Thursday, December 29, 2011

STOP SOPA Now!! This Video that Must Be SHARED! How the corporate media set up Internet users to commit crime.

STOP SOPA Now!! This Video that Must Be SHARED! How the corporate media set up Internet users to commit crime.

This guy has some great points about the SOPA act and its supporters. These supporters are responsible for encouraging and enabling the copyright infringement to begin with. Lets see if they can explain this??

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Roku: Streaming Right Into My Heart

I've been wanting to get some sort of streaming device for a while now but I was unable to decide immediately on what I wanted. The Logitech Revue was discontinued, so there went that idea. I didn't know if I wanted a Sony LED Smart TV powered by GoogleTV. What I really wanted to do was avoid shelling out for a new PC with Windows 7, but we needed Netflix instant watch capabilities. This meant that saving cash with Ubuntu Linux and a Zotac ZBOX from TigerDirect wouldn't do the trick either, as there is no Netflix Instant Watch support. I'm working on a Plex Media Server for streaming my DVDs all over the house or my massive MP3 collection while driving in my car. There was a Plex client beta released for Windows, but I really didn't want to give Microsoft more of my money, and a GoogleTV or Android powered device had everything I was looking for.

After weeks of deliberation and over-thinking, my wonderful wife decided I really wanted the Roku2 XS for the holidays. As of Christmas morning, I could access HuluPlus, Netflix instant-watch, a custom channel for my Plex server, and it had tons of other content like News and Sports content, Tech podcasts and shows, a TED talks channel and Crackle, a free streaming movie service, plus over 300 other channels with free and paid content. Below are some of the services I have examined thus far and their comparisons to the full versions of the original product. Some pretty good. Some not so much...

Roku Channel Store 4/5

The Roku Channel Store has lots to offer. The free content is pretty expansive and if you look in the right places, you'll find excellent resources for high quality, free content. For instance, Revision3 has an excellent selection of tech related content like App Judgement, a show that rates and reviews the latest mobile apps for iOS and Android. There are also tons of independent media channels available for free as well as an Onion News Network channel and a UFC channel.

Netflix 2.5/5

The interface is a little cluttered and watered down for my liking. I would lie to see a sortable category list, and a cleaner interface in general. The video links are aligned in a left/right scrolling grid much like the main site is now, but there isn't a way to filter the genres, what you get is on the initial screen and nothing more. While the limited content thing has been a bone of contention lately with most of their subscribers, it is even more limited on Roku.
Oh, Netflix. If it weren't for your DVD service and my aversion to Cable TV, I would cancel you altogether.


Hulu 4.5/5

The Hulu app for Roku is pretty sweet. I can do just about everything with it that I would normally on Hulu through Chrome or Firefox. Most of the content seems to be available with a few minor exceptions. I have full access to my history, subscribed shows, recently added and I can even adjust the auto-play feature. To me, the auto-play feature is a completely undervalued option It's an excellent substitute for live TV. You don't have to interact and something else comes on once the program has finished. Admirably they have recently taken to prompting you after 3hrs of streaming asking if you need a break. This is a great way to prevent waking up at 3 am to because you passed out watching the Colbert Report and you've been scared awake by the screams of a woman in labor during American Horror Story.


Pandora 4/5

Pandora was my favorite streaming music service for the longest time aside from gdradio.net. I like their interface. It's simple, clean and utilitarian. The UI is familiar and easy to adapt to. The selection is what I expect from their service. All of my stations appear with the latest albums covers of the artists they are named for. Navigating them is very congruent with the rest of the apps as the selections are limited to what you can do with the remote, up, down, left, right, play, pause, etc... Recently I switched to Spotify for my music streaming needs and have been more than pleased. I'm oh-so-patiently waiting for the Spotify Roku Channel.


Roku Newscaster 3.5/5

The Roku Newscaster has a wide variety of network news outlets all with fair selections of segments and shows. There are channels for Fox, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, ESPN, NASA and a few others. I'm frankly surprised that there is so much news content. I figured ABC and NBC would be on board, but rest of them are quite surprising. I would like to see an option to stream the local news affiliate based on the zip code in your settings.


Other fun features of note are, the expandable media slot for microSD cards, the ROKU USB media player capable of playing videos, music and displaying pictures on a USB storage device (XS model only) and an HBO Go channel for HBO subscribers, Some of the video formats supported through the USB media player are MP4, MOV, and WMV(HD). Music streaming is available for AAC and MP3 files and pictures of the JPG and PNG persuasion are also supported.

I'm not entirely impressed by the game selection. Angry birds bores me and the rest of the 30 or so of games aren't really my cup of tea.

I haven't gotten into any of the other paid services yet, but I'll take some time to review them once I've gotten through all of the freebies.

Overall, I am satisfied with my Roku2 XS. The excellent selection of programming, easy to navigate interface, and the extras for my media, are all huge positives. Springing for the $7.99 Hulu Plus account or some of the other paid content only adds to the experience. Between the free content, inexpensive paid channels and access to your music and movie collection make the $49.99-99.99 Roku 2 a worthwhile investment. Especially if you are trying to get rid of pricey and inconvenient cable TV.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Reduce Your IT Budget: Invest In Your Infrastructure

Let's face it, your IT budget is forever growing. Servers and workstations need to be replaced all the time and software is expensive, but to maintain an edge on your competitors, you need to keep up to date with the latest software and smooth running computer hardware. The better your employees tools are, the more productive they can be. Investing in and improving your IT infrastructure is a must. To get the most out of your IT budget, consider some of the following options

Open Source Software

Over the past 20 years, small business computing has been dominated by Microsoft and their expensive and frequently unstable software. The benefits of using the Microsoft family of products are many. Chances are your users have been using Microsoft products at home for years and just about every job they have had since college involved them sitting down in front of a MS Windows computer. They are familiar with it, they understand how to use it and are proficient at it. Why switch. Thats a perfectly logical and frankly intelligent choice. It eliminates a learning curve for new software and platforms and it provides a steady user experience. What about your servers? For a Windows 2008 Small business edition, the license will run you about $900, plus $250 per incident when your Administrators have an issue they cont seem to get under control... It can get very costly.
The many flavors of the Linux operating system offer the same services with extra bonuses like added security, increased stability and uptime. On top of that, the cost of the license is $0. Now some enterprise level versions of Linux like RedHat come with support contracts for yearly subscriptions to their updates and versions of the the operating system.
Most of the largest tech companies like Facebook,Google, and Amazon use Linux as the framework for their infrastructure. It provides a much more customizable, stable and inherently secure operating environment. With more user friendly flavors of Linux like Ubuntu, and Linux Mint with large support organizations backing their progress, Linux has quickly become a viable and exceptionally useful tool for the small and medium sized business.

Responsible Energy and Resource Usage

Power usage is a huge portion of your IT budget. Most desktop workstations are left on all day, and all night. Whether running your computer at maximum capacity, or letting it sit idle, there is virtually no difference in power consumption. This means that roughly 2/3 of the time your employees desktop computers are on, they are wasting power and mony. It is estimated that the energy cost of running a computer over its entire life span is equal to the initial cost of purchase. This means that $1200 worksation, if left on, will cost you another $1200 to run it for the next 3-5 years. There are power management policies that can be put into place at a server level to prevent employees from disabling them. Responsible energy usage policies can effectively reduce your power consumption by 50%. or more per computer or server in your infrastructure.

The average employee wastes about $85 per year in paper, and toner by needlessly printing emails, funny pictures for their cubicles and personal documents. A responsible printing policy can be a good step to save a big portion of your IT budget. To enforce the policy there are a number of software options available to assist with managing e-waste related to printing. Preventing internal documents from being printed in color or logging print jobs sent to networked printers for reporting and review, there is a software option.


Hardware Life-cycling.

John in accounting is in need of a new computer. It's older than your office and you don't remember where you got it and the once white case is now yellowed from age. The engineers just requested 3 new machines to meet the requirements of the new design software. Chances are, the old machines the design team bought 3 years ago are more than up to the task of running Johns accounting software, office applications and email client without breaking a sweat. Instead of buying John a new low end machine, its time to do some repositioning. John may not need all the power that the old engineering departments machines have, but someone else could. Shuffle around your workstations on a planned, as needed basis. If you make all of your IT purchased with a focus on longevity, you'll maximize the usefulness and lifespan of your IT infrastructure.


Cloud Solutions

Cloud computing is the new rage in sustainable, low cost IT solutions. Its on-demand scalability and decreased operational cost make it a great solution for businesses worldwide. For the average Mom & Pop operation, a couple of servers on-site with active support and maintenance agreements, with a remote cloud hosted daily backup of their data isn't all that expensive and will probably serve them well. It doesn't pay for them to host their servers and run thin clients, but a cloud based service that acts as their accounting software and inventory system could save them a lot of money on support and maintenance costs as well as the energy cost of running the server or servers necessary to host an internal range of solutions.
Sometimes software is just too expensive. Nowadays you can find a cloud based solution for just about everything. From CRM software, incident and trouble ticket systems like SugarCRM, to hosted email and collaborative workspaces like Google Apps, the selection low cost, stable and secure cloud based solutions is expanding rapidly. As most of these services charge by the seat, they are easily scalable to meet our user demands. A cloud based solution is likely going to be a better bet than that pricey software package that needs a server to host the application databases. These services are typically available through a web browser and can be accessed from anywhere. This gives you the opportunity for a mobile workforce that can expand your prospective client base and talent pool for new employment opportunities.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Solar Cells Soon to Be Cost Effective Enough For Widespread Adoption

While exploring some of Hulu's videos on the search for informative content, I came across a Program from Australia called Catalyst. Its a science program with focuses on the discovery and scientific breakthroughs. In episode 4 there is a segment on ANU (Australian National University) and their contributions Solar energy. They they developed a method of creating solar panels that are up to eight times more effective at generating energy from the sun than conventional solar panels. In the show they show an experiment with a computer fan. 2 solar panes next to each other are compared. One conventional solar panel and one with sliver technology. The sliver solar panels produce enough electricity to power the fan with 10% total exposure while the conventional solar cell needs up to 90% exposure to produce the same amount of energy. These sliver cells are also flexible and have the potential to be made into a cloth-like material to be work on a short or hat which could charge your smartphone. Also since they are so much more efficient, they can be spread out to make a transparent solar cell. The potential for this type of application is incredible. Office buildings that generate electricity form the sun shining through the windows, A green house that generates the power fuel an aeroponic system while allowing enough light through to grow vegetables that bring to mind visions of high rise urban farming.


Developed by ANU, sliver solar technology was introduced this year that the Intersolar trade show in Germany by Tranform Solar and their Australian partner, Origin Energy. Together they have 2 plants manufacturing these solar panels in the US and Australia. Some people estimate that the emergence of this technology will allow solar energy to finally compete with the cost of coal within the next 3 to 5 years. Right now the return on investment with Soar panels is 20 years. This breakthrough has allowed for the reduction in time needed for the solar cells to pay for themselves to 7 years.
Here's a link to the episode. The solar segment is about 10 minutes in...

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot: Through the eyes of a newb.

Last month, I purchased a new barebones kit from TigerDirect.com and, as usual, I got great bang for my buck. Being that the holidays are around the corner and I have a wife and family to think about, shelling out another $200 for Microsoft's latest and greatest, didn't make a lot of sense. So, I decided to gove the latest Ubuntu release, 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” a shot. There have been some frustrations and there are some limitations, but if you are willing to put in a little time and effort, its totally worth it.

Let me begin with the interface. I have so far accepted the Unity desktop, but my patience is wearing thin. It really gives a Windows like feel to the whole thing and i think it would be okay for the average PC user who is used to Microsoft's warm and fuzzy interface. However, I am not entirely sold on it. The extent of my previous experience with Ubuntu has mostly been using it for rescuing data and the occasional tinker. The past 3 weeks I have been it as my primary machine and I am still more comfortable with the GNOME GUI than I am with Unity. I'm sure there will be plenty improvement over then next few releases but in the interim I may check out some other GUI flavors. Feel free to recommend some in the comments.

The configuration was pretty easy which made me feel a little more comfortable After I put my machine together, I booted to the disc I burned and went through the installation. After a little bit of reading and educated guesswork, I was excitedly logging in to my new Ubuntu PC for the first time. I was amazed that the drivers for all of my bits and pieces were already pretty much taken care of. Sound, Video, Network, USB and Microsoft Wireless mouse and keyboard were instantly recognised and available for my use. The monitor I was using at first wasn't quite up to snuff, so it was replaced with two of a much higher caliber and I was off watching Hulu, listening to Spotify on a beta build for their Linux client (totally awesome, check my next post) and doing just about every task I would normally use my laptop for.

The options are great. Aside from the excellent selection of free and pay software available from Ubuntu and their partner Canonical, installing software is usually pretty simple. Occasionally you run into some missing dependency issues or broken installers, but again, with a little time and effort, these issues are totally fixable.

So far, I have been able to find suitable and free alternatives for all of the software I use on my laptop. Firefox was already a staple on all of my machines and it came bundled with Ubuntu. I installed Chrome through the command line and didn't have any issues using it at all. Checking my email was a snap with the Thunderbird client that also came bundled with Ubuntu. I've used versions of Thunderbird in the past so configuring it to pop my mailbox was a breeze.

GIMPM makes for a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It functions much the same way as Photoshop does which keeps the learning curve pretty shallow. There are a few WYSIWYG editors for HTML and web design available, though more and more I'm just using notepad and setting an auto-refresh on my test page in a browser. I tried Amaya and its worth every penny I saved not shelling out for anything else. The Ubuntu Software Center is a fantastic resource for finding the software you need to get the job done, and installing software packages is surprisingly easy with the built in package manager.

Multimedia is a staple for me just like everyone else. I listen to music constantly and I watch a ton of movies, streaming and otherwise. Spotify has a solid beta client available for the Linux platform. I have experienced a few glitches with it, but that's to be expected for a beta. Spotify has recently made it to the top of my free music apps list and I'm super happy to be able to use it with Ubuntu. It plays my mp3 collection and most everything else I want to hear.

I haven't tried to watch any DVD's yet, and I hope that getting all of the codecs together isn't going to be too tough.
The only real disappointment was the lack of Netflix. There is no Linux support as a result of their using Microsoft's DRM protection for their streaming content. With the growing list of cable TV alternatives like Roku and the
Logitech Revue built on the GoogleTV platform that offer Netflix support, this isn't really a deal breaker, especially if you are willing to shell out another hundred or so bucks.

As a techie, I enjoy a bit of a challenge. I'm comfortable with using a command line interface and I especially like learning new things. For me the switch is a pretty easy choice. For the average Windows user, Linux isn't quite there yet. Installing software can still be a bit of a chore as can fixing problems or customizing some of the settings. Adding to that the fact that everything just works with Windows nowadays, and the fact that most major software packages arent supported by Linux without a third part app like WINE, Linux still falls short and is still more of a hobbyists operating system. I think in the next few releases, Apple and Microsoft are going to start to lose money to competitors who offer similar services and option but for none of the cost.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

What Green IT initiatives can do for your company.

Lets take a minute to examine some of the benefits your company can reap from implementing Green IT practices...

Green IT can significantly reduce energy costs

With the current cost of energy and the recent economic climate, reducing the use of energy is a no-brainer. By reducing energy consumption you not only reduce the overall carbon footprint of your business, you can save big bucks on your energy bills. Taking simple steps like enforcing a responsible power usage policy, or installing automatic mottion sensor detectors on the lights in your office can make a big dent in that electric bill.


Green IT can reduce operational costs and increasing efficiency

Keeping your budget in check is a major priority for any business today. With the cost of doing business getting higher every day, maintaining your bottom line sometimes seems like an impossible feat. Policies based around reducing these costs make a lot of sense. For example; Employees waste expensive printer ink and paper needlessly reprinting documents in full color. A good policy to enforce would be always print both sides, or color printing restrictions to customer facing documents only. Another idea would be to subscribe to an electronic fax service like efax , smartfax or fax.com to prevent needless printing of faxed documents. By saving valuable resources for when you really need them, you can prevent workload bottlenecks, time wasting trips to the fax and printers, you can increase your overall efficiency. Maybe that one extra call your sales rep made that day lands one extra sale. Perhaps the color printer had that last bit of blue ink needed to make that hard copy proof to your design customer. Its always the little things that make the biggest difference.


Focused Green IT strategies positively impact employee loyalty towards an employer with strong Corporate Social Responsibilities

This one is my personal favorite. The best way to increase productivity is to increase employee morale. If I'm disappointed or do not respect my employer, my work will suffer. It is easier to motivate someone who feels respected and feels that their job is worth doing.


Green IT initiatives can improve customer loyalty.

People appreciate doing business with companies that demonstrate a sincere environmental consciousness through action and not just words. Some of those old computers may no longer be of use to your staff, but there are a variety of non profit organizations that can use these machines in educational, administrative or other capacities.




Monday, August 29, 2011

Coming soon to a Verizon Wireless retailer near you, the Motorola Droid Bionic!!

Since this is supposed to be a tech blog and not just about Sustainability and Green IT, I have decided to give a review of the specs for the Motorola® Droid® Bionic® .


Eight long months I have waited for this thing. Amongst all of the leaks and rumors, patiently waiting for the official release doc, my patience seems to be paying off. According to the most recent leak about the product, it will be available on September 8th. Since this is my birthday, and I’m awesome, I can see good things in the Bionic’s future.
So I’m going to go right past the slightly boring stuff like the 4G LTE capability which we all know is fast and head right for the most impressive part. The Motorola Droid Bionic sports a killer TI OMAP 4430 1.0 GHz Dual core processor. This thing is embarrassingly more powerful than the laptop I brought to college and way more powerful than the first computer I built after that laptop died a few years later. This thing looks awesome.

Now I’m not really one to just jump on a phone bandwagon. The last time I made that mistake it ended up costing me so much time getting replacement after replacement for the original LG Chocolate. Now I wait at least 3 months before I buy any phone. I’ll wait for the first round of complaints to go through and perhaps an update to fix any major bugs. I’ll review the phone again when I get my hands on it. Hopefully it will be worth the wait.

I'm so excited about this phone that the completely uninformative and entirely irrelevant teaser ad makes me warm and fuzzy all over.



Sustainable Home Computing

Keep Your Home Computing Green


As a soon to be married guy, my fiancĂ© and I try to cut down on waste any way we can. We try as hard as we can to live a sustainable lifestyle. I’m sure we could do better, but every little bit counts. We recycle, we get our food from a CSA, and use reusable shopping bags, and we walk as often as the distance and weather allow wherever we need to go. I spend a lot of time on the computer at home, so I try to follow these rules to keep my home computing green.


First and foremost, shut it down when you aren’t using it. There are bunch of people out there who just leave their computers on all day long. There are so many benefits to shutting these things down. I don’t know about you but I feel the heat coming off of my laptop as we speak. In the summer time, all of these little pieces of technology running all day not only consumes power just by being on, the heat they generate can increases the amount of time your AC runs to keep your house cool. With the last few summers filled with beleaguering heat waves, the AC units all over my neighborhood are screaming their condensing little hearts out trying to keep us cool, all the while sucking pennies out of your pockets and burning up all of our natural resources. This goes for Laptops, PC’s, Monitors, Printers, phone chargers, TV’s and game consoles too.


Print Both Sides. Rough drafts for school projects and papers, coloring pages for the little ones, that novel you’ve been working on when your wife is asleep, Google Maps® directions because your GPS on your cell phone stinks. All of these things can be printed double sided. Don’t waste costly ink and paper on something that is going to just get thrown out or destroyed. Make a re-usable paper pile on top of your new paper and use that one first if you can.


Refill Your Printer Cartridges. There are a few products out there that you can use to refill your printer cartridges. Some of them are tricky, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll save a bundle on printer ink and stop all that plastic and heavy metals from entering our nations overflowing landfills.


Maintain your computers. Okay, I know it’s probably pretty small in comparison to some of the other items on my list. But the logic is sound. A few little’s make a whole lot. All of those running processes on your computer cause your computer to use more electricity. When your computer is infected with malware or a virus, there are usually background processes utilizing your computer’s hardware to


Last but not least, this one is my personal favorite…


Get outside! Leave your house! Get some fresh air and a little exercise. Go take a walk with your kids, or just ride your bike around the block. Get away from the internet for a while. I promise, we’ll all be here blogging and twittering ourselves blind as soon as you get back. I’m willing to bet the videos of those Canadian fellas turning gluttonous portions of bacon and meats into YouTube gold will be here when you get back. Go rediscover the place you live. I bet it’s a lot nicer than you think. If not, move. America is pretty awesome when you know where to look.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

5 Obvious Green IT Practices

Here is a starting point. Anyone who wants to take their technology and business Green should take a look a t these 5 Green IT Practices. While some of them may not apply to you or make sense due to the nature or size of your business, there is at least one thing here that can work for your company. Have a look!

1. Reduce Power Consumption. This is perhaps the easiest to accomplish. The average worker is at their desk for 9 hours per day, 5 days a week. When their day is over, their PC’s are left on and are using energy. Utilizing applications to manage desktop power settings can save close to $60 per PC per year on energy costs. With the advancement in virtualization technologies, it is possible to reduce physical hardware necessity buy up to 65% and therefore reduce overall energy consumption. It is estimated that up to 9% of the percent of energy costs are generated by IT hardware like PC’s, Servers, switches, printers and the like.

2. Reduce Paper Waste. The average employee can waste over $80 in paper and ink per year. This is due to the unnecessary printing of email documents and websites. Implementing printer management software requiring users to be at the printer at the time the job runs through, or that prevents users from printing websites and other unnecessary item with expensive color ink can save these costly resources.

3. Buy responsibly manufactured and energy efficient hardware. Purchasing hardware that is manufactured from more environmentally friendly plastics, or containing lower levels of toxic elements like mercury, lead and cadmium creates less of a footprint and can make great strides in reducing the flow of toxic e-waste into landfills. Energy efficient hardware reduces the overall energy consumption for the life of the hardware and can save hundreds of dollars over the life of the computer.

4. Virtualization and the cloud. With the advancement of virtualization and cloud based business technologies, server hardware can be reduced by up to 65% and energy consumption can be reduced by up to 80%. This in turn reduces energy consumption and prevents tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere. Also, there has been a new movement towards green datacenter design that promises to reduce energy consumption even further. The EPA rates enterprise datacenters on set of criteria called Power Usage Effectiveness. PUE ratings lower than 2.0 are considered to be good for the environment. Following these guidelines, and keeping the average datacenters PUE rating below 2.0 will help make great progress towards a greener future.

5. Remote Workforce Initiatives. The average commuter travels 32 miles per day on their commute to and from the office. With the average gas mileage at around 20mpg this translates into roughly 2.9 metric tons of CO2 per employee per year. A remote workforce is a great way to reduce energy costs and usage by eliminating Desktop PC’s from the office. The reduction of hardware and electricity costs, are just the beginning. All of the computers and monitors create excess heat which can add to the energy costs of climate control within the office. Utilizing secure remote connections as well as cloud based solutions, VoIP phone systems that work anywhere you can plug in, and conference bridge lines allow for the completion of almost any business critical task.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Green IT Practice

In the last few years, there has been an enormous movement towards Greet IT practice. The advancements in virtualization technologies, energy efficient datacenter design, and cloud based solutions have provided us with an excellent springboard to reduce the environmental impact of our business technologies. The downside to the increased adoption of these technologies is the inevitable increase in corporate e-waste.

Reducing energy consumption is an important first step in Green IT practice. Calculated hardware life cycle management is critical to minimizing the flow of e-waste into our nation’s landfills. A 2008 whitepaper by IDC , Beyond Power: IT’s Roadmap to Sustainable Computing ,stresses the idea of thinking about more than energy consumption when it comes to hardware utilization. Proper and secure disposal of hardware that is no longer of use to is important in minimizing e-waste. For Example, the old workstations you phased out because your marketing department switched to a new design software that is too resource intense, may no longer be of use to you, that doesn’t make it completely useless. There are schools and non profit organizations that are strained for cash as a result of budget cuts or just the overall expense of technology. Donations to organizations like this not only stem the flow of toxic e-waste, but also can provide opportunities for better education for underprivileged children, or more opportunities for adults attempting to re-enter the workforce.

That takes care of the Environmental and Social impact of Green IT practice. What about the financial aspect of it all? When procuring new hardware, purchasing from a perspective of longevity is the best option for your bottom line. Maximizing your hardware longevity and minimizing costly data loss are both excellent arguments for Green IT practice when making your point to those who hold the purse strings.

iPass Mobile Security Report

Last night, I read the iPass Mobile Workforce Report. It was interesting and provided me with some insight as to where the smartphone market was headed. Clearly, RIM® and their dominance over the Mobile workforce, is slowly waning. iOS® and Android® usage are on the rise in both the mobile workforce and personal communications. As a result of this, new and creative security measures must be implemented to address additional security flaws that the multitude of smartphone operating systems that are available, will bring.

Companies who specialize in content filtering products should take from this that they need to investigate secure smartphone email clients utilizing the latest in encryption to insure that today’s mobile worker adheres to industry privacy standards and company data protection policy. Companies like MobileIron, based in Mountain View, California, have developed technology to secure the transmission of sensitive company data over mobile devices. MobileIron is one of the highest ranking companies in the Gartner Reports Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management Software.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Welcome!

Welcome to the Fat Frog Networks, Fat Frog tech Blog!
Periodically, the staff here at Fat Frog Networks will write an article reviewing some new and upcoming technologies, Local Tech News, Shameless plugs of our products and the ones we like, , shenanigans, general computer knowledge, and opinions about anything that affects us.

At the moment, we have a list of tech we plan on testing and will be posting something that resembles a thought roughly once a week.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Adam