Microsoft Accelerator
Powered by TechStars

Everyone keeps asking me what it’s like to go through an accelerator program. I got asked after we graduated from The Founder Institute, and I’ve gotten asked repeatedly as we’ve been going through the Microsoft Accelerator powered by TechStars.

The long answer is below (as best I can put to words)…but the short answer is:

You can’t describe it with words.

That should make this an interesting post, ‘eh?

Bryan and I have always wanted to get into a TechStars program, and when the Microsoft Accelerator came along…wouldn’t couldn’t resist applying (TechStars runs the program for Microsoft).

My company, Embarke, is next-generation analytics for messaging.  We increase engagement and revenue for marketers with 15 minutes of integration and a simple click of a button.  We automatically deliver messages when each individual user is most likely to engage, and with content they actually care about.

We were NOT that company when we entered the program.

Al + Bryan on Microsoft BizSpark Facebook Page (the flight to Seattle)

The program was up in Seattle, so my co-founder Bryan and I left our families behind for 3.5 months.  Bryan had 3 kids under the age of 10 he’d never been apart from for more than two days!  We also left our 3-man team of rock-star developers in San Diego.  It was impossible for even those we speak with daily to follow along with the insane pace of learning, growth and change we were moving at.  We regularly crammed 3 days of business into a single day.  Our moods and enthusiasm shifted constantly, the direction we were taking Embarke was akin to a ping-pong ball bouncing jerkily past the hundreds of Plinko spikes of opportunity.

We met with more amazing people than I can even count.  Hundreds, literally.  Many were mentors that are intimidatingly successful and miles ahead of where we are as entrepreneurs.  Others were potential customers at companies that we would have struggled to get access to on our own.  Yet there we were, meeting with CXOs and talking strategy, business, future, deals, and everything else as if we were peers.  Every day.  Multiple times per day.  I expect many of the friendships and relationships we’ve built through this program to last a long time, if not a life time.

We knew we had a good business…
but it wasn’t good enough.

Whenever we spoke with family or our team, we were off on a new exploratory tangent as we dialed in what Embarke was going to be.  Our family and even teammates thought we were insane.  How could they possibly be talking about this, when we just talked about that yesterday?!  See, we came into TechStars with a business:  We had a live product, we had customers, we were moving forward and getting great traction and publicity.  We had a good business.  Within just a couple of weeks, we knew it wasn’t good enough.  We wanted to build a great company, and had to figure out our path to that goal.

This was not easy.

Much like this article – you can’t describe it in words, or over the phone.  You have to experience it.  I recommend any serious entrepreneur should go through a program like this.  It will forever change you.

Side note – the next Microsoft Accelerator has already been announced,
so get your application in (Feb 3 deadline).  I’m looking at you!

Thankfully, my wife came up a couple times and two of our developers made the trip up for a week each…so they got to see the awesomeness of the insanity first hand!  Phew.  We’re not crazy, they get it now…because they got the opportunity to live through it for a few days.

Microsoft + TechStars “Mood-Biz-Traction-Chaos” Chart

Throughout the program I took various notes and actually graphed a few metrics such as:

• Mood - How was I feeling, both mentally and physically?
• Business - Was it defined?  Do we know who we are?
• Traction - Who are our customers?  Do we have any?
• Chaos - How crazy is the program right now?  (Crazy = Good!)

Enjoy the graph, and make your own assumptions about it!  It’s pretty clear that the program ramped up quickly and never really slowed down.  It’s also clear that our business concepts changed dramatically during the early stages of the program.  We ran down ideas and theories, tested and validated them as quickly as possible…thus the spikey-ness of the graph.  As stated, we had customers coming into the program, but over time they became less of our focus…even though the new business model is a good fit for them.

The point at which we realized that our existing customers might not be our long-term customers
…was an eye-opener.

Embarke Business Model Canvas – Early On

The most dramatic shift, however, was my overall mood and emotional state.  There was a pretty serious dip in the middle as Bryan and I pressed ourselves to find a better business opportunity.  Our mentors pushed us to dig deep, take big steps backwards, look at what we care about, and drive towards finding a big opportunity.  There were days where I wondered if we’d ever figure it out.  We knew we had a good business to fall back on, but that simply wasn’t good enough for us.  We wanted more, and we were struggling to find it.

Bryan and I have known each other for almost two years now, and in this time we have always been able to come to terms with disagreement…even when it’s become heated.  We’ve always had the ability to step back and go down the correct path…regardless of who was right or wrong in the debate.  We’re driven, but not so egotistical that we can’t admit we might be wrong.  This middle point in the program was, by far, the most challenging time for us in our relationship as co-founders.

We struggled to agree, we argued a lot, and we challenged ourselves to find validation for our visions.

It was dark and gloomy in entrepreneurial land!  Welcome to running a startup at light-speed.  Hell, welcome to running a startup at all.  The only difference here is that the highs and lows are hourly instead of weekly!  <laughs>  This is the life we chose.  This is why we’ve chosen to put ourselves through the accelerator programs we have.

As my wife would say, “This is the box you checked.”

We kept driving.  We kept pushing.  We kept searching, testing, and validating.  We managed to pull through it and come out on top with an amazing business, customers that are begging for our product, and a deep partnership with SendGrid.  In 108 days (including holidays), we managed to cram in at least 365 days of work, effort, and execution.  16-hour days, nearly every day, including weekends…and holidays.  Intense mentorship and customer development…and we are much better entrepreneurs because of it.

They don’t call it an accelerator for nothing.
…and wow, they weren’t kidding.

Al pitching to hundreds of investors

In the 5 short weeks our product has been live, we’re processing 25M user actions (opens and clicks) per month and have created over 650,000 user profiles.  Those numbers are increasing rapidly, and the product is already built to handle 40 times this volume.

I can’t even fathom where our company would be today without the program.  If you’re a serious entrepreneur, just apply to an accelerator like Microsoft + TechStars.  Don’t hesitate.  It’s an experience you will never forget, you will grow as a person and entrepreneur, you will build new relationships that you never dreamed, and you will have a jump start on building an enduring and profitable business.

To finish up, I’d like to thank:

• Microsoft for sponsoring such an amazing program and giving more than they got.
• The TechStars Team for running the past 3.5 months like a well-oiled machine.
• The amazing Mentors who kept us on track…but derailed us when necessary!
• Our Customers and Partners for going above and beyond with us, and helping us succeed.
• …and all of our peers in the program.  Amazing Entrepreneurs building Amazing Companies, and I look forward to deepening our friendship and camaraderie through our entrepreneurial adventures!  Be sure to check out these companies…
  They’re ALL the real deal:
  Appetas  |  BagsUp  |  Embarke  |  Fanzo  |  Keebitz
  MetricsHub  |  Mobilligy  |  Realty Mogul  |  Socedo  |  Staq

You can also see snippits of our “Demo Day” pitches in the following video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happens when you cut the cord?

January 25, 2012. That was the day.
(so I’ve had 3 months under my belt)

After years of building home-brew DVR’s, and spending countless monthly dollars on a service I rarely used anymore…I made the move.  Shut it down, turned it off, sent the equipment back!  Now I just have an internet connection.

How do I feel?  Well, like I’ve got a few more dollars in my pocket for one.  Frankly though, not much different.  The wife and I weren’t watching much TV anyway, save for the occasional Modern Family, so outside of the cash outlay not much has changed.

Quite frequently people ask me where and how I consume my video content.  I have this really nice TV attached to my wall.  What the heck do I do with it now?

Here’s the basics of my setup, and how I consume TV-like content.

Set-Top Boxes

AppleTV Set-Top-Box

I have two.

The first is AppleTV.  My photo library as a screen-saver, music from both of our libraries when we wish, movies and TV shows on demand (some for free, many for a fee), access to my Netflix account, all my video Podcasts in iTunes (I subscribe to quite a few), YouTube, and various other plugins that come with the product.  At $100, it’s tough to dismiss…especially if you’re an iDevice household (more on that below).

My other is a Mac Mini that I have running Windows 7 (yes, I did that) and DVR software called Plex.  Plex is a nice DVR-type solution that lets me play my DVDs and Blurays that I have ripped to hard disk.  It does way more than that, but that’s 90% of what I use it for.  Having a computer hooked up to your TV is a nice bonus for various reasons, like a browser or whatever other apps you’re interested in running.  I have a wireless keyboard and mouse tucked away, but I also use Logitech’s TouchMouse app to control it via my iPhone if necessary.

Services / Applications

Plex DVR

I do have a Netflix account, although their streaming movie content is pretty poor.  It accels for kids stuff and documentaries though.  I actually turn the service off somewhat frequently unless there’s something I really want to watch.

iPad apps:

• ABC Player
• NBC
• Crackle (free movies w/commercials)
• Plex (to browse and control what’s on the Mac Mini, or even watch on the iPad)
• TED Talks (watch them, awesome).

Using the iPad or iPhone with an AppleTV is actually pretty awesome.  I’m a PC guy, but Apple does have some cool stuff figured out.  You can push video right from your device to the TV, and the mirroring feature lets you stream your display right to the AppleTV.  Brilliant.

The big question is SPORTS.  How do you get live sports?  My solution to this is simple, but not always the best.  My TV can accept Over The Air (OTA) broadcasts, so, I just use an antenna and pull in some basic channels that way.  Old school, but it works.

A lot of people like Hulu+ but I never bothered with it, don’t seem to need it really.

So that’s about it.  I’m not turning back, no way, no how!  Anyone else take the plunge?  What are your favorite ways to consume post-cable-company?

We’re so excited, we shot a video for it.  Bryan and I chatted for about 15 minutes, then I clipped it down into about 4 minutes of dense content.  Have a watch below, or read the transcript of the Benefits of Microsoft BizSpark Plus.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

An Excerpt:

As Howard Lindzon says, crowdfunding has been around for years. So what’s the big deal with this legislation? Today, if you’re to invest your hard-earned dollars in a company (for equity ownership) you need to be an accredited investor. This is legacy law from years ago when people weren’t empowered with information to make intelligent decisions, as a protection from scams. Back then, it made sense.

I continue to discuss why it passed, why previous laws existed, why it has POTENTIAL to be good for both entrepreneurs and every-day investors like you and me, and who in the startup community is talking about it.

Have a look at the post here, and get your brief education on the subject!
Obama Signs JOBS Act – Crowdfunding Begins…?

Because of this you’d think I might have a clue what I’ve been doing all these years.  I’m confident enough in myself to say, you’d be wrong.  16 weeks ago I started to REALLY realize I had no idea what I was doing.

The Founder Institute (FI) is a technology company “incubator”.  The goal is to help entrepreneurs grow successful companies.  In fact, their goal is to build 1000 companies per year, and the program is well on it’s way to do so.  If you were to dumb down what the program does into one sentence, I would say:  “The Founder Institute is a business-incubation curriculum that surrounds you with successful CEOs (Mentors) that share their mistakes and best practices so you don’t have to suffer the same pain they did while building your business.”

That, however, REALLY doesn’t do the program justice.

The Mentors are aahhh-MAZ-ing.  Seasoned CEOs and Investors that have been there, done that, and exited (in many cases, multiple times over).  They’re available, helpful, generous, and willing to work with you to guide you towards building your company the right way.  The amount of time these guys give us is tremendous and was COMPLETELY unexpected.  You simply can’t get this kind of access and networking without a program like The Founder Institute.  There is a curriculum that you follow each week, and THESE are the guys teaching it to you.  We started with about 25 Founders and about 20 Mentors…a ridiculous ratio!

Not everyone can get into the program though…  You have to go through initial interview, aptitude, and personality testing.  If you’re lucky enough to get past the initial screening and actually get accepted into the program, you still have to get THROUGH it…and 50%-70% do NOT graduate.  We finished with 6 of us.

It is grueling.  It is brutal.  There are piles of assignments to do…but they’re based in the real world and for your company…NOT theoretical crap.  It will push you to your limits, because that’s what the life of an entrepreneur is like.  You will have to present to guys that are so far ahead of you in the entrepreneurial world, it’s occasionally frightening (not to mention intimidating).  They will be blunt and tell you that your idea, your presentation, your research, or your knowledge of your market sucks…but they’ll coach you on how to improve whatever’s wrong in creative ways that push you outside of your comfort zone.  They won’t pull punches, they will grade you and your performance along the way.  You will ask yourself “Why? WHY?!” far too frequently and bang your head against hard objects regularly.

BUT – with all of this comes a level of education, a network, and a family you won’t get from an MBA program.  You won’t get it on-line anywhere.  You won’t get it by going to events and meeting people.  You won’t get it by having 500+ LinkedIn connections.  It’s dense and it’s powerful, and I’m proud to say I’m a graduate.

During the program, I was working 20-30 hours per week as a consultant.  They say you can expect to spend 15-20 hours per week on the program, but I’m pretty sure I was averaging 25 most of the time.  Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it.

If all of this stuff doesn’t sound that great to you, you should probably not apply.  It’s NOT for everyone.  For me, it was 16 weeks of painful awesomeness.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m seriously (SERIOUSLY) happy that it’s over!  I’m just ready to start making my own deadlines and goals, launching a product, and creating my own entrepreneurial chaos.  <smile>

However…if you’ve got the goods to get through a program like this you’ll come out a better entrepreneur, and will have met and worked with incredible people.  You’ll have an amazing network of entrepreneurs, executives and potential investors that could last the length of your career or life.

Frankly, I can’t say enough good things about FI.  It was truly a phenomenal experience…but I’m the type of guy that will get a lot from a program like this.  It fits me well.  It’s up to you to figure out if you are that type of person.  If you’re curious enough, I highly recommend you visit The Founder Institute Website and read EVERYTHING.  There’s a lot of content there, and it’ll help you understand what you’re getting yourself into.

I even met my cofounder while in the program, and we’re on our way to doing some great things with our new company, Embarke.  We’re launching a private beta this month, so watch the video and throw your email into our form so we can let you know when we launch!

Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have further questions about the program.  I’ve already spoken to a few folks about the program in depth, and am happy to do the same for others.  Hit me up in the comments below, or via the contact me page.

Al Bsharah on This Week in Startups

You can see my mug on ThisWeekIn.com Web TV Network today, on their Startups show with Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley.  Amazing guys with amazing insights, been watching their podcast for some time now.

I asked some questions about co-founders and how best to find the good ones.

Have a watch of the show here!  I come on at around the 22 minute mark.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

What's Al's Next Big Thing?

UPDATE:  I’ve found my next big thing, and it’s called Embarke!  I was accepted to the Founder Institute in March of 2011, and graduated after 4 grueling months of entrepreneurial incubation.  I met my cofounder Bryan Hall through the program, and we’ve started a new company.  Our beta was in July 2011, and the rest is (or will be) history.  Have a look at our site, and let us know what you think! http://embarke.com

Original page below.
===

If you’ve found this page, you were probably sent here by a social network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) that allows too few characters to get a point across.

Thanks for getting this far!

Friends, Family and Colleagues: I’m currently in the market for a career shift and decided I might give some of my social networks a shake to see if any apples fall from the tree!

Some of you know me better than others, so a few can probably skip this somewhat self-serving paragraph!  I’m a business minded, technically inclined individual with a wide variety of real-world skills.  I’m currently a consultant as a CTO and a CMO, and I’m looking for a high-level position with an exciting company that can leverage my technical, business, operational, and marketing abilities.

As corny as this may sound – I’m looking for my next big thing, not “just another job” – and would love any help in finding it!

Start-ups with great ideas, co-founders looking for ideas (I have many), established organizations, anything with excitement and energy are on the list.  I’m not married to any particular industry, and might welcome a change as long as my skillsets can be put to good use.

If you or someone you know would like to learn a bit more, check out this page about me.

Thanks VERY much in advance!
Cheers!
AL

It’s the AR.Drone Quadricopter, controlled by an iPhone!

The review includes an unboxing, my first flight (indoors, mistake) including a crash in the sink! Then an outdoor flight and some of my comments on the quadricopter. Fun!

UPDATE 02.04.2011:  So, the battery wouldn’t charge about 3-4 months in and I contacted support.  Parrot (company that created the AR.Drone) responded within 1 business day that they’d be shipping me a new charger within 2 weeks.  Awesome response time, right?  Five weeks later, the charger showed up…and it didn’t fix the problem.  So, now I’m in process of waiting for them to correctly diagnose the issue (i.e. the battery is shot) and then wait for who-knows-how-long to send a replacement.  It’s still a fun product (when it works) but I’m not overly impressed with their service at this point.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Let’s say for example that you wanted to control music in two different rooms.  One room has an amp and speakers (i.e. Home Theater), and the other room has just speakers and no amplification.  Sonos’ cheapest bundle includes a controller and two-room system for $999.  Or, if you wanted to use your iPhone and don’t need a controller you could purchase a ZP90 ($349) for your Home Theater and a ZP120 ($499) for your speakers.  That’s still $848.

My system does nearly the same and only cost me $25 and two old laptops I had laying around (a Compaq Presario 1800T and a Dell Inspiron 8500).  You could use old desktops, laptops, even your iPhone or iPod Touch can act as a speaker (…or AirPort Express, or Apple TV, or Windows, or Linux, or Mac)!  It’s infinitely expandable, works flawlessly, and you can be up and running in as few minutes as it takes you to install some basic software.

My Compaq Presario 1800T was released Circa 2001 and has an Intel Pentium III that’s less than 1 GHz.  My Dell Inspiron 8500 was released Circa 2003 and has an Intel Pentium IV 2.4 GHz processor.  The point is, you can use old hardware that you have no other use for.  That Presario isn’t good for much else these days!

The trick to all this is actually quite simple, and this simplicity comes from a strangely named company Rogue Amoeba.  In fact, their tagline is “Strange Name.  Great Software.”  With this, I must agree!  So, on with the how-to:

Things you’ll need:

1. A music source (iTunes, Pandora, Web Radio, whatever)
2. If you’re using iTunes, an iPhone or iPod Touch will give you a nice remote control
3. To serve up your music: Airfoil for Mac or Airfoil for Windows
4. To listen to your music remotely, any combination of the following: a PC, a Mac, a Laptop, an iPhone or iPod Touch, a Linux Machine, an Apple TV, or an AirPort Express.  EDIT:  Oh, and some kind of powered speakers if you want more juice than your laptop.
5. About 20 minutes.  Seriously, this won’t take long.

My set-up includes the following, and is what I will be describing below:

1. Music Sources: iTunes Library, Pandora
2. Remote Control: iPhone
3. Server: Airfoil for Windows
4. Speakers: Compaq 1800T attached to cheap PC speakers, Dell Inspiron 8500 attached to home theater, and an iPhone connected to a music dock

What do do:

First, download your Airfoil Server (Mac or Windows).  This will eventually cost you a whopping $25, but the trial version will work fine for now in order to test (it will inject noise after a certain amount of time).  It should be installed from the machine that is going to be the source of your music (i.e. where your iTunes library is).  For me, it’s on my main office desktop.

Second, download Airfoil Speakers for whatever systems you’re going to be broadcasting your music.  Launch the application on each system.

Third, launch Airfoil Server and select the application you’d like to “hijack”.  Hijacking may require that Airfoil restarts the application so it may distribute the audio source throughout your Airfoil Speakers.

Once launched, you will see a small control panel listing the speakers you can connect to.  In the screenshot to the right, you will see that my local server (Computer) is active as well as my Living Room (INSPIRONLT7).  My iPhone and Bedroom (COMPAQLAPTOP) are currently inactive and not transmitting (but they are turned on and available).  You can click the blue/black speaker icon on the left to stop/start a system from broadcasting.  You also have individual volume controls for each room to the right.

Fourth, if you don’t already have it installed on your iPhone download the “Remote” application from Apple, Inc.  This application allows you to remotely control iTunes from your phone!

Fifth, kick back and enjoy your tunes throughout your house.  You could be relaxing in the backyard using your iPhone to control iTunes in your office which is broadcasting to everyone at a BBQ located in your living room, outdoor patio, and kitchen.  No kidding!

I’m guessing that might have actually taken you less than 20 minutes.  <chuckle>  I told you it was easy!

Tweaks:

In my setup, I simply power up a laptop and it will automatically start playing music when loaded.  There are two simple steps to accomplish this:

• In Airfoil Server settings, tell it to connect automatically whenever a source goes on-line.
• On each laptop, teach Windows to log in automatically instead of prompting you for a username and password.

Jukebox, anyone?

Have you ever wished you had a jukebox in your house?  Your friends could simply select the songs they WANT to hear, and voila…the jukebox will play them.  I’ll one-up you on that request.  This is likely one of the greatest and least known/used features of iTunes and it’s called iTunes DJ.

Anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch can connect to your iTunes music library and “favorite” songs that they’d like to hear played (simply give them access to your WiFi and tell them to launch the Remote app).  Additionally, if multiple people favorite the same song it’ll rise to the top of the playlist!  It’s truly a fantastic party tool.

Considerations:

• There will be a couple-second delay in what’s played from iTunes and what’s broadcast throughout your house.  This is so the system can buffer a few seconds of music in case there’s a hiccup (it can quickly recover while maintaining synchronization amongst all of your speakers).
• You can only play a single source of music at a time across your speakers.  For me, this is not a big deal, but might be an issue for some that want to have iTunes playing in one room and Pandora in another.

How do you handle your music distribution throughout your home?  Are you doing something similar, vastly different, or unique?  Tell us all about it in the comments!

I made some tweaks today to the new Twitter Widget that was released with BlogEngine.NET 1.6.  I noticed that @User and #Hash tags were not linked up, so I fixed that.

Below is the code you need to modify.  Any GREEN code is new, any BLACK code is code that was already there.  Should be pretty easy to cut/paste it in place.

Option #1: Download the version 1.1 widget.ascx.cs-v1.1 file directly, drop it into your site, refresh.

Option #2: Make the following changes in the file: <root>/Widgets/Twitter/widget.ascx.cs:

Comment this out, or remove it all-together:

//if (title.Contains(“@”))
//continue;

Add the two lines shown here:

twit.Title = ResolveLinks(title);
twit.Title = ResolveUserLinks(twit.Title);
twit.Title = ResolveHashLinks(twit.Title);

Add the green lines below:

    //URL
    private static readonly Regex regex = new Regex(“((http://|https://|www\\.)([A-Z0-9.\\-]{1,})\\.[0-9A-Z?;~&\\(\\)#,=\\-_\\./\\+]{2,})”, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
private const string link = “<a href=\”{0}{1}\” rel=\”nofollow\”>{1}</a>”;
    //@User
private static readonly Regex regex2 = new Regex(“@[a-zA-Z0-9_]*”, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
private const string link2 = “<a href=\”{0}{1}\” rel=\”nofollow\”>{2}</a>”;
//#Hash
private static readonly Regex regex3 = new Regex(“#[a-zA-Z0-9]*”, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
private const string link3 = “<a href=\”{0}{1}\” rel=\”nofollow\”>{2}</a>”;

Add the two green functions below:

    /// <summary>
/// The event handler that is triggered every time a comment is served to a client.
/// </summary>
private string ResolveLinks(string body)
{
return regex.Replace(body, new MatchEvaluator(Evaluator));
}
private string ResolveUserLinks(string body)
{
return regex2.Replace(body, new MatchEvaluator(EvaluatorUser));
}
private string ResolveHashLinks(string body)
{
return regex3.Replace(body, new MatchEvaluator(EvaluatorHash));
}

    /// <summary>
/// Evaluates the replacement for each link match.
/// </summary>
public string Evaluator(Match match)
{
CultureInfo info = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
if (!match.Value.Contains(“://”))
{
return string.Format(info, link, “http://”, match.Value);
}
else
{
return string.Format(info, link, string.Empty, match.Value);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Evaluates the replacement for each @User link match.
/// </summary>
public string EvaluatorUser(Match match)
{
CultureInfo info = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
String user = Regex.Replace(match.Value, “@”, “”);
return string.Format(info, link2, “http://twitter.com/”, user, match.Value);
}
/// <summary>
/// Evaluates the replacement for each #Hash link match.
/// </summary>
public string EvaluatorHash(Match match)
{
CultureInfo info = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
String linktag = Regex.Replace(match.Value, “#”, “%23″);
return string.Format(info, link3, “http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”, linktag, match.Value);
}

And that should do it!

You should follow this upgrade process, but I’ve also added my own summary of the steps I took below.

1. Make a backup!
2. Copy your live web to a test web, if you have the ability to test on another URL.
3. Download the 1.6 files on top of the 1.5 installation.
4. Delete the ExtensionsManager folder.
5. Change permissions on App_Data and Web.Config.
6. If you were using Akismet before, delete the Akismet Extension (leave the new AkismetFilter Extension)
7. Copy your original 1.5 .xml files from the App_Data folder back into the new 1.6 folder, but take care not to overwrite or delete anything new that was added.  Additionally, make sure you MERGE the settings.xml file as there were additional settings added.  The bottom line on this step?  Analyze the directories and file data to assure you’re not losing anything that was added in (and required for) 1.6.
8. Recycle or restart the web site
9. Log in
10. Go to the Extensions admin tab
11. Disable the “Commentor” Extension if you were using it before (it’s now a part of the core)
12. Enable the AkismetFilter Extension (if you were using Akismet before, make sure to enter your account information)
13. Go to the Comments admin tab
14. Under the Configuration sub-tab, update your settings the way you wish!
15. Test your theme and other settings thoroughly (make sure you check your CSS in the upgrade process provided by the BE folks)
16. If all’s well, copy the temporary site to your live site and re-test!

Enjoy the new system.  I’m curious to see if I’ll need to re-add the CAPTCHA Solution, or if this new build will mitigate most SPAM.

How has your upgrade gone?

UPDATE 02.21.2010:  Michael’s post was updated to include a minor tweak required for BlogEngine 1.6 support.

I’ve gotten a fair amount of attention regarding a post which details ways to reduce SPAM within your BlogEngine installation.  Yesterday, I received a comment from Michael Ceranski about a his adaptation of a CAPTCHA implementation.

I’ve installed it here, and it seems to work quite nicely.  A well-done and seamless integration within the AJAX commenting system BlogEngine employs.

Nicely done, and THANKS!
(Check it out here if you missed the link above)

Recognized for Most Innovative Relationship Management in a Downturn Economy

SAN JOSE, CA – 12/02/2009

Official Press Release Here

CenterBeam, an IT outsourcing provider, was named the winner of the “For Better or For Worse” award on November 20, 2009, as part of the second annual Outsourcing Relationship Management Awards – the RMMYs – sponsored by the Outsourcing Institute and Vantage Partners. This award recognizes the service provider with the most innovative approach in helping its customers do more for less in a downturn economy.

Vantage Partners and the Outsourcing Institute established the RMMY Awards in 2008 to broaden the dialogue about the importance of relationship management in achieving value, and to raise the bar for the industry. “Effective governance and relationship management is what sets apart the outsourcing deals that deliver the greatest value from those that fail,” said Danny Ertel, a founding partner of Vantage Partners. “Many providers have learned that it takes more than a few good people to manage a complex relationship to its full potential. The RMMYs shine a much-needed spotlight on those providers that have gone beyond ‘talking the talk’ to actually investing in developing the skills, processes, tools, and metrics to manage relationships effectively.”

“CenterBeam has quickly become an integral and trusted part of the SEMI IT team and helped accelerate our cost reduction initiatives,” states Gil McInnes, CIO of SEMI. “What has impressed me most about our relationship with CenterBeam is their collaborative approach and willingness to bear the risk of our relationship with a short term contract where they are literally earning our business every day. We benefit from a consistent level of IT service and support that allows us to scale up or down on a monthly basis to match our employment levels.”

As the category’s inaugural recipient, CenterBeam was recognized for its ability to help its customers do more with less. “From its short-term contract, to its scalable services and fee structure to its collaborative relationship management approach, CenterBeam’s model impressed the RMMY judges with its ability to incorporate the flexibility needed to stay in step with its clients evolving business conditions, as well as the natural evolution of technology,” states Frank Casale, CEO of The Outsourcing Institute. “CenterBeam provides a noteworthy example of how a world-class managed service provider can partner with its clients for shared success, and certainly something we would hold up for other outsourcing firms to aspire to.”

Winners will be formally honored at an award ceremony as part of the Outsourcing Institute’s “Outsourcing 2.0 Roadshow” on December 3, 2009 at the New York offices of Morrison & Foerster. They will also be promoted at “Outsourcing 2.0 Roadshow” events throughout 2010, and be showcased on www.outsourcing.com. For more information and to register for the Roadshow series and event for winners, please visit: http://www.outsourcing.com/roadshow.

About CenterBeam
CenterBeam is an award-winning managed IT services provider with a rich service portfolio including PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, and network and server management. CenterBeam’s focus is providing mid-sized businesses with Fortune 500-class IT management and services for a fixed monthly fee. CenterBeam’s partner designations include: Intel® Certified – Powered by SpikeSource®, Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, Cisco® Silver Partner, Citrix® Certified Partner, Juniper® Elite Partner, VMware® Authorized Consultant (VAC), and VMware VIP Enterprise Partner. For more information, visit www.centerbeam.com.

About Vantage Partners
Vantage Partners leads the field of relationship management, building on more than 20 years of research and consulting experience with the world’s leading companies. A spin-off of the Harvard Negotiation Project, Vantage Partners helps organizations negotiate and manage their most important business relationships, with key customers, suppliers, and business partners. Vantage works with clients on specific relationships as well as on enhancing their institutional capabilities, to make effective negotiation and relationship management a repeatable process. For more information, please visit: www.vantagepartners.com.

About The Outsourcing Institute
Founded in 1993, The Outsourcing Institute (OI), located at outsourcing.com, is a neutral professional association dedicated solely to outsourcing. As one of the most influential and credible in the outsourcing space, OI is recognized worldwide for its intellectual capital, outsourcing practice expertise and unbiased thought leadership. OI’s commitment to innovation, along with its mission to advance the skills and knowledge of its membership, has made it the most respected and relied upon brand for the outsourcing marketplace. OI’s executive network, which is comprised of more than 70,000 professionals worldwide, looks to OI as the go-to source for outsourcing thought leadership, information and advice. www.outsourcing.com.

# # #

Proof that Apple and Microsoft CAN play nice together!

I was quite pleased somewhat recently when I purchased a Mac Mini and found that my Microsoft Wireless Mouse and Keyboard worked flawlessly with it.  Saves me the hassle and monetary pain of buying something Apple-branded…and I can just get a USB switch to swap between my PC and Mac.  Beauty!  “Apple and Microsoft are playing nice”, I thought to myself.

Then the garage project happened.  As I started digging, I found something that made me stare in shock and awe.

I don’t recall specifically what this chip is for, but I think it might have had something to do with when I upgraded my 48KB memory to a whopping 64KB.  Oh yeah, memory to the max people.  Regardless, I found a couple spare chips in my trip down Apple ][+ memory lane.  One of those chips happened to have both Apple and Microsoft inscribed on it!

Microsoft and Apple on the same chip!

Amazing, I thought to myself.  Not only are they in secret cahoots today…but Apple and Microsoft have been scheming against us since the late-70’s and early-80’s!  How long has this conspiracy been going on?  How many other instances of this unholy union exist?  Remember Apple’s first programming language?  What do you get when you merge the names “Apple” and “Microsoft”?  Applesoft BASIC (confirmed to be provided by Microsoft)!  Oh, the humanity…

<chuckle>  It’s not so bad, is it?

Today I deposited a number of checks into both my personal and business checking accounts.  I got my checks lined up, signed, and added up the totals for each account so I could fill out my deposit envelopes when I got to the ATM machine.  It’s a routine, really.

I got to the bank and was disappointed to see that the envelope dispenser was empty.  No, wait…it’s not even THERE anymore.  What?  I walked around the ATM with a confused look, half expecting the new envelope dispenser to jump out of somewhere and bite me.  I’m sure I entertained at least a couple of on-lookers.

Eventually, I spotted a sticker where the envelope dispenser used to be.  This ATM no longer requires envelopes, it exclaimed.  I stared in astonishment.  Then I got excited to see how this might have been implemented…and immediately got distracted by my own pessimism about how this is probably something to benefit Wells Fargo and not me (like the plethora of fees I now pay).

So, off we go.  I insert my first first ATM card for the account I only have one check to deposit…I figure I’d better go easy on this new system until I get the hang of it.  I insert the check, sans envelope, and listen to it churn for a couple seconds.  Poof, there’s a snapshot of my check on-screen including the amount of the check.  Yes, it read a hand-written check perfectly.  I clicked the green confirm button, and got a receipt…WITH an image of the check on it.

<blink> <blink>

Wow, that was cool.  Ok, let’s see what it does with 7 checks at once.  Stacked ‘em all up (you don’t have to insert them individually) and shoved ‘em in.  Listened to the system sort the checks and start sifting through them.  In all, it probably took 10 seconds for the entire process and I was staring at snaps of my checks and amounts for each on the screen.  I confirmed and got a receipt with, you guessed it, all seven checks printed with amounts.

Awesome.

I have to give kudos to Wells Fargo for a VERY slick system.  Not only does it remove my pain of having to fill out (or even find) envelopes, do math, and lick an envelope…but it also saves a few trees along the way, by entirely eliminating envelopes.

Now, if they would simply allow me to deposit my checks by taking photo of them via my Wells Fargo iPhone app, like USAA Bank…I might have to do a little dance.

How is your bank making you happy?

This is a game-changing way to watch tennis.  First, I’m not the type of person who will go out of my way to watch the game, but have found myself doing so.  If I could do this with football or hockey?  Trouble in the making!  I hope to see other stations and organizations following this fantastic business lead.  Read on for the features…

USOpen Live Broadcast Features

The stream is crisp, clear, and snappy to load up.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Once loaded, you’re presented with a number of options right on the screen:

• View other courts (top left):  This displays video from all 5 courts that have feeds as well as scores, clicking on one will take you to that broadcast.
• Game statistics (bottom left):  Aces, 1st Server %, Double Faults, Win % on 1st/2nd serves, Winners, Unforced Errors, Receiving Points Won, Break Pt. conversions, Total Points Won, Net Approaches.  Real time, ON SCREEN!
• Fanbook (top right):  Sign up for an account, and you can comment on the match along the way…or just sit their and read if you don’t want to interact.
• Picture in Picture (bottom right):  Yep, pick one of the other stadiums and you can watch a smaller stream of that!  Click the “swap” button, and voila…PIP is swapped.  Awesome.

Click on the image in this article to see a full-screen version of the stream with all four options expanded.  clicking them again nicely hides them out of they way.

Better yet, head over to USOpen.org and watch for yourself!

What additional features can I imagine?  The ability to view your own camera angles instead of leaving that up to the event producer, ability to tie into your Facebook or Twitter account so whatever you type in the “Fanbook” section shows up on other social media sites, an alert for an amazing play you may have missed on another court (with the ability to quickly catch a replay), the list goes on…  I’m looking forward to the 2010 version!

What additional features can YOU imagine?  Have you seen a better player out there?  Let me know in the comments…

First:  To stress the importance of preserving the security of your on-line identity

Second:  Exposing a company who’s doing an inexcusably poor job of protecting your on-line identity

Most of us don’t realize how insecure the on-line world can be.  You create an account on a website, give it a username and the password of your choosing.  That password is obfuscated with asterisks so someone over your shoulder can’t see it, and many sites even require certain complexity (numbers, upper/lower-case letters, special characters, length, etc) to help assure your password is not easily guessed by a human or a brute-force and/or dictionary attack.  As well, the registration form is usually protected with SSL (aka: Secure Sockets Layer, Transport Layer Security, or when you see https:// in the URL) encryption.  Beyond that, you’ll usually enter an email address where you’ll have to validate that you’re you before you can even proceed on the website.

Sounds like a pretty secure process, right?  In most cases, it is.  The problem with this, is you’re only exposed to how they protect you from OUTSIDE exploits.  Everything mentioned above does nothing to protect you from an INSIDE exploit…and frankly, an inside exploit is FAR more likely than an external one for 99% of the population.  A rogue IT Administrator or Webmaster, or worse yet…an internal company process that ALLOWS employees access to your private information.

ZipRealty is a company that I’ve used for a number of years to help keep an eye on property values in my area.  I set up some criteria for alerts that send me emails, and I had a hankering to make a change to those emails just the other day.  I logged in and found out that the system said I didn’t have any “saved searches”, despite the fact that I was getting emails from them.  So, I asked for help in straightening this out.

When you register at ZipRealty, they assign you to a Real Estate agent.  I’ve had more of these agents assigned to my account than I can keep track of, as it appears they have a fairly high turn-over rate for their agents.  Since all my “alerts” come from this person’s email address, I replied to her.  I asked why it was that I was getting alerts but didn’t seem to have the ability to modify them.  After going back and forth a bit, it came into question whether or not I might have two accounts assigned to the same email address (turns out I didn’t…but that’s not the important part).

In order to verify whether or not this was the case, she emailed me information about my account and asked me, “Is this you?”

Here comes the sad part.  She emailed me, in plain text across the Internet, not only my user account…but my PASSWORD.  It’s bad enough she did that, but the far worse situation is that she actually had ACCESS to my password.  This is an agent that likely signed up to get leads from this service and was randomly assigned to various user accounts.  This person, who will likely not be assigned to me due to turn-over in the next 3 months has access to my username AND password.

The grand point of this post?  There are two of them:

1. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.  Just because their outward appearance seems secure, does NOT mean the internal workings are anywhere near as secure.
2. Do not use ZipRealty.  If you do?  Change your password to something you do not EVER use anywhere else.  If you have the same username and password on another site…someone from ZipRealty (and possibly other poorly managed companies) has access to that site.  Let’s hope it’s not the same as the account to your on-line banking site.

What’s the best means to protect yourself against inside exploits?

Do not use the same password on any two sites.  I know…I know…how can you remember them all?  Options:

• Build a spreadsheet with all of your passwords (and password protect that spreadsheet.) Also, for good measure, don’t name it “passwords.xls”!
• Use a password management application.  There are lots of them out there.  Assure the ones that store them on-line or in the cloud use master keys and encryption methods that don’t allow anyone but you to decipher them.
• Assuming you have a good password to begin with (secure from outside exploits), you can add characters to this password that pertain to the site you are registering with.  This makes your password unique, albeit only slightly different (and thus, still easy to remember).  For example, if your password is normally “password” (please, tell me that’s not your password)…your new password for ZipRealty.Com might be “ZpassRwordC”.  Be creative, but memorable for you…and not something so obvious that someone looking at ZpassRwordC knows that your WellsFargo.Com password is going to be WpassFwordC.  My example was just a simple example, not a gold standard!

Have you seen similarly poor security practices anywhere?  Have you experienced any security breaches from particular companies?  Please share them in the comments…

Twitter's Famous Fail Whale

Back when Twitter was still just a method for geeks to spout off about whatever, seeing the Fail Whale was quite commonplace.  Multiple times per day, Twitter would get overloaded and the system simply couldn’t keep up.  Post venture capital, it’s finally come around that everyone from celebrities to the stiffest of corporations to your Mother is tweeting…and the system has been rock solid 6-9 months.

Until today, it would seem!  It appears that around 6am PST, the system simply stopped responding.  We have not even been blessed with the appearance of the Fail Whale, just a Page Not Found error.  <gasp>  What are we to do with ourselves??!

About 40 minutes ago (6.30am PST), Twitter posted that the site is down and they’re trying to resolve it.

Denial of Service?  Catastrophic Crash?  Hack?  And you thought the Twitpocalypse was bad…  <grin>  Good luck enjoying a Twitter-free couple of hours!

It will be interesting to see how long this lasts, and how this affects Twitter’s reputation as a reliable communication tool, instead of just a Social Network.  The good news is, massive outages such as this usually lead to improved infrastructure to combat such issues in the future.  My guess is that will be the case, and Twitter will live to not die another day (well, until the next major system outage…)

All this lack of Twitterness reminded me of this video, quite hysterical even for those of us who use Twitter regularly!  Hey, if you can’t laugh at yourself…right?  The Fail Whale ending is classic…

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

BlogEngine.NET implements an “Invisible CAPTCHA” solution that has worked quite well for a considerable amount of time.  As of the past few weeks, those of us using BlogEngine.NET have been pelted with numerous SPAM entries, far too frequent to be human-generated.  It seemed as if someone had found their way around the CAPTCHA solution…and they have as the below video shows.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

There is a lot of discussion amongst the developers of BlogEngine.NET on how to combat this, and four lines of code were added in Change Set 28194.  The four lines are below, and are added to the top of the Page_Load in CommentView.ascx.cs.

string generatedFieldName = “txtName” + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString();
txtName.ID = generatedFieldName;
CustomValidator1.ControlToValidate = generatedFieldName;
RequiredFieldValidator1.ControlToValidate = generatedFieldName;

The code seems to dynamically generate the submit button name, so that an automated bot can’t just post based on what it knows the submit button’s name to be.

This appears to be something that could theoretically be hacked as well, but is an easy quick fix if you’re having issues.  My understanding is that the BlogEngine.NET team is working diligently to come up with a more substantial solution.

Good luck…

When I started, I had waist-to-chest high stuff all over the place and had to jump over items to get from one end of the garage to another.  When all was said and done, I gave away three truckloads of household stuff, another truckload of automotive parts, and filled up a 4’ H x 4’ W x 6’ L dumpster…to the rim.  I could have sold two or three of those truckloads (garage sale, Craig’s List, eBay, etc), but chose to give them away as I knew they were going to a good cause.

STEP 1 – Acquire Tools

1. Rent a dumpster.  Yes, you heard me.  Rent a dumpster.  You’ll be amazed at the motivation a big green dumpster in your driveway can deliver.  I kept mine for a week.  I used Dumpster.com (a Waste Management company).
2. Purchase storage shelves.  There is a lots of stuff available for cheap on-line…or you can do what I did.  I purchased plastic shelving stand-alone units that’re easy to assemble and move if necessary (note these are not the ones I bought, but they’re very similar).  I got a couple from Lowe’s (or try Home Depot, etc), and also got some freebee’s from a friend.
3. Acquire small storage boxes to go on the shelves (plastic bins, cardboard boxes, whatever works for you).  Since I was unloading so much stuff, I was able to re-usable bins and boxes that were made available.  You may find as you unload stuff, you free up a number of boxes for re-use.
4. Acquire a permanent marker.
5. Build a spreadsheet in Excel or Google Apps Spreadsheet (or use an old fashioned pen and paper if that works for you!)  More on this later…

STEP 2 – Categorize

Empty your garage.  Put everything out on the driveway / yard so you can work with a clean slate.  You’ll likely have to move them in and out a couple times if this isn’t a one-day job (mine took about 4 days at a fairly relaxed pace).

Categorize your stuff into four piles:

1. Stuff to sell
2. Stuff to donate / give-away
3. Stuff to throw away
4. Stuff to keep

STEP 3 – Downsize

Start throwing stuff away, start giving stuff away, start selling stuff, and start putting things away you’d really like to keep!

Use the permanent marker to put a number on each box.  Use your spreadsheet to keep track of what each number represents.  For example, the box with a “1” on it contains your high-school keepsakes.  The box with the “2” on it has your important documents.  When you move something from one box to another, you don’t have to actually re-write anything on the container…you simply change your spreadsheet.

Additional Tips for Success:

Have a friend come over and evaluate what you plan on keeping.  It’s in your best interest to pick a friend who’s actually well organized and lives a clutter-free existence!  Don’t cheat and ask the friend who has more stuff than you do!  This person will help put a non-biased opinion on what you should keep or get rid of.

Take photos of memorabilia you are struggling to throw away but can’t really see the need to keep them in a box.  For example, I took photos of all my old trophies as a kid and they now rotate in my screensaver with all my other photos.  It’s a nice reminder, and a kept memory…but without the clutter!

Tell all your friends you’re undertaking this project.  There’s nothing like a little peer pressure to keep you motivated to complete your project.

I’m living in glee right now, by the way.  There’s nothing like reclaiming what’s rightfully yours (your garage) so that you can actually use it for something beneficial…you know, like your CAR.  This was an immensely gratifying project for me, and well worth the time spent on it.

Good luck!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Highest Distinction within Cisco Channel Partner Program

SAN JOSE, CA—06/16/2009—Today, CenterBeam, Inc., a leading managed service provider (MSP) to the mid-sized market, announced it has been awarded Cisco Channel Customer Satisfaction Excellence—the highest distinction a partner can achieve within the Cisco Channel Partner Program.  A result of Cisco’s independent client survey and assessment program, this designation identifies CenterBeam as having maintained outstanding customer satisfaction.

As a Cisco Silver Certified Partner, CenterBeam is recognized for its broad technical capabilities, its advanced specializations and its ability to incorporate Cisco technologies as part of its innovative managed service solutions to mid-sized organizations. In addition, as a Silver Certified Partner, CenterBeam has integrated Cisco Lifecycle Services into its offerings and demonstrated a measurably high level of customer satisfaction.

“While there are many providers out there who can build or manage pieces or parts of my infrastructure, CenterBeam manages the entire value chain. There is incredible value in having the consistency and accountability of the same people who built my systems be the people who manage and support those systems. Add to this their Cisco Silver certification, which assures me that CenterBeam is committed to managing and supporting these systems for the long-term. All of this translates to our being a satisfied and loyal customer,” states Don Blake, Director, Information Technology at Mental Health Systems, Inc.

”CenterBeam considers its commitment to customer satisfaction as one of our major market differentiators.  We are pleased to have earned this designation from Cisco, as it demonstrates the importance we place on providing quality services, and the high satisfaction marks we have received in this assessment are a direct indication from our clients that we are indeed achieving this goal,” comments Matthew Stoyka, Senior Vice President, Technical Operations and Professional Services at CenterBeam.

CenterBeam continues to meet the rigorous demand of specializations, personnel, and customer satisfaction requirements to maintain the Silver Certification.  As a part of this honor, CenterBeam will be given a “Gold Star” distinction in the Cisco Partner Locator tool, which enables customers, partners, and the Cisco sales teams to identify the top performing partners in terms of customer satisfaction per the Cisco worldwide assessment process.

CenterBeam’s Cisco certified services are available as part of its turnkey managed IT service portfolio or individually as a way to extend in-house IT resources.

About CenterBeam
CenterBeam is an award-winning managed IT services provider with a rich service portfolio including PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, and network and server management. Since CenterBeam’s inception, its focus has been providing mid-sized businesses with Fortune 500-class IT management and services for a fixed monthly fee. As a pioneer of cloud computing services ten years ago, today, more than 140,000 daily services are delivered in an integrated software as service (SaaS 3.0) architecture to clients with end users working in six continents, across fifty countries. Visit CenterBeam online at www.centerbeam.com.

###

Microsoft and Sony both announced some new controller technologies at E3 a couple weeks back, and I’ve included promotional videos from both.  The PS3 motion controller solution appears to be a little closer to prime time and uses a hand-held device.  The Xbox motion controller concept (named Project Natal) is void of any physical device and simply uses your body movement, but this seems to be more of a “vision” at this point than anything tangible.

I find this incredibly fascinating, and not just for the video game industry.  The interactivity potential is limitless here when these types of products come to market.  Immediately, I can picture training for surgeons or other health-care personnel…or heck, any hands-on profession for that matter.  If Sony or Xbox ever come to the television table with anything worthwhile, imagine the interactivity!  Who needs a remote, when you can just gesture what you want to see on TV?  How about swiping your hand to the side for a new angle while watching your favorite sport?  The possibilities will keep me up at night…  <smile>

Enjoy the videos…

SONY PS3 CONTROLLER CONCEPT:

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

MICROSOFT XBOX (lack of) CONTROLLER CONCEPT:

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

Nothing To See Here!

Yet another installment of links that are hopefully not indicative of the title…

Google announced a few new search features last week, allowing you to further drill-down into your search results based on type (Video, Forums, Reviews), time (recent, 24 hours, week, year), style (standard, with images, more text), and view (related searches, timeline, and the “wonder wheel”).  Give it a shot by clicking on the “Show Options” link after entering your search terms.

Click this page.  Follow the instructions.  A very cool collaboration of sounds, music, and spoken word…but you get to choose how it plays out.  Click this page.

Looking into the past, we were recently able to see a supernova that happened 13 billion years ago.  That’s with a “B”, billion.  13 of them.  13,000,000,000 years ago.  Just for reference sake, we’re living in the year 2,009.  If we were to live from year zero to 2009 over and over, it would take 6,470,881 times before we’d reach 13 billion.  Makes ya feel young, don’t it?

Every so often, a new technology comes about that changes the way we do things.  Electricity, Television, the Refrigerator, the Dishwasher, the Internet, Google, Personal Computing, Microsoft, the iPhone…these are all fair examples of world-changing inventions.

Looking at what Google has done to the many industries they’ve touched (Internet search being just one…and our focus here), who could possibly trump what they’ve done?  To date, I’d say no one comes close.  The ones who have tried are simply replicating what Google does and slapping a couple new features on top of it…which is not a game-changing solution.

Today, I was introduced to a new website, which appears to be launching in varied locations today.  The company is called Wolfram Research (and the site appears to be taking a bit of a beating right now).  Regardless, have a look at this Wolfram | Alpha Video to get an amazing look into what this new search technology is capable of.  Yes, this part is bold *and* italic.  Click it.

Other links:
Wolfram|Alpha Website – Going Live Today
Wolfram|Alpha Launch Webcast

I’m a bit of a stats junkie, so this site really caught my eye.  The possibilities for this type of search engine are amazingly complex and deep, and I can’t wait to play with it…let alone see where this heads long term!

Enjoy…

UPDATE 5.13.2009:  Trying to find out why the counter is not incrementing, I know there’s at least two out there…and other posts seem to work fine.

UPDATE 5.15.2009:  Appears Tweetmeme might have lost some Tweets and not aggregated them into the system, they did an upgrade and things seem to be better…  (their support response was admirably quick, too!)

Ran across a nice article on Daily Cycle called Re-Tweet Counter For BlogEngine.NET that shows how to add a TweetMeme Button to your site or blog.  This shows how many times your post has been re-tweeted, as well as allowing your readers to easily re-tweet your article.

As you can see, I’ve added the “button” to the left of the body text within each post.  As stated in the Daily Cycle post, all it takes to get up and running is a quick modification of the TweetMeme code and the PostView.aspx file in your theme.  Voila, you’re good to go.

My code is slightly different than that posted on Daily Cycle, so I’ve included it here.

<div style=”float: left; padding: 10px;”>
  <script type=”text/javascript”>
    tweetmeme_url = <%=”‘” %><%=Post.AbsoluteLink %><%=”‘” %>;
    tweetmeme_source = ‘ALBsharah’;
  </script>
  <script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js”></script>
</div>

You can also add the following line for a more “compact” version of the button:

tweetmeme_style = ‘compact’;

Enjoy… Oh, and go click the Re-Tweet button while you’re at it!

Within just a couple months of acquisition, we not only had both companies on the same internal business infrastructure (email, file systems, etc) but we integrated our on-line web presence into a single pane of glass for all of our customers (launched Feb 2009).

Took me a while to post this, as it all happened between November and February, but below is the official CenterBeam Press Release text:

—-

Midmarket Gains Window to its IT Services Through Single Pane of Glass

MyCenterBeam Delivers Innovative Enterprise Mashup Functionality

SAN JOSE, CA – 04/07/2009

CenterBeam today announced its next generation online customer interface, My CenterBeam. This enterprise mashup represents a significant evolution of its key information and support tools into one seamless window pane for organizations to manage their IT services. Combining information from messaging systems, business intelligence engines and data integration solutions, My CenterBeam delivers critical service information to a single pane of glass, clean and standardized.

With My CenterBeam, the company addresses a significant issue for midmarket businesses, the ability to inspect, verify and manage, in one pane of glass, its IT service performance, security and availability information. With this data typically coming from numerous vendors, systems and platforms, each with its own proprietary console or reporting portal, there has been no coherent way to easily or cost effectively aggregate and correlate the information.

Traditionally, IT teams have to draw information from disparate data sources, each tracking and reporting data in their own way. CenterBeam’s operational data store forms the nucleus of My CenterBeam, leveraging Web 2.0 techniques and CenterBeam-developed API’s to collect and transform that information into consumable or “mashable” assets. My CenterBeam presents the correlated assets in a standardized format, allowing users to gain valuable insight into service metrics. This includes patch and configuration management data, anti-virus and anti-malware statistics, case and satisfaction metrics, service requests, server and network availability and performance and mailbox usage – all in a single pane of glass.

“Until now, an IT executive had to keep track of statistics and information from possibly dozens of different vendors to figure out the health and performance of its IT systems. This makes inspection close to impossible and exposes the business to risk if, for example, they don’t notice that a significant patch has been missed, or if backups aren’t happening the way they are supposed to,” states Shahin Pirooz, Executive Vice President and CTO, CenterBeam. “My CenterBeam eliminates the confusion and delivers clarity by rolling up all service and information into one standard view, giving the business or IT executive, for the first time, one place to go for comprehensive and actionable information.”

“My CenterBeam provides invaluable insight into the performance of our IT operations,” states Curtis Helsel, Vice President, Information Services at University of Colorado Foundation. “To gain this level of information on my own, I would have to access several different reporting consoles and attempt to translate and reconstruct the data to provide a holistic view of our systems. This is something I don’t have the time or resources to manage or maintain.”

My CenterBeam aggregates information for all CenterBeam services including hosted email, PC security, network and server management and help desk statistics.

About CenterBeam
Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., CenterBeam is an award-winning managed IT services provider with a rich service portfolio including PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, network and server management and consulting services. More than 140,000 daily services are delivered in an integrated software as a service (SaaS) architecture to clients with end users working in forty-five countries. For more information, visit www.centerbeam.com.

# # #

EDIT 2011.02.11:  Well, wouldn’t ya know it…Microsoft released an iPhone OneNote app!  Kudo’s to MS for pulling the cross-platform card.  Will it make me switch from MobileNoter?  To be determined…  After a couple days of testing, MobileNoter is still well in the lead from a “this looks like OneNote, but on my iPhone” perspective.  Time will tell if Microsoft steps up to the plate with future upgrades.  Here is a good visual comparison of the two products.  I think you’ll see why I’m sticking with MobileNoter.

EDIT 2010.12.04:  I’ve been using MobileNoter to synchronize OneNote between my PC and iPhone, and for over a year it’s pretty solid!  It even allows you to sync both ways.  Regardless, it’s a great addition to this syncronization article.

EDIT 2009.05.30:  I’ve tested with SugarSync successfully, and have heard that Live Mesh works as well.

I just started messing around with OneNote the other day, and I have to say it’s pretty impressive.  The ability to cut/paste, annotate, tag, and organize just about anything in any way is something I wasn’t expecting but was pleasantly surprised to see.  <tips hat to Microsoft on this one>

One of the biggest criteria I have for just about any application I use these days is mobility.  I want to be able to use it at home, at work, on my phone, and on the web.  Simply put, I want it synchronized anywhere I am.  Some of the applications I use and share today:

• Email.  I have my own mail server and connect to it using IMAP from Thunderbird, Outlook, my iPhone, and the web.
• File Sharing.  I use Dropbox to maintain a small group of files that I need to access anywhere, anytime via multiple PCs, my iPhone, or the web.
• Bookmarks / Favorites.  I use Xmarks (previous Foxmarks) to synchronize all of my favorites, across browsers or operating systems, on all my PCs and on the web.  Ultimately, these also get sync’d to my iPhone via iTunes.
• Feed Aggregation.  I use Google Reader to gather the multitude of feeds and searches that I follow.  Available on the web from any PC and on my iPhone.
• …and now, after some messing around and testing, it seems I’ve come up with a solution for Note Taking.

Granted, I’m likely not the first person to do this…but hey, ya never know!

So…the trick is determining what to do with OneNote across the Internet.  How can you share it amongst geographically dispersed PCs?  Well, if you’re trying to share it within your organization, OneNote will allow you to collaborate across a file share or other domain-type resource (built-in functionality).  But, if you’re trying to share with a personal computer, a work computer, or a friend’s computer in Timbuktu…you need an external solution.  That solution for me was Dropbox.

Dropbox is an application that you attach to a particular folder on your PC and it will syncronize it with the web and any other PC attached to this folder.  It’s got good security, speed, and not too much overhead on your CPU.  When you make changes to file, particularly large ones, it will only push out the difference (as opposed to the entire file) – thus saving on time and bandwidth.

How do we go about connecting these two?  Below is a pretty straight-forward step-by-step for setting up OneNote to work over a Dropbox file share.  I’ve been using this between home and work for a week or so now, and it’s been great.  The beauty of it, is you can collaborate with the other person…and within a few seconds of making a change on one PC, it will be seen on the other PCs!

Step 1:  Install Dropbox on PC #1

(http://www.getdropbox.com)

Step 2:  Install OneNote on PC #1

(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote)
OneNote is a part of Office, so you may just have to “enable” it if you’ve already got Office installed

Step 3:  Open OneNote

Step 4:  Create a New Notebook

Creating a new Notebook in OneNote

Step 5:  Name Your New Notebook

Give your new Notebook a name.  Aside from the name displayed in OneNote, this will also become a sub-folder within Dropbox.

Name Your Notebook in OneNote

Step 6:  Set Folder Location to a Dropbox Folder

Most Vista users will have a Path structure similar to this for Dropbox.  I’ve decided to put it in my ”Private” Dropbox folder, and created a “OneNote” folder to include any and all of my OneNote Notebooks.  Also note the circled portion, with the “My Shared Network” folder being created.  This is the name chosen in the above step.

Set a Folder Location in OneNote

Step 7:  Set the Type of Sharing You’d Like to Have

My understanding is that the option I’ve chosen here allows multiple people to make changes to the Notebook simultaneously.  This is where the magic is.  Even if you have OneNote open on multiple PCs, changes on one will cause Dropbox to send updates to other machines.  When the other machines get updates, OneNote will make adjustments and display those changes on-the-fly.  It can take a few seconds, but it certainly works!  Of course, if you only use one of them at a time it will show the updates when you open at the other PC.

Set the Shared Folder for Your OneNote Notebook

Step 8:  Repeat Steps #1 and #2 on your Second (Third, Fourth, etc…) PCs

Step 9:  Open the Shared Dropbox Folder on PC #2 (3, 4, etc…)

Open the Shared Notebook

Step 10:  Start Taking Notes!

It’s really pretty much that simple!

Now if I could only get OneNote working on my iPhone…I would be the happiest guy ever.  Is that weird?  If anyone has any thoughts on a better note-taking application (with similar features to OneNote) that might be available on the iPhone, I’d be interested to hear them…currently, that’s the only drawback for me on this solution.

Nothing To See Here!

Because I seem to have gotten pelted with a bunch of cool stuff over the past few days…

This video’s been around a bit, but the geek in me loves a crazy machine.  This is the most insane wine corking / pouring gadget ever created:

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

So, Google acquired GrandCentral a while back and they’re on the verge of releasing Google Voice.  It’s only available to GrandCentral users, but they expect it to be ready for launch in a few weeks.  You can read about the features here, some of which include:

• Google Number:  Call Screening, Listen In (while someone is leaving a voicemail), Block Calls, SMS, Place Calls (US calls for free), Taking Calls (from any number of your phone lines), Phone Routing (based on who calls), Forwarding Phones
• Google Voicemail:  Voicemail Transcripts (yep, read your voicemail), Listen to Voicemail, Notifications (via email or SMS), Personalize Greeting, Share Voicemail (forward or download)
• Voice Features:  Conference CAlling, Call Recording, Call Switch (switch phones mid-call), Mobile Site (check things via mobile phone), GOOG-411 (Google’s already existing directory assistance), Manage Groups (and set preferences for them)

Here’s an interesting video on listening in on a voicemail as it’s being left (and joining the call if you wish!)

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Jason Calacanis posted an unemployment chart for every state over the past couple of years…

If you’re in to Home-Brew DIY DVR’s like I am (click the link for my first article on SageTV), then you’ll love this list of available SageTV add-ons posted by GeekTonic.

Were you lucky enough to ever make it to the world famous CBGB’s before it shut down?  Me neither.  Here’s the next best thing!  This is an amazing 360-degree panoramic view of everything from the stages to the bathrooms…classic fun technology.

This Solid State Drives (SSD) are cool?  How about 24 of them RAIDed together in an amazing system?  Might cost you a few bucks though!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

A very cool technology that allows you to interact with a video presentation on-the-fly, you can even try it yourself!  Watch the video in this link then give your own version a go!  All you’ll need is a piece of paper, a printer, a webcam, and a microphone.  Thanks GE!

It’s a list of 32 applications that you, geek or not, might very well find useful in some form or another.  I use about 40% of these on a regular basis.  If the list wasn’t enough, they also provide 10 more “honorable mentions” and a final application that will install them all for you automatically.

It includes applications for Directory Visualization, Ripping DVD / Blu-Ray, PDFs, Virtualization, Gaming, File Syncrhonization, Search, Encryption, IP Telephony (Voice Over IP), CPU / GPU Specs, Media (music, video, photo, audio, image), File Transfer, Secure Password Storage, Productivity, Anti-Virus…and the list really goes on.  It’s very much worth a look.

Maximum PC’s 32 Totally Essential (and Free) Applications for PCs

The one application I disagree with…or, better yet, I simply use another…is the Photoshop replacement.  They recommend Gimp, I use (and have used for some time) Paint.NET.

Image (and story) Credit:  Maximum PC

Nothing To See Here!

For the second time in a row, a “Nothing to See Here” episode is being written during what many in San Diego would consider a tropical storm.  Really, it’s just a good rain and some wind.  We silly San Diegans…

1. A very cool mockup-tool has been released that allows you to quickly create drawings of websites or applications without using pen and paper.  Have a look at Balsamiq’s Mockup, it runs on Adobe Air so it’s plaform independant.
2. Check out the new Palm Pre smartphone.  Will it finally be the one that makes people think twice about the iPhone?  It sure looks slick in the video, but that’s likely a rendering and not the real application.  Time will tell…
3. Sirius and XM Radio, who you may remember merged to form a monopoly (odd, ‘eh?) last year, are possibly filing for bankruptcy this week.  Too bad, I know a lot of satellite radio people who couldn’t live without it.  I’m not a subscriber myself, but can appreciate the benefits!
4. Have you seen Bill Gates’ speech at the TED Conference?  I think this man is going to change the world, yet again, in another completely different arena.  Amazing.
5. I’ve blogged a couple times about the upcoming potential U.S. CTO Position.  CIO Magazine has an update on some of the changes that might be happening to the organizational chart.
6. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company to make FUEL?  What?  I love this.  The brewery is taking it’s leftover beer yeast waste and turning it into Bio-Fuel.  Beautiful Beer.
7. A cool new browser-based app, ScreenToaster, allows you to record your screen and distribute the video via the web.
8. If you’re like me, having your browser Favorites synchronized across all of your computers (home, work, laptops, etc) is a must.  There are plenty of on-line bookmarking sites, but I tend to prefer to have them locally on my machine.  Foxmarks now allows this synchronization across Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.  Your links are also available via the web.  Make a change to one computer, it updates the others.  I’m a happy guy!

Image Courtesy: SouthPark

This topic was spawned by the numerous articles out there discussing the varied emergency mergers and acquisitions that seem to be happening due to our economic situation.  It seems that there has been a subtle swing in reasons for a merger today compared to the pre-economic meltdown environment.  Previously, companies would merge not only for financial gain but for the ability to spread their wings, improve their position in the market, and stretch their product focus to new boundaries.  Today, many of the mergers happening are based in large part (if not completely) on financial survival.  Survival being the key word.

Having recently gone through a post-meltdown merger NOT focused entirely on survival (CenterBeam Acquires Network Insight), and being largely responsible for the initial merging of these companies from a technological perspective, it seemed appropriate to share my thoughts on this.  As CenterBeam, I’d like to think we’ve done a very good job at mitigating the below risks, or avoiding them entirely.  Of course none of us are perfect, but I’m proud to say that we’ve accomplished a lot in a short time frame and haven’t destroyed anything along the way.  Yet, there’s still plenty of work to do.

Don’t get IT Involved Early

A common theme through many of the articles I’ve read over the past 6 months is that IT wasn’t involved in either the decision making, the planning processes, or both.  In this day and age, you simply can’t afford to do that.  If you don’t have an IT department (or an “IT guy”) in your company, you’re likely outsourcing it.  If you’re not doing either, we’ll call you and your company “unique” and move on.  <smile>  The important point is that in many organizations, the accelerated proliferation of technology over the years has become the glue to keeping things moving smoothly through your organizational process flows.

When was the last time your email server went down?  How much of a screeching halt did your company come to because of it?

Get IT involved as early as possible.

Don’t Use Proper Project Management Resources

In a previous life, I was a Project Manager and even led a team of them at one point.  Despite the title no longer residing on my business card, I still wear my Project Management hat on a near-daily basis.  As someone who’s worked in the IT-based Professional Services industry for 10 years, I can say…without question, hesitation, or doubt…that project management is a vital aspect to successful technology projects.  A small project can get by with a solid technological resource who knows how to manage his tasks, but that’s not what we’re discussing here.  A project of any scale requires multiple Subject Matter Expers (SMEs) working in harmony, with numerous dependancies on each other, over a lenthy period of time.  The only way you’re going to keep that herd of cats moving in the same direction is by using a solid Project Manager, or Project Management team.

In the Professional Services world, customers will often balk at getting billed for Project Management hours in their projects because they don’t understand the benefit.  Having lived and breathed it, having seen projects succeed and projects fail, and knowing wholeheartedly that much of that success and failure had to do with the level of project management involvement…it would be silly to avoid proper project management.

Our VP of Operations provided me with an exceptional quote the other day:

“If you can’t take the time to do it right today, when will you find the time to do it over?”

This applies to so many areas of business.  Don’t skimp on Project Management, you’ll only pay more later.

Don’t get Appropriate Subject Matter Experts Involved

SMEs are your best friends when championing or managing an IT project.  If you plan without them, or without their input, you will miss things…you will forget something…and your struggling project will cause grief for many.  Better yet, don’t limit yourself to just asking for their input.  They need to be active players and stakeholders in the project, so give them the responsibility to be successful with you.

You are not a super hero, regardless of the underoos you sport!  Don’t work in a bubble.

Don’t Spend Time Researching Both Networks and Systems

If you’re an IT Manager, CIO, CTO, or other technology leader…and you’re working in an organization who’s core focus is not technology…odds are that you might not be very much involved in the “go” or “no-go” decision making regarding the merger or acquisition.  This is OK in most circumstances.  What’s not ok is for you to sit back, accept the decision and deal with the consequences.  You still need to do your dilligence.  You have to consider how both organizations are functioning, on what types of systems they are functioning, what the short-term merger solution is and what are the long-term merger solutions going to be.  Beyond this, you need to know the risks, requirements, and effort necessary for you to be successful.

A subset item to this is having an understanding of how the two disparate systems will actually work together in the future.  There have to be distinct visions for what the merger will look like in 2 months, 6 months, and 12 months…and you need to be considering this well in advance of any acquisition.

If you are working in a technology-based organization, and you’re a high-level technology leader, you need to be a part of the decision-making process.  The executives will be looking to you for appropriate analysis and decisions on whether this is the right solution.  Everything mentioned in the above paragraph is still mandatory…and it’s mandatory that your peer leadership team hears what you have to say.

The bottom line here is that the Executive teams need to understand the entire cost structure required to merge the two companies, whether they are based on technology or basket-weaving.  If they don’t understand the cost basis, and it runs out of control because dilligence was not performed (or listened to), the acquisition is an immediate failure.

No one loves homework, but you need to do yours.  Thankfully, you can do a lot of your homework at work.

Don’t Sweat the Workload Requirements…You’re Acquiring or Being Acquired!  There are Now More Resources to Do the Work.

This one scares me the most.  In this economy, companies are downsizing dramatically.  Last week alone 100,000 jobs were lost.  ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND.  In ONE WEEK.  Insanity.  This means that everyone in the company is going to be asked to do a little more, with a little less.  It’s incredibly likely that the company acquiring you, or the company being acquired by you, has a heavy workload on their employees already.  Adding headcount due to acquisition does NOT mean you have more people to do new work.  It means you have more people that already have full-time jobs, and you now have to find a way to merge these organizations with your existing headcount (as it’s pretty unlikely you’ll be getting any more heads).

Even in a normal economy, this is still a frightening proposal.  Understand the workload of your employees and those being asked to perform merger duties.  Of the employees critical to the integration, work with their supervisiors and peers to understand their workload, existing projects, and abilities to balanace additional responsibility.  Otherwise, risk severe inaccuracies to your time estimations, commitments to Executives, and deadlines.

Know what can be done, who it can be done by, and in what timeframe.  Know it well.

Don’t Bother Planning for Change

So, you’ve heeded the above advice…you’ve got your ducks in a row and everything is moving along as you’ve hoped.  The plan is set in stone, risks have been identified and mitigated, stakeholders and SMEs have been identified, everyone knows their responsibilities, and project management is on it.

What’s wrong with the above paragraph?  “The plan is set in stone…”  Come on.  You know as well as I do that nothing (nothing) is ever (ever) set in stone.  Your deadlines will get moved.  New customers will drive requirements that throw wrenches into your well-formed plan, cascading further issues throughout the project.  There are any number of items that can cause problems.  Your job is to forsee these and build flexibility into your plan.

Be nimble, be quick, be prepared to jump over that candle stick.

Do Not, Under any Circumstances, Focus Your Efforts on the Employees

The first thing to approach in just about any acquisition I can think of, is the employees.  If you ever expect to perform as a single organization, one company, one unified front…get your employees on the same collaborative systems as soon as humanly possible.  If you don’t, all communication between the two companies will be haphazard and many, many, many things will fall through the cracks.  One of the first things we did at CenterBeam was get Network Insight employees dialed into all the CenterBeam systems (email, instant messanger, intranet, file systems, human resources, etc).  We did this in roughly one month.  Not bad, considering the network and systems effort required.

The point is, we’re still working on the integration and merger.  I expect it to go on in various phases throughout the year.  But, since our employees are now “one”, it makes our integration life so much easier.  Because we’re already working as a single unit, getting the company to function as a single unit will be that much easier.

Employees first, without them you’d be job hunting instead of reading this.

Don’t Rush it…Our Companies aren’t Going Anywhere…We Have Time

Procrastination is NOT your friend, especially when it comes to acquisition.  We all know what happens to things that get “put off”.  Something else always comes up with higher priority, and the items sitting on the shelf waiting for completion will never get attention again.  Stoke the fire while it’s still hot.  If you’re not well on your way after 2 months, 75% complete after 6 months, or finished in 12 months…something is seriously wrong and you need to re-evaluate the acquisition project and get Executive sponsorship back in the game to prioritize and finish things up.

If you’re not fully integrated, your employees are spending valuable time and money working around operational inconsistencies when they could be focusing more on productive endeavors.  Get on your integration horse and ride hard.

Conclusion

This is by no means an all-encompassing look into how to be successful at a merger and acquisition, even just focusing on the technology.  However, these are all very important aspects that in many circumstances get overlooked, undervalued, or shrugged off.  Treat these items with the respect and attention they deserve and you’ll at least be on your way to a successful M&A.

Image Credit:  business-sale.com

Today, I ran across a guy (Randy Jones) who did a DIY version of a multi-touch interface.  He uses it to play music, and shows off how it works in the below video.  It’s got a much higher sample rate than most, and is pretty impressive as it identifies where your fingers are located…as WELL as how hard they’re being pressed!

Check out this cool video below…

Click here to view the embedded video.

More information about this prototype can be found here.

This is one of those videos that staggers the mind with sheer numbers…

This is one of those videos that can make you feel a little old… (but it’s great to know we’re living through such an accelerated time)

This video has a slight bent on technology, and I think you should watch it!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

First a little info about LaserTV…  The light source is, you guessed it, lasers.  What benefit does this provide us?

• Twice the color (TWICE).
• 135W power consumption.  1/3rd the power consumption of LCD, 1/4th of Plasma.
• Less than 12″ deep (for a rear-projection…amazing).
• Laser light source expected to exceed the life of the TV itself.
• 160 degree viewing angle, similar to LCD and Plasma.
• 57.7 x 12.5 x 39.8 inches ; 136.4 pounds (lighter than LCD and Plasma).
• 65″ screen size, 73″ to be released soon.

Mitsubishi released their first product a few months back, and it’s got some pretty raving reviews.  Picture quality is the bottom line, and it’s apparently blowing away LCD and Plasma.  At the moment, they’ve got a corner on the market…and it shows.  The price?  $6,999.  Yep.  Not cheap…yet…but I’m hopeful…!

Some links for you regarding the TV:

• LaserVue (Mitsubishi) website.
• Product Page for the 65″ LaserVue TV.
• Buy (me) the L65-A90 at Amazon.
• Google Search on LaserTV!  There’s a wealth of information out there.

If you’re well off enough to purchase one, see if you can’t squeeze in another for me!  <grin>

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year…Cheers!

Nothing To See Here!

The “impending storm of doom” lurking outside my office window today has postponed my hike with the dog.  So, I decided to hibernate for a bit and do another quick list of interesting links…

1. This is slightly older news (story broke a month or so ago) but I found it timely, as I’ve been semi-in-the-market for a new TV.  3 Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Trying to Keep Prices High.  LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes (who?) pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing and will pay $585 Million in penalties.  Tell ya one thing, when I buy…it won’t be from these guys.  Can’t wait for the price drop!
2. DNA Strands Become Fibre Optic Cables.  In an amazing technology breakthrough, scientists have been able to pass light through DNA strands.  The technological ramifications of something like this are astounding.  When they figure it all out (likely many years from now), it will dramatically reduce the size of computing systems while increasing speeds.
3. Forget having to learn to use your ESP powers to read another person’s mind, Japanese researchers may be doing it with technology!  Yet another amazing breakthrough…these guys supposedly had users focus on block letters in the form of the word “N E U R O N” and were able to extract and decipher that using sensors and computing power.  From what I understand, this focused mostly what was being presented through the visual cortex (not memory, technically) but it’s a pretty amazing first start.
4. I got a new Lenovo T400 laptop for work this week, to replace the HP with more hardware issues than I can count.  At first glance, it seems like a nice system.  Not flashy in any way, but the insides are what really matters.  I’m most interested to see if I can really pull 9 hours of battery life as advertised…  I’ll likely do a review of some kind once I’ve had a little time with it.
5. Finally, this is some cool technology (that can be used today).  For the woodworker in you, save your fingers!  The SawStop, an amazing piece of technology that will literally stop a table saw blade in it’s tracks before it takes your finger off.  Check out this video below (taken from a pretty cool show called TimeWarp).  Awesome stuff.

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

Image Courtesy: SouthPark

Nothing To See Here!

Another installment of some cool links and do-dads I’ve gathered over the past few weeks.

• Gary Vaynerchuck and Maynard James Keenan.  Know either of those names?  I’m impressed if you know one…if you know both, you’re a rock star.  Gary is the Director of Operations for WineLibrary and energetically hosts a great video podcast WineLibrary.TV.  Maynard, on the other hand, is the lead singer for Tool.  What in the world do these two have in common?  Wine.  Believe it.  Check out the latest video podcast here.
• Amazon iPhone Application – Really, I’m not thoroughly impressed with the interface.  Mainly because I can’t just *browse*.  I have to search for specific items.  Pretty boring way to shop…considering the categories and many other things I *could* be using.  You do get to browse by category, but only after you search for a product.  Nice, but…really?  However…!  There is one fun part to this…and it’s call the “Remembers”.  Take a photo of something…a game, a toy, a book, anything.  The application will send it to Amazon and a human will actually find it for you.  I took a photo of a video game box I had laying around, and I was given a link (within the application and via email) to the product within 2 minutes.  Pretty cool way to shop.  I’d probably rate this a 3 out of 5 stars…once they get some better navigation in place, it’d be a higher rank.  For free, it’s pretty cool though.  Here’s a link to the Amazon app.  Photos below…

  

  Amazon iPhone Search

   

  

  Amazon iPhone Product

Images Courtesy: SouthPark, my iPhone

The old SageTV HD Extenders (HD100) required a SageTV server on the back-end, or they would not function.  My guess is that this device is their answer to other stand-alone set-top-boxes (STBs) that do not require server hardware.  It appears that this device will work without a back-end server to handle much of the functionality (your own pictures, videos, music, DVDs, on-line content, etc).  However, if you want DVR functionality, THAT will require the SageTV back-end server.

If I’m right on this, it certainly opens up the doors for SageTV and their market.  No more will users need to be savvy enough to set up a computer in their garage in order to get some of the nice features SageTV offers.  As well, it opens up the likely possiblity that SageTV will be soon supporting the likes of Netflix Watch Now, maybe other sites such as the increasingly popular Hulu, etc.  My question is, will my HD100 get this new functionality as well, or will I be forced to upgrade?  Hmmm…

I have to question their marketing, however.  Despite the cool features, there’s really nothing that would draw a new customer to purchase.  Their “screenshot” is flat out basic and not very attractive, so it doesn’t appear they’ve made any improvements on this somewhat sore spot for their product (it’s still “Interface 1.0″).  There are plenty of other products out there (XBMC, Boxee, AppleTV, Media Portal, etc.) that don’t do what SageTV does nearly as well…but they DO look nice and draw people from a marketing perspective with their “Interface 2.0″ designs.  I hope SageTV spends some serious time on this in the future…not just with their product, but with their website.

Despite this, I’m still a huge (HUGE) SageTV fan and hope this product does well for them (and maybe me if I figure out enough about it to decide if it’s worthy of upgrading to).

This is a screenshot provided via the SageTV website, credit SageTV.

For more information on SageTV, visit their website or read one of my previous articles on the topic.

Music happens to be something I spend a lot of my days listening to, and I’ve also spent a lot of time creating ways for my world to have my music in a form I’m interested in listening to it.  From my home, to my car, to my office, to my gym, to my phone…I’ve got most of them dialed in to what I want to hear, when I want to hear it, and how I want it organized.

There have been two recent software releases that triggered this post.  The first is from Pandora, where they’ve created a Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget for their service.  The second is from a service called Simplify Media, and the ability to Scrobble your personal music listening habits directly into Last.FM.  This post will surround these two new services as well as general discussion points on iTunes, Pandora, Last.FM, MusicIP Mixer, and Simplify Media…and how these services help you take your music with you, suggest new music, and organize music to your liking.

I used to be a Windows Media guy…because, well, the iTunes machine just wasn’t for me.  Then I got an iPhone, and all that obviously changed.  It simply would be silly for me to not use iTunes.  Since I rank/rate my music, it was a difficult process migrating and I actually had to write software to move my Windows Media ratings into iTunes.  Regardless, the media player of focus here will be iTunes.

Pandora and Last.FM

First, a bit about Pandora and Last.FM.  These are services that allows you to listen to a wide variety of music via the internet, iPhone, or other media devices.  You simply select a song, an artist, or an album, and voila…an instant stream of similar music is sent your way.  You do not own this music or get to download it locally, but you can stream all day long.  Pandora uses humans to categorize music by giving each and every song a “fingerprint” of sorts to be compared with others.  Last.FM uses more of an automated algorithm to do much of the same.  Some like one over the other…frankly, I like them both.  I’ve used Pandora for longer, so I tend to lean towards it…but really there’s not a lot of difference in the quality of music selection.  There are differences in features and community connectivity, but I’ll leave that up to you to discover on your own.

Pandora Vista Sidebar Gadget

Don’t have Vista?  Want the Sidebar gadget for XP?  Here’s a way to get it!  Ok, back to Vista.  First, get the Pandora gadget.  Note, it will not work with 64-bit versions of Vista because it runs on Adobe Flash, and Adobe has not released a 64-bit version of Flash yet.  Tsk, tsk, Adobe.  There is a workaround, but it requires you to configure your system to use the 32-bit version of the Sidebar.  Once you’re installed, follow the on-screen instructions, log in, configure your settings, and voila.  You’re rockin’ and rollin’ from your sidebar.  A nice feature, for sure.  A couple images follow…

Simplify Media and Last.FM Scrobbling

Simplify Media is a service I’ve been using for some time.  On it’s own, it’s a fantasic (I repeat, FANTASTIC) application.  Install it on your desktop and point it to your iTunes Library, Winamp Library, or just a general music folder…and voila, accessibility to your music just increased dramatically.  Not only can you install the same application on other PC’s, but you can also install the iPhone version of the application.  What does this allow you to do?  STREAM your music to you…wherever you are.  You heard it right, I can be in my car driving down the freeway streaming music from my home computer, to my iPhone, and into my stereo.  I do the same from my work PC (minus the driving part).  My playlists, my music, as if I were in front of my computer.  BRILLIANT.

What’s better than that?  You can share your music with up to 30 (that’s THIRTY) of your friends, and you can connect to any number of friends that are also running the application.  You have complete ability to play their music, their playlists, directly from their libraries.  And yes, it’s all quite legal.  Better yet, it even uses the iTunes interface to access your or your friends’ music (not sure how Winamp functionality works).  Amazing.  Get this software and spread your wings a bit.  Seriously.  Some nice screenshots of the application are located below (plus a few more here).

So, they’ve recently added a new feature in Simplify Media 1.2 that allows you to Scrobble from your iPhone.  What is Scrobbling?  Simply put, it attaches your media player to Last.FM, so it knows the last music you’ve played via whatever music player you use.  For the desktop, it’s been available for a while and can be downloaded here.  The beauty of what Simplify Media did is that you can now also Scrobble from your iPhone…so all music played there gets transmitted to Last.FM.  Good times!

Apple iTunes Genius Playlists

What’s next on the discussion list?  How about Apple’s new Genius Playlist functionality.  Personally, I’m not a fan of this and have explained why in this article.  They do, however, work great for certain types of music libraries (i.e. those where you enjoy all the music in your library).  For me, I have too many full albums that I only like a few songs from…and unfortunatly Genius includes songs I’ve ranked 1 or 2 in it’s “intelligent” recommendations.  I digress…on to the beauty of it.

Aside from a fantasic marketing tool for Apple (lookie, more music for me to buy from you!) it actually does work great for many.  You can select a song and it will create a new playlist of similar music for you, based on that particular song you’ve selected.  As well, as mentioned, it will also provide you with a list of similar music you do not own…can preview…and then quickly purchase if you wish.  Of course, this is built right into iTunes and works nicely for most.

MusicIP Mixer

MusicIP, and their Mixer Product is more of an unknown…but I’ve grown to like the application.  Since I have issues with iTunes Genius Playlists (really, I wouldn’t use MusicIP Mixer if I didn’t) it plays the part of creating similar-song playlists based on my selections.  Then, I import these into iTunes and other systems.  The problem here, similarly to Genius, is that MusicIP Mixer typically isn’t aware of your ratings and will mix songs you don’t like or even hate into it’s playlists.  Since I’ve been using this for nearly a year now (well before Genius was released), I spent some time developing a little bit of software to take my iTunes ratings and merge them with the MusicIP playlists in order to create playlists that actually have similar music that I like.  Yes, more than what the average bear can tackle…I know.  But, it’s worked for me.

Regardless, it’s a fairly worthwhile application that may prove benefical to those who don’t use iTunes, don’t rate music, and just want something to analyze their music and provide recommendations.  As well, it allows you to select a song, album, or artist…where Genius only allows you to select a song.  So, there are benefits.  It also has a very nice API for you developers who want to mess around with it’s capabilities within your own applications.

Conclusion

Not sure I really have a conclusion here, or that this was meant to be a conclusive article.  But, I needed a header to separate from the last bit…so there ya have it.  I do enjoy the direction media manipulation is going in, especially when it comes to music.  I’m not a fan of manually creating playlists…never have, actually.  Finally, folks are writing software that is intuitive enough to play the right music for me.  Are any of the solutions perfect?  Certainly not for everyone…but many of the solutions hit the mark for many of us.  Some, in combination, really close the gap.

Logo/Image Credits: Apple iTunes, MusicIP, Last.FM, Pandora, Simplify Media

From the Movie: Minority Report

Whether or not you’re a fan of the movie Minority Report (or Tom Cruise, for that matter), you’re going to love what you see here.  This article was sparked by some new technology from a company called Oblong Industries.  Apparently, many of the founders of this organization were involved in the making of the movie and have decided to make the incredibly cool user interface from the movie into reality.

The user interface is quite elegant and (of course) the movie makes it appear easy to interact with.  The surprising thing is, the real version looks just as easy to manipulate.  What’s the core interface comprised of?  You standing in front of any number of screens moving your hands around, making jestures, pointing, etc.

So, this is a discussion on Graphical User Interface (GUI), Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and any other buzz-phrase / acronym you can come up with to describe how we interact with virtual worlds and environments.  I’ve always been a proponent of something outside of the stale keyboard and mouse standard we’re all tied into.  To quote a close friend Jack Bell, “There’s got to be a better way.”  I believe that there are better ways today, and very soon, there will be incredibly better ways.

We’ve seen some major steps forward in touch and multi-touch technology via the Apple iPhone and Microsoft’s Surface technologies.  This has certainly sparked development in the User Interface (UI) industry, but I don’t see it as the holy grail.  What might that holy grail look like today?  Likely no single item you’ll see in this article, but possibly a combination of them…working together to provide us a seamless and intuitive ability to interact with the machines and virtual worlds we rely on today.

Are you a hand-talker?  This might just be the inteface for you!  Unless, of course, you’re trying to navigate and talk at the same time.  <chuckle>  The first video I’m sharing is the inspiration for this post, and is truly cutting edge when it comes to UI.

I recommend you view this in full screen to get the full effect (button on the bottom right of the video).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another popular technology getting a fair amount of attention is Microsoft’s Surface.  The video is long, and a little slow in the beginning (marketing blab), but this is a great video that shows off some of the possibilities this technology has.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The next two videos aren’t so much directly about a human interacting with a computer, but are more about computers being smart enough to adjust to our environment which is certainly quite important in the ultimate UI experience.  This first video shows how a projector can automatically calculate a screen to match where the screen is…wherever it is.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

This next video is very similar, and shows how we might be able to use similar technologies for virtual newspapers (foldable!) and other dynamic surfaces.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Another very important aspect is how we organize our data within this new interface.  We could have the most incredibly evolved way to interact with a computer, but if we can’t find anything because how we store the information we need is clunky then our inteface is useless.  This is a novel desktop replacement idea that has some slick ideas.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I found this video interesting because is shows a cheap and easy way to track head location and movement using a Wii remote and receiver.  Pretty amazing what this guy is able to do by re-using existing (and affordable) technologies.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Finally, this is yet another great video showing the ability for a computer system to track humans or items in the real world, and project information based on those real-world items.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image Credit:  20th Century Fox

This type of communication alone has the ability to attract the attention of those with the abilities to bring stability back to this country.  It will be interesting to see how this approach works in the fast-paced world of technology we live in, and whether or not it will be a successful approach.  I think our country needs to take substantial steps towards leveraging our many technologies, so I appreciate the efforts.  However, with anything political, only time will tell.

Below is the first of (what will apparently be) a weekly video address via YouTube:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Yet again, I should give some credit to Sean Blakemore’s Silverlight Extension, since that is what I based my YouTube Extension on.

UPDATE 01.13.2011: Version 1.1 Released.  Fixes compatibility issues with BlogEngine.NET 2.0.  Should now work just fine!

Version history at end of this post.

So, installation is quite easy:

1. Take this ZIP file - Vimeo Player 1.1 – BlogEngine Extension – and extract the VimeoPlayer.cs file into your /App_Code/Extensions folder within the root of your BlogEngine installation.
2. Log into the “Extensions” portion of your admin panel, you should see the VimeoPlayer extension.
3. Click the Edit link to change settings.  NOTE: You do not need to modify these settings if you don’t want, you can skip to step 4.
   • Width and Height are set to the default Vimeo size, but I actually run mine at a larger setting of 600 x 338.
   • Make sure you keep this “aspect ratio” of 400 x 225.  Meaning, the default ratio of 400 / 225 = 1.7778.  My new ratio of 600 / 338 = 1.775 (pretty close).  This will assure that you display wide-screen format in case the Vimeo video you imbed is Hi-Definition content.
4. Create a new entry and add this code to your blog to insert a Vimeo video:  [ vimeo:YourVideoCodeGoesHere ]  (without the spaces).
   • Note that the “YourVideoCodeGoesHere” part is typically random numbers.  You can see them in the URL of your Vimeo video.

Below is an example of a Standard-Definition (SD) video, as well as a High-Definition (HD) video.

That being said, the code entered for these two videos are [ vimeo:1098984 ] and [ vimeo:1674177 ]
(minus the spaces)

The SD video looks like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The HD video looks like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy!

=================
VERSION HISTORY
=================

01.13.2011
Version 1.1
Vimeo Player 1.1 – BlogEngine Extension

Fix: Compatibility issues with BlogEngine.NET 2.0 resolved.

——–

11.15.2008
Version 1.0, first release
Vimeo Player 1.0 – BlogEngine Extension

Nothing To See Here!

Having just got back from a trip to San Jose to meet with a number of my new CenterBeam team members, I decided to plow through my Google Reader and have a look at some of the starred items I’ve been tagging over the past couple of weeks.  In doing so, I’ve found a few nuggets that I felt should be shared.  Thus, “Nothing to See Here” has been born.  Hopefully, the title won’t live up to it’s name.

1. Frustration-Free Packaging – Amazon Launches a multi-year plan to allow you to easily get to the products you’ve ordered.  Not only this, but they promise to make the packaging environmentally friendly.  Recall the last time you picked up a piece of electronics, toy, or other goodie from the store?  Recall the fact that you flat-out can NOT open it with your own two hands due to the hard clear plastic with the kung-fu grip welding job along the edges?  Amazon to the rescue.  Someone tell me why it’s taken this long for someone to get this misery removed from our lives?  This alone makes me want to buy everything from Amazon.  Thank-you!
2. How secure is your password?  How long would it take a brute force attack to compromise your security?  Use this Excel spreadsheet to find out!  I was shocked by some of my passwords, both in good and bad ways.  Time to make some adjustments where needed!  You might want to read the tab that has instructions, as there are two ways to enter information about the structure of your password.
3. Thriller as a 64-Voice Acapella – You’ve really got to appreciate the time and effort that went into the creation of this.  Truly amazing.  Make sure you check out the clothing used for the Vincent Price voice-over at the end…classic.  I wish I had that kind of time on my hands!
4. Windows Azure – Hmm, this may be an interesting topic for later…
5. CIO.com offers a nice glance at some upcoming technologies.  Some of the 15 that stuck out for me: Memristors, GPU shifts, USB 3.0, wireless power, a theoretical Google Desktop, better interaction with your TV.  They also offer an entertaining look at their own ”predictions we’ve gotten right” as well as “predections we’ve gotten wrong” at the end of the article.
6. LinkedIn steps up to the Social Networking plate with Applications.  I’m a fan of the BlogLink application, so I can show my blog posts on my LinkedIn page.  Theoretically, it’s supposed to show you blogs from your contacts as well, but I’ve yet to really see that working correctly.  Either way, cheers to them for building the framework.  While you’re at it, have a look at My LinkedIn Profile.
7. Guns N’ Roses (I should say, Axl Rose) released a single to radio a few weeks back from the Chinese Democracy album.  Has anyone actually heard this yet?  Amazingly I haven’t, considering I used to go to their concerts before anyone even knew who they were.  I’ve not been dialed into radio much lately, but I assume that since I’m not hearing it constantly in typical beat-a-dead-horse radio fashion…that it must suck.  Frankly, I hope I don’t like it because Guns N’ Roses doesn’t theoretically exist any more.  <grin>  On a side note…if you’re looking for a read, Slash’s Autobiography was surprisingly entertaining.  EDIT: Looks like going to the main website (linked earlier) allows you to listen to the song.  I’m not overly disappointed in my desire to not like it.  Meh.
8. Finally, a glimpse at Windows 7.  So far, I really like what I see and am excited to get my hands on it.  From what it sounds like, usability and speed were the main focus for this new operating system and I’m amazed (and happy) to hear all the positive feedback on-line about it.  Below are some videos displaying the functionality.  I think I’ll be quite entertaining to see how Apple chooses to market against this.

A good video of the new interface and usability changes including the new peek feature

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another shot of the peek and jump lists features

Click here to view the embedded video.

Windows Live Maps tied to touch gestures

Click here to view the embedded video.

Likely a 3rd party application, but nicely done regardless.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image Courtesy: SouthPark

In this day and age, in a world full of technology…I’m awestruck by the fact that we still commandeer thousands of garages across the nation in order to cast the vote of millions of United States Citizens.

Ya know what?  I LOVE THIS.

Every time I say that I’m going to sign up for an absentee ballot the next time, but I don’t.  Every time I say to myself that we’ll have technology in place that will allow us all to vote on-line next time around, but we don’t.  The fact is, I may never choose these quick-and-easy options because I love walking 0.2 miles to my neighbor’s garage to cast my vote for the next President of these United States.  To me, that is an amazing thing.  The fact that these votes all get gathered, organized, tallied, and slapped up on our TV screens within such a short period of time is equally amazing.

There’s something about this grass roots voting process that brings me back to my youth, to the days of crayons, neighborhood gatherings, doing things manually, and getting the community together to rally around something so monumental.  We still do this.  A nation of 305+ Million people.  We vote in garages.  We vote in VFW’s.  We vote in apartment lobbies.  We vote wherever we can find a willing host with room for voters.

Amazing.  Now run to your local garage and cast your vote!

• You’re on a call at your desk, and another call beeps in.  You have to ignore it, as…you’re on another call.
• Your cell phone then rings.  Again, you can’t answer…and you scramble to find it and mute it so the person on the other line isn’t annoyed.
• Meanwhile, your desk voicemail lights up…and if you’re really cool, an email with that voicemail pops into your inbox.
• Your Instant Messanger starts lighting up (why are you looking at that while you’re on a phone call anyway?)
• That cell phone voice mail finally alarms letting you know you have a voice mail.
• Soon after, a text message comes in from the same person saying, “Call me”.  Really?  I had no idea.  <grin>

Ok, that probably hasn’t happened to all of us at that extreme of a scenario, but we can all certainly relate to bits and pieces of it.  These interruptions come at any time of day, and sometimes at very inopportune times (since when did the bathroom lose it’s sacredness?!)  This interruption-mania doesn’t even take into account the (literally) hundreds of Social Networks many use as distractions…Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn (and that is barely the tip of the iceberg).  How is it that we get anything done?

Are we handling this new found immediate gratification and communication at our fingertips well?  I suppose it depends on where you spend most of your time.  The majority of my day is spent at work, like many of you.  In most cases interruptions are quite counter productive to, well…productivity.  Don’t get me wrong, interruptions also have benefits…and I’ll get into those…the ones in immediate focus are those you have (apparently) no control over.  But…you do.

I was sparked into this post by an entry at the Manager-Tools blog that briefly discusses the concept of “toast”.  These are the little pop-ups that slide their way into your vision located in the bottom-right of your screen.  IM’s, emails, whatever…little pieces of toast coming out of the toaster that you can’t help but look at.  Don’t kid yourself, most of you will probably look at one while reading this post.  Frankly, if you haven’t been distracted away from this post by one of them…I’d be surprised!  The irony that Manager-Tools brings forth is a nice play on words…”If you’re paying attention to the toast, you’re toast.”

How many times have you been in a meeting, formal or not, where the person speaking simply stops mid-sentence to focus on their PC or phone?  How many people in meetings are typing away on their Smart Phones, clearly oblivious to the conversation around them?  Have you noticed while having a conversation with someone on the phone that they occasionally drift away…clearly focusing on something else at the same time?  How many times have you caught yourself pausing in the middle of something to look at a piece of toast on your screen?  Don’t kid yourself, it likely happens more than you even realize.

These are distractions that pull us all away from directing our focus at the person who’s kindly requested our focus.

There’s a cost associated with this type of activity.  In some ways it’s directly financially tangible, but in others it’s more indirect.

1. Lowered morale of those left waiting because something that can likely be dealt with later is given higher priority, leaving them with the feeling that you believe your time is more important than theirs.  As a manager, this would be an awful situation to put yourself into.
2. Opportunity cost of those waiting for the key stakeholder to return their focus.  How much of their collective time could have been spent on something productive, how much does idle time cost the company…or you if it’s your company?
3. Despite how good you think you are at multitasking, you’re going to miss something.  Sooner or later, it’s going to be something important.  You’re going to regret not paying full attention to those around you who need your full attention, and you’ll be left dealing with a loss of #1 and #2 (morale and cost) all over again.
4. How long does it take you to get your train of thought back once you’ve finished your distraction?  Once you finally remember to get back to it, you have to get your brain back into that mode.  This rings especially true for software developers, project managers, or others who have to focus on the short-term as well as the future simultaneously.  To clearly do your job, you thrust yourself into a virtual world where you plan and make a long-term solution happen.  It’s surprising how long it can take to get you back into that mindset.
5. Learning is usually compromised by distractions.  I apologize for not having direct citings, but I’ve read about a few studies that show that learning while multitasking is much less efficient.  The bottom line (to what could be an entire topic by itself) is that distracted learning may allow you to make similarly accurate decisions on occasion, but you may not fully understand why it’s the right decision to make.  This is due to the way your brain ends up processing the information you’re learning and ultimately storing (or not storing) it in long-term memory, as there are very different methods used during focused and distracted learning.

So, back to the most common types of communication many of us use…  Are they being used correctly in your environment?  Part of eliminating distractions has to do with the people around you.  If someone calls your cell phone every time they need something, regardless of how important it is, that can be a bit of a distraction.  In my estimation, a call to the cell phone is typically the sign of a very important item….but it may not be used that way by others.

Below I’ve listed, by order of my perceived priority, the most common types of communication available to us in the workplace.  It should be noted that there are always valid exceptions to any rule, especially this one.  I can’t say enough about how important in-person communication can be to a productive working environment.  Just because it’s listed as #1 on my list doesn’t mean that you should never contact someone in person unless it’s vitally urgent.  There are many other circumstances at play here, and there is no black-and-white definition on how communication should happen.  This is merely meant to be a framework or guideline for prioritization of communication.

Aside from prioritizing each communication type, I’ve also included a few bullet points on how this type of communication should likely be used.

1. In Person
   • Requires face-to-face collaboration
   • Quick or substantial discussion needing immediate attention
2. Cell Phone Call
   • Requires substantial discussion
   • Requires immediate attention
   • Is tied for #1 if the person calling does not have the ability to quickly find you in person
3. Desk Phone Call
   • Requires substantial discussion
   • Important but can wait until you’re at your desk
4. Text Message
   • Requires quick question / answer
   • Relatively urgent answer required
   • Could arguably be placed at #3, but I put it here because it’s usually a shorter communication
5. Instant Message
   • Requires quick question / answer
   • Important but can wait until you’re at your desk
6. Email
   • Requires substantial information to be shared
   • Requires documents or other files to be shared
   • Can wait until you’re in front of your computer
7. Everything Else
   • Low priority

This is all fine and good, but what do I do to enforce this?  How to I keep these distractions at bay so I am not constantly distracted?  For this list, I’m going to start from the bottom up.  The least urgent items get first attention here.

• Everything Else
  • Social Networks and other items do not require immediate attention in 99% of the workplaces.  I’m sure there are some organizations that thrive by using these systems, but for most of us they’re nothing more than distractions.  Disable all alerts to your email, to your phone, or to any other place.  Turn them off.  Look at these sites on your lunch break or when you’re at home.  Do not allow these sites to dictate when you should be doing something…you own your time.  If you need something specific, by all means, go for it…just don’t get caught up in their notification loops.  These sites selfishly want you coming back, don’t forget that.
• Email
  • Turn off your pop-up toast!  You’ll be amazed how much more productive you’ll be with this one simple modification.  Email is low priority, and if you get as many emails as I do in a day…that constant pop-up will keep you from ever getting anything done.  Here’s a quick tutorial on how to disable Outlook 2007 pop-ups.  A little Google Searching will likely find you where to change options in whatever mail client you use.
  • There are many recommendations on how often you should check your email.  For me, this depends on what kind of project I’m working on.  If I need to sit down and grind on something uninterrupted for a while, it may be a couple hours before I get to it.  In most cases, once an hour is probably good unless you have nothing else going on (lucky you).  For some, once every 30 minutes would be OK.
  • If others are using email as high-priority in an organization that doesn’t function that way, politely ask them to contact you using different methods if it’s more urgent.
  • Turn off email notifications on your phone.  There is rarely a need for this.  People grow to hate their Smart Phones because they say they can “never get away from work” because of them.  The reality is, most of these comments are based on constant harranging due to email notifications.  Turn them off and look at email when you want to, not when it wants you to.  Smart Phone life can be good!
  • If it helps you, politely ask people to start CC’ing you on things that you just need to be aware of.  This is another layer of productivity that’ll help you find the important items in your inbox quickly…when you do decide it’s right for you to get to your inbox.
• Instant Message
  • Again, turn off the pop-up toast!  Turn off the blinking task bar items.  Turn off any other creative “look at me” notifications the IM clients provide.
  • Don’t allow people to write novels in IM, and don’t allow this inflectionless quick communication to lead to misunderstanding.  It’s meant for quick question / answer solutions.  If you’re going back-and-forth with someone, pick up the phone and have a 2 minute conversation and get it over with instead of banging on your keyboard for 15 minutes (and being distracted all along the way).
• Text Message
  • Get comfortable with putting your phone on mute.  Do it regularly, in particular when you cannot be bothered due to an urgent in-person or phone conversation.  Granted, a text message should be used for relatively urgent communication, but some things are more urgent than others.
  • Much like IM, do not attempt to have long and productive conversations over Texting in a short period of time and without distraction.  Use the other fancy feature on that phone…the phone!
• Desk Phone
  • Turn the volume down and choose a more appealing ringer if you have that option.  I’m not saying to ignore this communication tool, that would be counter-productive.  However, turning it down and/or using an amicable ringer is less alarming and startling to your thought process.  You will be able to field the call and get back to your groove quicker if you didn’t jump out of your seat or become irritated by that annoying ringer sound.
• Cell Phone
  • The same desk phone ringer suggestion applies here.
  • Additionally, much like the text messaging suggestion…get familiar with your mute button.  Turn that ringer off when appropriate.
  • See the phone email notification section under Email above…turn these off!
• In Person
  • If you’re one of the lucky ones with an office, shut your door.  This signifies that you’re busy and only urgent items will result in a knock on the door.
  • If that isn’t enough, and you really need privacy, put a sign on the door that says something to the effect of, “Please do not interrupt unless you are on fire.”  You may choose your words more wisely if you wish.  <chuckle>
  • If you have the option to work at home, that’s always a solution.  I will warn, however, that in many cases the remaining communication tools will increase in their use due to you being out of the office.
  • Finally, one of the simplest and most effective forms of getting yourself some focus time is to politely tell your employees and/or coworkers that you have to focus and would appreciate if interruptions could be avoided.  This one really works wonders (as long as you’re not asking that every day!)

Are distractions ever a good thing?  After reading this article (assuming you’ve even gotten this far), you may believe I think they are pure evil.  Not true.  Distractions are good, and can be good if used correctly.  Here are a few reasons how they can be beneficial:

1. If used on your terms, meaning, you initiated the distraction on your own because you needed to hit the mental reset button.  Get up, stretch, walk around a bit to get the blood flowing again.
2. If you’ve been struggling with a problem for some time and are fighting to get to a solution, step away for a while.  It’s amazing how our minds can keep working on a problem subconsciously, and in many cases that subconscious thought will result in a successful solution…sometimes when you least expect it.  Sometimes sleeping on a problem is even better, as you’ll wake up in the morning refreshed and occasionally with a new solution that your sleeping mind helped devise.

Some will ultimately argue with these views.  One argument that I’ve heard many times is, “I have to keep up on my inbox or I’ll get too far behind.”  So, they focus on it on-the-fly to keep it from queueing up.  I disagree with this mentality because I don’t believe these people realize how much productivity they lose in distraction time (I was one of those people, by the way).  Jamming through all your emails on a 60-minute (or even a 30-minute) basis is a great way to focus on email and get it cleaned up.  Meanwhile, the other projects you’ve been working on don’t suffer because you’ve neglected them due to email distractions.

If you don’t agree…I’ll only ask you to give it an honest shot.  I have been, and on occasion still am, a distraction junkie.  I live in the same world you do.  But, in making some subtle changes in how I manage distractions I’ve become more productive…and really, a lot happier.  Oh, and I still get more than my share of good, clean, positive distractions in!

San Jose, Calif—October 28, 2008—Today CenterBeam, Inc. announced it has acquired Network Insight, a premier network management and consulting services firm based out of San Diego, California.  The acquisition strengthens CenterBeam’s position as the leading managed services provider (MSP) to the mid-size market by bringing deeper network design, architecture and management expertise. Additionally, the location in San Diego provides CenterBeam with another network operations center (NOC) for further redundancy.

Network Insight focuses exclusively on IP network systems integration and managed services to organizations from several hundred users up to Tier I service providers. The acquisition significantly increases the number of network devices CenterBeam can manage and adds deep network assessment, architecture and design capabilities to its broad service portfolio that includes PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, and network and server management. The new capabilities now make it possible for CenterBeam to provide its customers with comprehensive services no matter where they are in their IT lifecycle.
 
“CenterBeam sought this strategic alliance to meet our customers’ need for comprehensive and deep network management and design services. Network Insight brings the right blend of people, technology, services as well as a customer focus that complements our services and corporate culture,” said Dr. Kevin Francis LLD, CEO, CenterBeam. 

“We’re very excited about becoming part of CenterBeam. This provides a unique opportunity to further extend our offerings to the North American marketplace and to offer our customers a more comprehensive suite of services,” said Chris Pond, CEO, Network Insight.  Chris will join CenterBeam as senior vice president, business development and consulting.

Services are immediately available as part of CenterBeam’s turnkey managed IT service portfolio or individually as a way to extend in-house IT resources. Network Insight was designated as a Cisco® Silver Partner that has achieved Customer Satisfaction Excellence and is certified as a Juniper® Elite Partner. These certifications extend the partnerships CenterBeam has secured: Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, Citrix® Certified Partner, VMware® Authorized Consultant (VAC), and VMware VIP Enterprise Partner.  For more information, visit www.centerbeam.com.

About Network Insight
Founded in 1998, San Diego-based Network Insight, LLC, is a leader in high-availability IP network infrastructure consulting, operations consulting and managed services for enterprise and service provider organizations. With a 10 year track record of successful IP networking projects, a 24/7/365 carrier-grade NOC and proprietary customer web portal for real-time status and reporting, its clients experience significant cost savings and increased revenue from streamlined designs and processes as well as new services for end users. For more information, please visit www.networkinsight.com.

About CenterBeam
CenterBeam is an award-winning managed IT services provider with a rich service portfolio including PC management, hosted Microsoft® Exchange email, helpdesk support, network and server management. Since CenterBeam’s inception, its focus has been providing mid-sized businesses with Fortune 500-class IT management and services for a fixed monthly fee. More than 140,000 daily services are delivered in an integrated software as a service (SaaS 3.0) architecture to clients with end users working in forty-five countries. CenterBeam offers predictable monthly pricing backed by a Total Satisfaction Guarantee. www.centerbeam.com.

First…I’m NOT a fan of politics.  Frankly, I’m amazed I’m even writing about it.  <grin>  Don’t get me wrong, I vote religiously.  More clearly, I should likely say that I’m not a fan of politicians.  There are plenty of reasons why, but I won’t bother you with that here!  However, I will share one core belief I’ve held for a number of years now:
Business(wo)men should run the country, and politicians should run their campaigns.

While I may or may not have agreed with their stance or capabilities, I’ve been happy to see the likes of Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, and other successful businessmen run for the presidency over the years.  I wish more would do so.  This country is a complicated machine, moreso than the majority of companies out there, and just like any successful company it deserves a solid business mind at it’s helm (and throughout it’s Executive Branch).  I believe the recent talk of a CTO position being created for the United States is discussion in the right direction.  Do I believe it’s the right thing to do?  Will it induce unnecessary or useful insight and/or regulation?  Too early to say.  Conceptually, however, I believe it’s on target.

Our country is in a world of hurt and we need the best and the brightest available to help us right things.  Whoever takes office next year, I truly hope they’re able to bring a team of proven individuals together that can steer this monstrosity of a ship.  I think one of the bigest questions might be, are the best and brightest willing to sign up?

Below is a read, a listen, and a view that I’ve tagged over the past week.  I felt they should be shared…which is the main reason for this post:

• READ:  CIO Magazine discusses who might be the best CTO for the USA.
• LISTEN:  This American Life has an audio discussion full of interviews and insights into what really has caused this sub-prime meltdown.  It’s a really insightful listen, and well worth it.  There are things going on that most of America has no idea even exists…and these unknown and unregulated activities are exactly why we’re in this mess today.
• VIEW:  …and finally, remember the days of “Whhaaaasssssaaaaaaaap?!”?  It’s been 8 long years…see where they are now (an entertaining video, to say the least).  You can see it below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I had recently installed Sean Blakemore’s Silverlight Extension, and since I have never coded an extension for BlogEngine I figured I’d learn from a similar application.  Thanks for the head start, Sean!  I really used the base of his code and modified it to work for YouTube videos instead.

UPDATE 01.13.2011: Version 1.3 Released.  Fixes compatibility issues with BlogEngine.NET 2.0.  Should now work just fine!

UPDATE 05.11.2010: Version 1.2 Released.  Includes heavily-requested feature to add YouTube videos to BlogEngine.NET “Pages” (as well as Blog Posts)!  Thanks to Dobin Fernandes for the updated code!  Now if we can just get him to figure out how to apply this to RSS feeds, we’ll be all set!

UPDATE 10.28.2008: Version 1.1 Released.  Instructions modified.

Version history at end of this post.

So, installation is quite easy:

1. Take this ZIP file - YouTube Player 1.3 – BlogEngine Extension – and extract the YouTubePlayer.cs file into your /App_Code/Extensions folder within the root of your BlogEngine installation.
2. Log into the “Extensions” portion of your admin panel, you should see the YouTubePlayer extension.
3. Click the Edit link to change settings.  NOTE: You do not need to modify these settings if you don’t want, you can skip to step 4.
   • Width and Height are set to the default YouTube size, you can change them if you wish but I don’t believe it will change the size of the video.
   • Show Border is nice if you want to blend the video border into the color scheme of your website.  By default this is turned off (0).  Turn it on by changing the setting to “1″.
   • Primary and Secondary colors are used for the border and need to be entered in Hexidecimal value.  The example below uses 709397 for the secondary (the aqua in this site) and 000000 (black) for the primary.  You can see how it looks below.
4. Create a new entry and add this code to your blog to insert a YouTube video:  [ youtube:YourVideoCodeGoesHere ]  (without the spaces).
   • Note that the “YourVideoCodeGoesHere” part is typically random characters and letters.  You can see them in the URL of your YouTube video.

That being said, the code entered for this is [ youtube:Ddn4MGaS3N4 ]
(minus the spaces)

The video looks like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy!

=================
VERSION HISTORY
=================

01.13.2011
Version 1.3
YouTube Player 1.3 – BlogEngine Extension

Fix: Compatibility issues with BlogEngine.NET 2.0 resolved.

——–

05.11.2010
Version 1.2
YouTube Player 1.2 – BlogEngine Extension

Change: System now allows for YouTube Videos to be posted to BlogEngine.NET “Pages” as well as just the “Posts”.  Thanks Dobin Fernandes!

——–

10.28.2008
Version 1.1
YouTube Player 1.1 – BlogEngine Extension

Change: Code used within [ youtube: ] tag is no longer the entire URL (i.e. http://www.youtube.com/v/Ddn4MGaS3N4).  On occasion, if the WYSIWYG editor set the URL as a hyperlink, the rendering of the video would fail.  Now, it’s only required that the random video code is entered (i.e. Ddn4MGaS3N4)

——–

10.25.2008
Version 1.0, first release
YouTube Player 1.0 – BlogEngine Extension

I’ve spent the past couple weeks on-and-off with some of my new co-workers…in person, via email, on the phone, etc.  I’ve learned a lot…and have also learned I’ve got a LOT of work ahead of me.  In doing so, I realized I need a much more scalable system to keep track of:

1. All systems that currently exist today.
2. What these systems are tasked with doing…?
3. …and what are they capable of doing?
4. How do these systems interact with each other…?
5. …and how could they interact with each other?
6. Which systems from both companies overlap…?
7. …and where do we need systems that neither company has?
8. What’s wrong with the current infrastructure(s)…?
9. …and what’s right with it?
10. Who are the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for each system?
11. What are the business requirements of our new organization…?
12. …and are these tools mapping to those requirements?  Better yet…CAN they?  If not, what will?
13. How can these systems be broken out into functional groups?
14. What is the best way to categorize and prioritize changes and releases to actually get things accomplished?
15. …
16. …
17. … (the list really goes on and on, but I’m sure you get the point)

What point, you say?  How in the world do you organize all of this?!

Today I ventured into the world of Mind Mapping.  I’ve been here before, but it’s been a few years.  There are a plethora of options when it comes to Mind Mapping software, and I briefly skimmed the features before deciding upon one to try out.  I spent an hour or so taking my varied lists of notes over the past couple weeks and dumped them into iMindMap.  I’m not necessarily following the strict rules set forth by the software, as I don’t think that’s an appropriate fit…or, I’m just too stubborn to see the perfect fit yet.  <chuckle>  Entirely possible.

So, what are my initial thoughts?  My head is still spinning a bit…but at least I’ve got a big inventory laid out.  If I continue down the path of Mind Mapping, I will likely end up with multiple maps.  The first one I’ve created lists the people and technologies involved, and is a nice looking overview of everything.  Could I have done this with a simple list?  Likely.  Was this a beneficial excercise and hour well spent?  Of course.  Trying new things is always a good idea, and this is no exception.  Even if it turns out not to be a great fit moving forward, I will very likely find a more fitting use in the future.

Right then, what might my next steps be?  Gather more information and keep plugging it in…  Then, determine if this will help me sketch out a big picture that can be modeled into a plan of attack, and result in successful changes.  At a minimum, I’m hoping it can be used as a brainstorming tool to help me devise a path to be modeled into a plan.  Regardless of the outcome, I’m excited to see where this ends up.  I’ll share any future enlightenments…!

Image Credit:  iMindMap

Becoming a Godfather is actually one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me…

I’ve ALWAYS wanted to be a Godfather.  The parents are great friends, the father is my best friend and was the best man at my wedding.  I’ve known him since 1991-92 timeframe and his wife is the sweetest thing ever.  Months back, while eating at the bar at a local Sushi joint he raised his Sake glass and said, “Here’s to being a Godfather”.  Of course, my world came to a bit of a halt…a somewhat screeching one…and I went silent because I was just stuck with happiness.  I’d secretly hoped they’d pick me, and they did!  What a great feeling.  Being asked to help guide a child through life, in any way, is an incredible honor.

So cheers to my Goddaughter and her new found technology itch.  I look forward to future insightfulness such as:

1. How to attract immediate attention by using appropriate noises.
2. How to poop all over your brand new U of M gear and still have your Daddy love you.
3. Boobs.  Just…boobs.
4. The best tactics for recycling milk onto your new friend’s shoulder.

In closing…I give you…the Godfather (in more ways than one!)  So please click play below and watch all the way through…then you’ll understand what I mean.  <chuckle>

[silverlight:Godfather.wmv]

UPDATE 10.24.2008:  The acquisition is 100% official, so I’m updating this post to be a little less anonymous regarding the buyer.  I’ll post the press release when it comes out.

So, the big news is that my company, Network Insight, was recently acquired by CenterBeam.  The formal press release has been delayed (due out the week of 10/27/2008), so I won’t announce the buyer just yet…although all of our clients and most of our colleagues are already fully aware of the details.

What does this mean for those of us at NI?  It means we’re becoming a much larger organization, with much better funding, a much larger footprint, and are gaining a number of very (very) complementary offerings.  The Professional Services and Managed Services that Network Insight provides to it’s customers is very similar to what our buyer CenterBeam does for theirs, but the overlap in services is incredibly minimal.  We’ll finally be able to accomplish many of the things we’ve been hoping to over the past few years.  Additionally, it will allow the employees of NI to have a broader spectrum of peers surrounding them, and have more opportunities for career growth.

What does this mean for our acquirer CenterBeam?  Much of the same, ironically, despite our size being much smaller.  We will allow them to take on business they’ve had to turn away over the years, add to their experience, and help them spread their wings.  They will gain efficiencies, redundancies, and skillsets they do not have today.  I will say that everyone I’ve worked with over the past couple weeks has been incredible…this truly appears to be a great company that has “it” figured out, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how things pan out.

Network Insight has always been a company that does very well during economic booms, and very well during economic busts…but just does average when things are in the middle.  Right now, we’re in an economic bust and we’ve been doing quite well over the past months and years of the downturn.  The most recent accelerated downturns, and this acquisition, will bode quite well for both companies.  Singularly, we were each able to substantially reduce costs (both OpEx and CapEx) for our customers…together we’ll take that benefit to new heights, which is exactly what CFO’s have their eyes open for today…more than ever.

As for me, my life just got a whole lot busier!  I’m going to be responsible for much of the integration with respect to all of our (and their) technologies, and have started the process of researching and learning what each company has to offer so we can make educated decisions on our future product catalog…not to mention the systems used to service that catalog and our customers.  This will certainly be a daunting task, but believe it or not…I’m really looking forward to it!

For reference, I’ve been hacking my way through solutions to create this feature for a good year now.  I’ve written a fair amount of code to do this work behind the scenes, using various bits of software to make it happen.  In a nutshell, I have written code to do the following:

1. Create a list of songs in my iTunes library, including ratings
2. Create a list of songs in MusicIP Mixer (this is the software that does the similar-music selection for me)
3. Take a list of artist/album/song-based playlists I want created and build them using MusicIP Mixer’s API
4. Filter those playlists based on my iTunes ratings, so I get the music I *want* to hear (not crappy-rated songs)
5. Import those playlists back into iTunes using their API

Yes…it’s a hastle, but now that it’s set up it works fantastically.  I can pick an artist, album, or song…select the ratings I want included (say, 4 and 5 star only) and I’m ultimately presented with a playlist that includes the best songs that are similar to the artist/album/song I selected.  Beautiful.

So, where did Apple miss the mark with Genius Playlists?

1. Limited to 100 songs.  Really?  Why the limitation?  Why should I miss out on additional songs that match?  A list of 100 can get old pretty quickly if you listen to music a lot.
2. Can only pick a song.  I’d like to pick an album, or even an artist and have a Genius Playlist created.
3. Can’t filter any further on this list like you can with existing Smart Playlists.  Really?  Can’t filter based on anything?  I’m stuck with whatever you decide is best?
4. …for example: My Genius Playlists come back with songs I’ve rated 1 and 2.  I’ve already made it clear I’m not interested in those songs, why am I being forced to listen to them by some “Genius”?  Useless for me.

So, not being one to complain about a problem without a solution…it’s very simple to me:

1. Implement Genius as an option within Smart Playlists.  Then, you can mix and match all of the Smart Playlist functionality with Genius abilities and voila…USEFUL playlists.  Or….
2. Get rid of Smart Playlists all-together and at least add that filtering capability into the Genius Playlists product.  Same result, different branding.

I understand I’m not your every-day user, but I also know I’m not an extreme minority.  I think it’s pretty obvious I’m not a fanboy, but I did have an Apple ][+ back in the day!  Besides, I’m trying really hard to be a mini fanboy with my iTunes and my iPhone.  <chuckle>  Point is, I’m not bitching just to bitch.  This is a real need and something I think should be improved upon.  C’mon Apple…show some love here…

I got a private beta invite to Dropbox, a very cool file sync application that works on PC, Mac, Linux, web…  Essentially, you can drop files into your DropBox folder on one computer and they’ll magically show up on your other systems (or even the web).  You can share them out so people can view them on-line (i.e. you want to show friends a few photos).  It’s incredibly easy to use!

For example, here’s a link to one of my Dropbox image galleries.  I simply put images into a folder, right-clicked on the folder to get the public link, and pasted it here.  Silly easy.
Click here for: Sample Dropbox Image Gallery

I’ve got a few invites I can pass out to folks, so if you’re interested…shoot me your email address and I’ll make sure you get an invite to use it!

What I’d really like to see is an enterprise version of the software.  My ideal vision of this would be a system where you could house your own Dropbox-like server and eliminate the need to have a 3rd party store your data.  Configuration options would allow for the ability to view files via the web (or not), and possibly the option to NOT store files on the server (instead, act more as a peer-to-peer system).  The on-the-fly synchronization of Dropbox at a low price-point would be quite beneficial to many Small Business and Enterprise users.

Cheers,
AL

So…I made the decision about a year ago that I was done with TiVo.  Just not as flexible and feature-rich as I wanted it to be.  Upon making this realization, I began researching my options.  Low and behold, I found an entire world of software companies out there making their own DVRs!  In many cases, these are called PVRs (Personal Video Recorders).  But whatever…

After trying about 6 different flavors of PVR software, I landed on one and have not turned back.  It’s called SageTV and is quite likely one of the greatest things ever.  Not only does it record all my TV shows, as well as make some great recommendations on shows I’d never have found on my own, but it also houses my photographs, my own videos, my DVDs and Blu-Rays that I’ve ripped to disk, my podcasts (including video podcasts), and my music (and playlists).  Oh yeah, it handles HD too.  Everything through my TV, with one remote.  It’s beautiful!

The support community is massive, and direct customer service is quite good (responsive and knowledgable).  There are plugin’s galore available, from Netflix (yes, I can manage my queue and find movies with my TV now) to Commercial Skipping (yes, it automatically skips commercials!) to any number of other features you never knew you wanted.

Now, you do have to be a little computer savvy to pick up this “hobby”…because it’s not a no-brainer.  But, I’ll give you a little insight into what’s required, and what your options are…

Required Components

Server:  This is what takes a TV feed and records it, it’s where the brains are.  For me, this is a Windows XP Windows 7 PC (Mac and UNIX flavors are available) that has a video capture card in it as well as considerable hard drive storage.  HD video capture is tricky, because there’s encryption involved and many providers (Cable TV and others) will encrypt HD channels so your server cannot record them.  There is a HD PVR Product that resolves this issue, and it’s from a company called Hauppauge (no, I have no idea how to pronounce that).  It was released early summer of 2008.  Essentially, it will allow you to record from any HD source as it uses the Component (non-digital, non-encryptable) output.  It takes this analog output and converts it to digital on-the-fly so your PC can record and store it for later playback.

Client:  This is where you watch TV, Videos, Music, Photos, etc, from.  This can be a PC, but you’ll have to get a good video card/processor and do some considerable tweaking to get it to work right, *especially* if you’re planning on playing HD.  The other alternative, which I highly recommend, is a set-top-box manufactured by SageTV called an HD Extender (UPDATE: a New Extender has been released).  Simply put, you plug it in to your network, it finds your server, and you’re playing immediately playing any SD or HD content you need.  It’s a no-brainer in my book and I’ll never go back to a PC-based client.

Ideal Environment (easiest and least hassle, biggest bang for buck/time)

A server.  It’s required, no way around this.  But, it certainly does not have to be a high-end box.  My server is currently a AMD Athlon 3200+ (2.0GHz) machine.  I’ve run it on MUCH lesser hardware.  Yes, you read that right.  ANCIENT HARDWARE WORKS!  I’ve upgraded because my commercial skipping plug-in keeps the CPU pegged and it struggles to keep up…but it has worked great for a year.  Point being, you don’t need much for a server, it’s not doing much of the heavy lifting in the scenario I’m posing.  No high-end graphics card required, because all that’s done on the client side.

A video capture device.  As of today, that’s a card that plugs into your server.  There are many flavors, and Hauppauge has a ton of options.  Do your homework.  You will feed the output from your cable/satellite set-top-box (STB) into this capture card.  The other option is the HD-PVR mentioned above…it’s an external device that plugs into your server via USB.  This eliminates any encryption issues and just makes life a lot easier.

An IR (infra-red) Blaster/Repeater.  This essentially copies the commands from your remote control for your STB and allows the computer to command your STB to change channels.  So…when you click channel 25 on your SageTV remote, the server sends an  IR signal to your cable box to change the channel to 25.  Your STB outputs that channel and your capture card records the content.  Voila.

An HD Extender.  One for each TV you want content on (I have two).  All you need is to have a network cable nearby, and to plug this into your TV (it’s got component and HDMI outputs).

Total Costs (UPDATE: pricing as of posting, many discounts can be had)

Server – Old hardware or cheap hardware, deals can be had if you look around.  You’ll want considerable hard-drive space, but that’s cheap now-a-days.  You could build or buy a NAS for the purpose of storage (I built my own, but that’s a whole other story).  Single drives will likely be fine for most.

Video Capture – A card can be had for $100-$150, the HD PVR is about $250.

IR Blaster/Repeater – I think I paid $50 for my USB-UIRT.  The HD PVR comes with it’s own blaster, so won’t need need to buy a separate one if you go this route (but I’ve heard the quality of the HD-PVR blaster might not be that great…)

HD Extender – $200 each.  A no-brainer when you consider how difficult it is to build a stable PC to act as a client, especially for HD.  You simply can’t do it at that price.  Besides, who wants a clunky and noisy PC by their TV?

My Setup

So, my setup consists of the AMD Athlon server mentioned above…which now houses my SageTV Server, has my HD-PVR plugged into it, has my USB-UIRT IR blaster connected to it, and also acts as a NAS for file storage (RAID 5 system, 7TB of storage).  Lots of bleeding, sweating, and crying went into this over the past year and a half, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I also use skin called SageMC.  It’s much cleaner, prettier, and user friendly than the default skin.  Many folks agree that the SageTV interface isn’t the best of breed, but SageMC brings it closer.
SageTV has just released Version 7, which has a completely rebuilt interface.  Everything runs much quicker, and looks 100x better than the old interface.  It’s a departure from SageMC, that I’m used to, but I’m getting used to it and think it might be quite useable in the long run.

Conclusion

So there you have it.  The wave of the future!  Of course, it’s much more expensive than simply having your Cable or Satellite company send you their DVR…but you can’t record shows and move them around from PC to PC, you can’t watch your own DVD’s that you’ve ripped to disk, you can’t listen to your music or watch podcasts, view your photos through a slide show, modify your Netflix queue, skip commercials, or anything cool like that with a normal DVR.  Yeah, you pay for it, but it’s SO worth it.  Hell, commercial skip alone makes it worth it’s weight in gold!