I switched from Packet8 to ViaTalk a while back, and while I knew the service wouldn’t be as reliable, I couldn’t ignore the drop by more that 50% in the phone bill. For VoIP Packet8 is expensive, but they are also a premium service. In my year and a half with them I had rock solid availability and voice quality. ViaTalk on the other hand dies on a regular basis. I’ll call home and can hear them but they can’t hear me, or they can hear me but I can’t hear them. There are also times where there is no dial tone or just a fast busy when we pick the phone up to make a call. When ViaTalk is working it is wonderful.
To fix the problem when one of these issues happens I have to remove power and plug it back in and everything is fine. I just hooked it up to an appliance timer with one 15 minute interval set to turn it off in the middle of the night. We’ll see what happens with daily reboots and if it gets any more reliable.
There are some things that never change. One of those is people’s need for distraction. Seems like it would be a good time for video game and entertainment companies to make a killing. If they are not, it is probably because they are charging too much. We finally got a console game system, a Wii, with the intention of using it for family time and fitness. The problem is that in order to do anything on it, it just costs so much money. Looking around on the Internet you’ll find GameFly with about the best prices and deal if you are an average to big gamer. If your kids can play through a game in a few days, then it doesn’t make sense to spend $50 for something that will be boring to them in less than a month. With a GameFly subscription, similar to Netflix, you can borrow games and send them back when you are bored. Their prices on used games are also very cheap.
I’m not subscribed. My kids are just not the gaming type (yet), and I certainly don’t have time. If I was a gaming company exec I’d try the move of reducing the cost of all my games to see how much better they’d sell in this economy.
Computer and Internet policy in the workplace, Part 2: The Ideal Policy
The ideal policy must balance productivity. It has to focus on actual results of policy change, not a theoretical ideal. First, you need to identify what problem you have that you want to develop policy to solve. Policy for the sake of policy is worthless. Once the problem is identified, say your employees are spending too much time on webmail, then develop a policy to counteract it, working in small steps at first. Next, evaluate your small-step policy change. If it has accomplished what you set out to do, then do not proceed any further. If it has not, then take another small step. The goal is to rarely backtrack on policy. If you have to backtrack then people will lose respect for the policies you implement and further policies will need to be even more drastic in order to have any effect. Read the rest of this entry »
I have some first hand knowledge of several different ways of handling policy in the workplace. This article is the first in a series that will discuss those, some theoretical ideals, implementation and awareness techniques, and pitfalls to implementation. Policy usually seeks to maintain safety for proprietary company data, employee privacy, public relations/image reasons, and for employee efficiency reasons. Failure to create or implement policy effectively has all the opposite effects. Read the rest of this entry »
So what was on your wishlist for Christmas this year? Did you get it? I did not put much in the way of technology on my wish list this year. Everything I want is too expensive. If I didn’t have a limit here are some tech things on my wish list:
Dual-Quad server with 64GB of RAM, ESX server, and at least a couple TB of fast RAID10 disk.
Flatscreen TV for bedroom and computer room
Netflix Roku player, or alternatively low energy media PCs to attach to my TVs
If you run a blog you’ve most likely come across spam comments like this: Submit your comments to millions of sites with the ***** submission tool. Generate backlinks, etc etc. Ok, two reasons why this is stupidly funny. First, if you have such a bad blog that you need to spam to get it viewed then you likely wouldn’t read comments on your blog to find this information. Second, the product doesn’t pass through the default Akismet install for Wordpress. Why would you buy something that obviously doesn’t work?
While I’m on the subject of spam, I noticed another tactic recently. Generic reviews on services such as MyBlogLog. These reviews say “Great Site” and nothing more. Looking at the user shows they have reviewed dozens of sites in the space of a few minutes. Does this stuff actually work?
UPDATE: Ok, I posted this and viewed the page and the first thing that I saw was a Monty Python advertisement. Hilarious!
I just saw an article on Wired called 8 Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special. I am going to breech the Apple vs. PC subject here with my 2 cents. First of all, the article has some good points, but the larger picture is that Apple has fans that spend money on them rather than customers. Customers are a fairly loyal sort of people. You give them a good product at a good price and they will likely return when they need to replace that product. Even more, they will go out and tell their friends who they bought the product from and you can build a base of loyal customers this way. A fan on the other hand is fickle and moves on as soon as something better comes along. Apple’s “customers” are more fan than customer. Read the rest of this entry »
GM has halted work on the factory that is to produce the engine for the Volt. This is absolutely the last thing they should be doing right now. They need to commit 100% to the Volt at the expense of all else. I don’t care if they halt every other production line and sell every car on a lot for half price, they need to downsize and fully invest in the Volt. Their survival depends on it. This to me is just evidence that either GM has no idea what they are doing, or they are trying to manipulate the public into giving them cash so that they can continue working on the Volt. It’s time to take them over and hand off Volt technology to a company who will know how to build it properly and market it effectively.
I’ve written about the Atom processor and what it could do to save power if used in enterprise. Here are some things that I’ve done to save energy at home.
Replaced all my lights with CFL (Compact FLourescent) bulbs.
Replaced windows with triple pane vinyl.
Fixed the draft under the front door with a draft guard like you’ve probably seen on TV.
Replaced a 50+ year old boiler (in progress).
Reports on some of these are going to be subjective since I was not thinking at the time that I would be reporting on them, but I thought I would post this as an encouragement to some who may be thinking about undertaking a project like this.
It took me less than 5 minutes to upgrade 4 blogs that I’m responsible for on the technical end. If you are a Wordpress user who has shell access to your server and you aren’t using subversion to update, then you are just wasting your time.
I have been looking forward to this release for quite some time. The interface is nicer looking on the back end, and threaded comments are available without a plugin. As with any upgrade, please let me know if you experience any issues. I have tested most things on a test site, but there is always the chance something crazy will happen during a release.
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