• Business,  sites

    Google Outage

    May 22, 2009

    When a large company loses email and other services the help desk is abuzz with calls.  But who do you call when an outsourced vendor goes down?  I’ve read a number of reports about the Google outage from a few days ago.  Having millions of users without service, or with deprecated service, is a lot of potential calls.  Just like tens of thousands in an enterprise is  lot when those users cannot access email.  In the reports I’ve read people were taking a very strong stance on the outage, not necessarily with Google directly, but identifying cloud support options across the board as having “no one to call.”  Really?  There’s…

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  • personal

    Fun with Google Maps

    April 28, 2009

    Open up Google Maps and search for 8 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh, PA. This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on Google Maps. There was an old picture of the 318 offices, which showed me going over the fence one day when I locked my keys in the office that I thought was funny (because it was me mostly), but this is way better – and it got me to thinking about what else people have come across that Google has captured in action. Another that my wife mentioned to me is Liam Gallagher, frontman from Oasis, outside his favorite pub (he denies this is him btw). There are…

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  • VMware

    VMware for Mobile Devices

    April 11, 2009

    I am one of those weird techies that just likes a phone that works. It seems like the more I do to my phone, the less it works. Therefore, I don’t do much to my phone at all any more. I guess VMware is trying to change that. You see, if I had a bunch of Virtual Machines on my phone then I would have infinitely more games to waste time playing while waiting in line at the bank (OK, so who goes to the bank any more – whatever), I would be able to test code and sites from multiple OS’s and I would be able to hack around…

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  • Business

    A Saturated Cloud Backup Market

    December 9, 2008

    It’s not that it all started with Amazon, but they were certainly the ones to mainstream cloud-based storage.  Now, there are a variety of services such as Mozy (with CrashPlan) and BackBlaze from some of the smaller, niche  players (both of them support the Mac) to Apple (can you say Mobile Me), Microsoft, Amazon (who now supports Windows Server and SQL Server), Google, Symantec, EMC and others for some of the more major players. According to James Staten of Forrester research, the cloud computing bubble will burst in 2010, if not before.  At that point, we’re likely to start seeing far more feature rich applications start getting released and one…

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  • Articles and Books

    The Seven Wonders of the Internet World

    September 22, 2008

    The Google Search Engine is probably the top wonder in the Internet world.  Why, because it’s just so friggin’ huge!  But, also because it involves Google Maps, is integrated with gMail and well, is just a better engine than the other’s.   Wikipedia – and don’t forget specialty wiki’s like http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page or even (as depressing as it may be) the wikia 90210 page. Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com and LinkedIn – oh and digg and delicious too…  Social networks are today’s iteration of what we thought virtual reality would be.  They get better every year, with the exception of New Facebook, which isn’t actually as cool IMO as old Facebook.…

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