with a botnet may carry serious legal consequences for researchers, since the botnet hosts are effectively computer systems belonging to third parties, who ordinarily are unaware that their systems are being misused."
And we wonder why the bots are beating us? This type of research and activity should be welcomed and not touted as being illegal just as the bots are illegal.
fdunn3
I think this scenario is indicative of a society, filled with fear and paranoia, which has gotten out of control.
Instead of addressing the causes of crime, we apprehend people, tag and categorize them and throw them into a storage facility for hazardous material.
Read more
Hi Mark
Thanks for the great review and all the referrals! Just wanted to let you know that we are launching our own blog platform in Q3, and it will be tightly integrated our existing workflow, to keep the simplicity consistent!
Thanks again!
Vinny Lingham
CEO, SynthaSite
Attributing a problem to virtualization can only be substantiated when the problem is resolved and root cause determined. Until then, you can throw around suppositions but have no significant leverage behind your point of view.
Frequently, it really is ignorance, but not wilful ignorance. Compare it to smoking. It's been very widely reported that smoking is bad for you. Smokers aren't ignorant of that, but they smoke anyway. But let's make smoking more like the world of online risk: Suppose some cigarettes are actually beneficial or necessary. Suppose also that the good and the bad cigarettes look and feel pretty much the same to most people, and there are no warning labels on the bad ones. Suppose even further that many people have ignorant friends and relatives who spread misinformation about what's risky and what's not.
Those who have trouble distinguishing the risky from the non-risky aren't being wilfully ignorant.
Read more
I can see "twittering", since that has been the most popular application, but "blog" itself is a very unfortunate choice of name, and "microblogging" even more so. If I caught myself coining such a word, I would do my very best to try to find a way to contort my body enough to kick myself in the head for such an affront.
I think this is exactly the example that points out how wrong the entire article is.
I have several bank accounts for different purposes. Some are with credit unions, some with investment institutions, and at least one holds my mortgage.
They all seem to want to offer their own form of electronic banking, but none follow a particular standard other than their own.
Using Quicken on my own PC at least gives me some control over the way my accounts look. If there was a bank to customer standard for file transfer that was agreed on, I might use some other software, but I've left banking institutions because of service fees for online access.
Excellent resource - I'd been using a few of the rogue sites in recent months, but Modern Feed looks great. Thanks for the tip.
GC has a very bad feature called call presentation. If you receive a call, you MUST press 1 (2, 3, 4) before you can talk to the incoming call. If you have a bluetooth, this is almost impossible while driving or if your hands are busy.
This "feature" cannot be turned off.
Jim
While I'm fond of federated identity, and I think SAML and OpenID are great, this is no standard, and it went through no standards body.
Ease of use is probably not the most compelling reason to implement the specifications, though. Federated identity introduces additional clicks and more complicated user interaction, at least unless Cardspace is successful.
The stronger use case is probably sharing of trusted identity information between organizations.
And if we never have downloaded music and have no interest in it we get taxed. That is fair...
It continues to amaze me that those who have grown up with the Bill of Rights (e.g.; most of the FCC and the administration) have so little understanding or respect for it. Apparently, there is no realization that the rules they champion could, in a slightly different environment, be applied to their own cherished beliefs. We must defend the ugly, wrong, or distorted speech, or be prepared to lose our own ability to present reasoned, logical, and correct opinions. And using "the children" as the excuse and shield for otherwise unacceptable positions is both cowardly and disturbingly elitist. It is my understanding that Mr. Gibbs was not born in the US, but traveled here.
Read more
A major issue with SaaS is also that you lose control of your compliance and governance responsibilities. Can you demonstrate SOX or PCI compliance?
Lookup locations with nearby wiki's worldwide on satellitepictures easy by address?
A combination of Googlemaps mashup, Wikipedia information and thirdparty addressdata with address suggestion.
Also take a look at trafficjamlocations in the Netherlands with thier average length in graphics?
http://www.traffic2graphics.nl
I think the problem is everything that users ask for from Microsoft has to go through the Microsoft Translation Engine. For example, if you type the word "faster" into the MSTE, you get back "DRM." If you type "useful" you get "UAC." See how simple that is?
Mark: I thought the Internet's commercialization was in 1995 when the non-commercial use policy changed with the end of federal funding... or are you using the first Interop conference in 1988 as the trigger?
We have a businessman in town that has been using a cell phone connected to a regular video camera to videostream school and community events for the last couple of years or more. Go to http://www.glenwoodsports.com to see some of the videos. The cool thing is that you don't need a special Nokia phone to do it.
I bought the same drive and added it as a third drive to my XP system. Now Pinnacle Studio hangs! Could there be an issue with the drive?
Stay tuned as I work this out.
A good list, many items on which hit close to home. I would add technology companies that refuse to sell directly to customers but have clueless resellers who don't understand the products. Just last month, I called called a manufacturer, got referred to a reseller who had me call a contact at the manufacturer to figure out what product configuration I needed. This very knowledgeable guy couldn't give me a price, though, and bounced me back to reseller guy so I could play phone tag for three days. All manufacturers who use this model should regularly have a "secret shopper" call up the reseller to see just how their products are being represented.
I suspect that there’s no Web application that won’t eventually acquire a whole slew of social networking features. Rather than just doing whatever their core competency is it seems that every startup along with many established Web applications provides friends, comments, content voting, messaging, and so on.
This makes me wonder how quickly the gloss will fade for users as they wind up with yet another set of similar social networking services for every Web application they sign up for. The challenge for Web Applications that aren’t intrinsically focused on social networking (that is, social networking isn’t a core feature of what they do) is to partner with companies that are social networking focused.
Read more
Someone has such built a similar animal where I work - you upload a file, other folks can make changes, and anyone can set an alert to know changes were made. You also have the ability to open up the area to all, limit an area, or limit a specific file. The few differences that I can tell are instant notification (versus alerts of any changes withing last day or last 4 hours) and "web page" like files.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for mentioning us! There's a slight error regarding pricing - right now, brokers may post listings for free during our beta period (set to last a few more months). Owners however, will never be charged for posts.
Adrian Liang
FlyRig.com
The point of my message the Mark Gibbs was that merchants have more options. To put my quote back into context, here is the complete message:
Hi Mark,
It may be worth mentioning that ProStores has a Reseller Channel, a
Certified Designer Network and an Authorized Developer Network capable
of supporting end users who wish to customize their ProStores stores.
Neoverve is a charter member of the ProStores Developer Network and
Certified Designer Network. We are also a Master Reseller of
ProStores. ProStores is our primary focus and we have been hosting,
developing and designing custom stores on this platform for eight
years. Our ProStores merchants consider Neoverve as their Strategic
Partner for eCommerce.
Customizing any eCommerce application is difficult for the vast
Read more
Just tried it out with a couple of business associates and it's real easy to setup. Real easy to change things (I mistakenly set it up for 11:30pm and changed it to 11:30am). The call was clear, the powerpoint slide presentation seemed a little slow and jerky, but for free - it's really nice.
Thank you for the tip!
It's awesome!
Mike,
This eCommerce research effort of yours is an incredibly valuable topic to me and many others that have online stores. We want some integration with our QB's to end the mindless, error-prone, time-consuming re-entry of data. I've spent many hours trying to find out what is really being offered by the stores you have investigated as well as other 'conversion tools' and I haven't made a move (from my Yahoo hosted store) out of fear that I'll only really discover the pitfalls of an ecommerce offering once I'm heavily invested in it. KEEP UP THIS TOPIC!!! THANKS.
Full Disclosure: I am a Sage Software Business Partner - while I don't deal in the MAS500 product line - I know plenty of people who do. So I am NOT independent with respect to the comments I am making.
Probably 75% of my business is rescuing the Digital Warehouse's of the world. It probably could easily be 100% - but we turn away 25% (or more) as salvageable.
Where do I see people go wrong? (I'll be brief)
1. Relying on a free demonstration - and not entering into a conference room (paid) pilot - not sure if this is the case here as the words "needs analysis" were used.
2. Trying to push a lousy existing system (that users hate) into a new system - feature for feature. The result - a lousy new system with similar features that users always hated.
Read more
I’m wondering how much IT budgets might be cut …
In a February 6th teleconference with financial analysts Cisco CEO John Chambers said that in the quarter ending in April the company’s revenue would increase by just 10 percent. As the company’s forecast had been for a revenue growth of between 13 percent to 16 percent for the 2008 fiscal year Wall Street wasn’t at all happy with the news and the stock trade volume jumped up by just over 47 percent and although the share price dropped 8 percent at the start of the 7th it recovered to end the day more or less where it had ended the previous day.
What did Chambers blame most of the revenue fall off on? Yep, you guessed it, the financial sector but hard on their heels (or perhaps that should be “soft on the heels”) came “retailers as well as automakers and other transportation companies” (see Business Week). Surprisingly Chambers didn’t have anything to say on the effects of the softening candlestick makers market.
Overall, the financial analysts see Cisco’s softening market as indicative of an overall weakening of market confidence and a herald of what will become a serious cutback in IT spending across the board.
So, are you prepared for budget cuts? What gets cut first? I’m betting new projects will be at the top of the list but after that what?
And if the cuts go really deep when does it all start to implode? What’s the event horizon where the budgetary black hole reduces IT capability beyond the point of no return?
Dear Mr. Gibbs,
I feel your pain. But the fact is that most ecommerce "solutions" still fall short of customer needs, especially in terms of harnessing opportunities throughout the vast global market.
Imagine for a moment a simple to implement and manage e-business service that empowers companies of all sizes to effectively compete with Fortune 500 firms by allowing them to take B2B and B2C orders in the language and currency their customers prefer using to shop on their sites.
Read more
It was on this date one year ago that Sean and Peter crippled Boston with Mooninite Madness.
Refuse to be Terrorized!
Mark, thanks for the kind writeup. One small correction -- SMS works from anywhere, but the phone number is in the UK. We do hope to be creating SMS gateways in other countries, though.
I just read a mail list posting in which a friend explained how he had to shut down and number of servers in a data center for facilities maintenance for the first time in six years -- the machines had all been running non-stop for the whole time. On restart a significant number failed because -- it is suspected -- the power supplies which could supply power for normal operation could no longer handle startup conditions! The suspicion is that electrolyte evaporation in the PSU capacitors is the most likely cause!
Wow. Is there a disaster waiting to happen in your data center? I did a quick search on this topic but not being an electrical engineer I may not have been using the right search terms. Anyone know anything about this problem?
In Network World this week there's an article titled "IBM's fight over Web 2.0 will dwarf past clashes against Microsoft". The proverbial bottom line of this article is that IBM is going to flood the market with advanced products and services based on Web 2.0 technologies and then beat us to death with a marketing tsunami that will rock the worlds of Microsoft, Cisco, and everyone else who stands in their path to world domination.
We've seen IBM re-invent themselves several times and there's a lot of evidence that they can do the same thing in the Web 2.0 world ... at least on the products and services side. But is that what Web 2.0 really is?
I've been pondering the Web 2.0 market and while there are all sorts of standards, products, and services that you can point to as being typical of Web 2.0-type "stuff" what really stands out as the big emergent property of this market can be summed up by one word: "mashup."
The greatest generator of mashups so far has been Google with the whole universe of "mashapps" that rely on Google Maps. From Trulia to Twitter Google Maps have transformed the use of mapping. And that's just a single service in a universe of mashable Web service APIs!
The true nature of Web 2.0 is collaborative business processes that integrate to create hyper-applications. Different vendors providing services based on their core expertise that are mashed with other services from other expert service providers to create applications that benefit from the knowledge of legions of experts not from just one small pool of programmers.
The real test of IBM's products and services will be how nicely they can play with other service providers and product developers. If IBM does get this aspect of their Web 2.0 strategy in place and working they could indeed dominate the market. Microsoft, Cisco: Are you ready to play too?
|
|
