Robert Stinnett

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Archive for category Tech Stuff

Instant Messaging is so 2000 and Late

May 7

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff | View Comments

While doing some work here at home tonight I realized something – for corporate communications in our workplace, I love instant messaging.  It helps us keep connected even though we have offices and employees scattered across the US.  With just a quick “ping” I can engage in a conversation with one of my colleagues in Virginia, or with a click of the mouse I can share my desktop and hold a virtual conference with folks working in the field, at home, wherever!

I then realized that as much as I love IM in the workplace, here at home I haven’t used IM actively in probably three or four years now.  For social connections its a “dead” technology to me.  Who wants to have to run a myriad of instant messenger clients because friends are scattered across different IM networks – that is, if they even have an IM account to begin with.  Not to mention it seems like its no longer real-time communications.  If I wanted to IM someone socially I’d have to catch them when they were logged in, and then hope we had the same version of the software running so we could share a file or send a picture.  What a hassle.

Besides, who needs IM at home when you have things like Twitter or Facebook?  I don’t have to worry about what “version” of Facebook you are using, or if you are logged into Twitter.  It’s an always-on, connect any way you like, wherever you like technology.  You aren’t there?  Fine – you’ll get my message later.  It’s a pull technology as well – Twitter, for example, let’s you follow me but you don’t have to get an annoying pop-up every time I send out a message.  IM on the other had was a push technology.  If I wanted to talk with you I had to push a message to you (and only you).  Talk about social isolation – one to one conversations that were intrusive and hard to manage on the go.

Perhaps I’m getting “old”.  I remember when instant messaging was the revolutionary app. Logging into AOL to “chat” with my friends or downloading the latest beta build of ICQ to keep in touch with other Internet nerds like me.  Then again, maybe I’m not getting old and it’s the technology that is changing.  For every need there is a technological solution it seems, and for keeping up with friends nowadays IM isn’t it.  For keeping up with co-workers IM fits the bill just fine.

That is, until the next technological revolution begins…

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Virtually Yours

Feb 19

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff | View Comments

I’ve been under the weather since Monday, so I haven’t had a chance to hit the gym for the past 3 days.  I learned long ago when you are sick that you don’t want to try and push yourself too hard.  Sometimes rest and relaxation are the best things you can do for yourself.  Besides, who wants to be coughing and hacking while trying to run on a treadmill or lift weights?  Ew!

 

image This week I had a training class for BMC’s Proactivenet software.  Had this been a traditional on-site class there would have been absolutely no way I could have made it.  I just did not feel up to going out in the cold weather, and I surely was in no shape to be traveling!  Lucky for me this was my first online “virtual” class through BMC.  I had my reservations before the class started about how good it was going to be, however once I came down with this nasty cold and logged into the class on Monday I was pleasantly surprised.  The class was excellent – and since it was online I didn’t have to worry about traveling or spreading my germs to anyone else.  Everything I needed was at my fingertips!  A headset and a high-speed internet connection was all that was required. 

As the class wrapped up on Friday it occurred to me that what happened during the week was more than just training.  It was getting work done no matter where I was at.  Technology has come so far and yet so many of us are still scared to death to use it.  Sure, we carry around our iPods and Blackberries and all sorts of gadgets – but we still think that in order to get training we need to be in a classroom; in order to meet we need to be in a conference room; in order to work we need to be sitting at a desk. 

Luckily companies far and wide are starting to see that technology use (not just implementation) is going to be a big productivity and cost-saving factor in the future.  Why in the world would anyone spend money on flights, hotels and rental cars when you could achieve the same thing with a WebEx session and a high-speed connection?  It just doesn’t make sense.

I’ve learned a lot about Proactivenet this week, but I also learned a lot about using technology instead of just “having technology”.  When you use it the right way it can really make a world of difference – not only to you, but to your organization as well.

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Why Do You Need My Address and Phone Number?

Jul 18

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Customer Service, Tech Stuff | View Comments

So I got yet another e-mail from another company, this time Elance.com, informing me that my personal data had been “breached”.  Breached is the new term companies are using for stolen, swiped, copied and leaked out.  Breached is somehow supposed to soften the blow and make me feel like it was a covert operation by a spy organization from the former USSR and that I shouldn’t fear because the Man from U.N.C.L.E. is on top of it.

Please.

Lately it seems like every time I turn around its my bank, or a credit card company or some online retailer or site sending me an “Ooops, sorry” letter.  There was a time when this happened they at least offered to buy you a subscription to a monitoring service – but you don’t see that much nowadays, I guess they figured that it happens so often now that its just standard procedure to notify you and then ask for forgiveness.  “We really, really promise to try harder next time!”  Next time what?  Next time you put my private data up for grabs?

Please.

It’s time that websites stop collecting personal data.  Period.  After all, most websites (I’d argue well over 95% of them) have no need for personally identifiable information.  I shouldn’t have to share with you my home address and telephone number just to be able to browse your website.  In fact, for most websites out there all the information they need is a way to identify me (a username) and a password to make sure its me.  That’s it.  They don’t need my zip code, my birthday – nada.

To be fair, some websites have already seen the light and are heading in this direction.  Sears Holding Corporation, parent of Sears and Kmart stores, recently made it so you can login to their customer service sites using a plethora of identification services such as OpenID and Facebook.  Even blogs are starting to get in the act and allowing you to “authenticate” with your Twitter or Facebook id to post a comment.

Of course, that’s not to say we should automatically trust Facebook, Twitter or even OpenID with our personal information.  However, I’d rather take my chances with a small number of companies that adhere to strict data privacy guidelines than giving it to every Joe Six Pack on the Internet who starts his own blog.  We can hold companies who setup guidelines accountable when they misuse our data or abuse our trust a lot easier than we can anonymous strangers behind a website.

If anything it encourages more interaction because we don’t have to interrupt our train of thought to create yet another account we’ll forget about or have to write down somewhere and keep track of.  Ever since some blogging platforms started allowing me to authenticate using Twitter and Facebook I’ve noticed I’m more willing to jump in and participate instead of thinking about participating and then opting not to because “I have to create an account first <Groan>”.

It’s time we stopped giving out our personal data to websites and start asking questions about why they want it to begin with.  Heck, I won’t even give out my phone number to people anymore, instead I give my Google Voice number to folks – even my friends.  Heck, I’ll even give that out to you – complete Internet stranger – just look to the right of my blog for the link!  I trust Google to keep my real phone number private (perhaps I’m being a bit too trusting?)

The past 16 years on the web has been the wild, wild west – but there is a new sheriff in town, and a whole lot of townsfolk who have had it with privacy “breaches”.

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Windows Live Mobile SMS Lets Me Connect to my Digital World

Jul 9

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff, windows live | View Comments

iPhone, Palm Pre, Android Phone – wow, those smart phones sure are cool!  They also come with a pretty hefty price tag not just to purchase, but to keep the data plan necessary to access all the cool features they offer.  I want to connect to my digital world – especially my e-mail and calendar, but you see, I’m cheap – and in this economy cheap is cool.  I’ve looked at the iPhone and the Blackberry and I keep thinking the same thing – even if they give the phone to me, the data plans end up costing a fortune over a two year time span.

I have a regular, basic Samsung phone from AT&T with txt messaging (SMS messaging).   I pay $9.99 a month for our whole family to have unlimited text messages.  For years I’ve just wanted something basic – something to say “hey, you got a new e-mail from Roger” or “Don’t forget you have an appointment at 2:00”.  A simple text message to help connect me to my digital life.  Unfortunately, nobody seemed to offer that.

That is, until now.  I stumbled upon Windows Live Mobile for SMS the other day and I’ve been an addict ever since.  Talk about keeping me connected – I think someone over at Microsoft must have been listening to my rants!

imageIf you haven’t yet, go ahead and fire up a browser and head on over to mobile.live.com and take a look around.  Here is where the fun starts.  It doesn’t take long to get your mobile phone registered and to start exploring. 

It Started With E-Mail

Being someone who runs a small business and needs constant access to my e-mail (powered by Live Mail thanks to Live Custom Domains) the first thing I checked out was what type of alerts they had for mail.  Sure enough, I found out that my old settings for e-mail was carried over from my “Experiment” last year – the txt msg mystery was solved!

If you have a Live Mail or Hotmail account you are in business – and Microsoft makes sure imagethey put you in full control.  Not only can you specify when you want the txt msgs delivered (for instance, I don’t want any between 11PM and 7AM) you can also specify under what circumstances you want to be notified through mobile alert filters.  For instance, I belong to several mailing lists that I don’t want to be alerted to – so I put in a filter for them to turn off the alerting for those messages.  You can setup as many filters as you wish to really give you granular control over how you will get alerted.

So after I got my e-mail alerts fine tuned I wanted to find out how else I could “connect” with my digital life from my “dumb” cell phone.   What I discovered next turned me from a fan to a pure enthusiast.

From E-Mail To Full Blown “WOW!”

After getting e-mail alerts setup I started looking around to see what else Live SMS alerts had to offer.  That’s when I discovered the full blown list of commands you can send from your phone to Windows Live to get back information in virtually real time.  I found out I could even access my calendar and contacts – score!

 

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I recently started to use Live Calendar to keep track of appointments and events and have been very impressed with its abilities.  Now that I could query my calendar from anywhere at anytime with my phone and a simple txt msg I was ecstatic!  Once you query your calendar for your schedule you can even drill down into it for more details – all with simple txt msgs.

Another cool feature not to be overlooked is the ability to access your contact list on the go.  Now I know most of us (including me) keep our contacts on our phone stored in our SIM cards.  However, think about this – what happens if you ever lose your phone or your SIM card gets damaged?  I learned the hard way that its always good to store your contacts somewhere other than on your phone for long-term storage. 

So for example, while I may have my friend Roger’s phone number and e-mail on my phone, perhaps I need his work number or address.  Not a problem with Windows Live – it’s right there, at my fingertips!

Finally, as if I wasn’t impressed enough already, I also found out that the SMS alerts can also work with Live Messenger.  Now I’m not a big user of Messenger – though I find myself using it more and more each month, but I can see the possibilities here.  Say a friend or client wants to get ahold of me, but its not important enough to interrupt with a call.  They can just tell Messenger to send me an IM through SMS – to which I can respond back and have my reply delivered as an IM directly to them. 

So after all these years of drooling over all these smart phones I have to say that using Windows Live Mobile SMS I’m pretty happy that I didn’t bite the bullet and buy one of those expensive things.  I’ve finally found a way to keep my digital life connected with me on the go – and on the cheap!

 

 

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Bing’s Got the 411 On 411

Jun 22

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Reviews, Tech Stuff | View Comments

Even with computers on every desktop (and kitchen counter) and smart phones that can do everything but make coffee (though I’m sure that is coming soon) there is still a need for the occasional call to 411.  In fact, I’ll be honest, I’m an addict when it comes to 411 service.  It’s so much easier to call 411 and get the info with a hands-free headset than to navigate on a tiny screen while driving down the road (and much safer!).

Now it should come as no surprise that the old Ma Bell telephone companies love to charge for this service – have you made a call to 411 on your landline (remember those?) lately?  If so, you know that you can get socked with an outrageous charge just to find a phone number.  So when Google launched their 411 service it was an instant hit with me.  Now I could use it anytime, anyplace without worrying about having to pay for it.

And so I did… and was happy with the service.. until Bing launched their 411 service.  Then I was no longer happy – I was addicted!

Bing continues to impress me – more relevant search results, and the ability to find what I am looking for within the first ten results.  That alone has made me a fan since day one.  Today I came across a Twitter post about Bing 411 and had to try it out.  I spent a good 15 minutes just playing around with it.  This was what 411 should be – this wasn’t basic 411 from the phone company or the business-only 411 Google offers.  This was 411+.

Weather, traffic – even cheap gas prices – all waiting for you to just ask for it.  My first lookup on Bing 411 was for Copeland’s Auto Service in Boonville, MO.  For some reason Google 411 has an awful time locating this business that has been around for over 10 years and it takes me at least 4-5 tries to get it to find it.  Not so with Bing!  The very first result was what I was looking for.  Woo hoo! 

Next I decided to have fun with the cheap gas locator.  Now, granted, its still in beta – but sure enough it worked!  I found a station near me in zip code 65201 that had gas for 3-cents a gallon cheaper than what I thought was the cheapest gas in town!  Woo hoo!

About 5 minutes later I had deleted Google 411 from my cell phone and replaced it with Bing 411.  Because, I’m telling you, this thing is just plain cool.  It’s like that Black Eyed Peas song “Boom Boom Pow” – Bing seems so 3008 and Google seems so 2000 and late.

Interested in trying Bing 411?  Just call 1-800-BING-411 and enjoy!

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Search vs. Decision or Library vs. Librarian – The Bing Decision Engine

Jun 5

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff, web 2.0 | View Comments

When I was a kid growing up in St. Louis I spent many a hot summer day at the Carpenter Branch Library of the St. Louis Public Libraries.  When you are a kid who loves to read, and your parents don’t have air conditioning, the library is a “cool” place in more ways than one!  It was back then when I discovered the power of the card catalog (which was computerized) versus the librarian.  Sure, the card catalog could return a ton of listings on my search query – but it was the librarian who could actually understand what I was trying to find and in what context and then guide me to the material that would be most beneficial to me.  It’s this same model that Microsoft is now using for their newly launched Bing.com search engine.

Bing bills itself as a decision engine and promises to free us from search overload.  I have to admit, I’ve been using it for two days now and so far Microsoft is living up to the promise.  I’m highly impressed at how Bing can focus in on determining what I am asking and trying to give me relevant results instead of just throwing everything in its database at me.

Case in point.  I’ve recently became a very active fitness buff (feel free to come follow my progress over on Nike+) and wanted to pick up a new pair of Nike Shox M1+ running shoes.  I had went to the mall after work and didn’t really see what I wanted, so though OK I would give Bing a try.  Not only did Bing find me the shoes at $20 less than I expected to pay, but it also found them locally at a store I had walked right past in the mall!  Now THAT is relevant results that I can use!

Ok.  So maybe Bing just got lucky.  Time to throw it some curve balls.  I live in a rather small town of about 10,000 in Missouri called Boonville.  Nice place, and a great river town.  We don’t have a whole bunch of restaurants, but we got enough to give us the variety we need – and they are all locally owned for the most part.  I asked Bing to show me the restaurants local to me.  I was impressed when the results came back with not only the restaurants, but pricing and reviews as well.  Cool!

Now of course there are always a few rough edges in any new products, so I have to admit that a few restaurants from nearby Columbia, MO (about 20 miles down the road) snuck in – but hey, to be fair, the same thing happens over on Google as well.

What Bing is doing, and I think doing rather well, is that it is just not throwing back a bunch of results like a typical search engine does and saying “have fun”.  It’s actually trying to narrow down your query and focus in on relevant results that fit the context of what you are searching for.  Just like the librarian at the library, Bing is trying to understand exactly what you are needing and not just throwing back the entire card catalog at you.

I’ve been a Google fan for years because even though it threw back all the results, it threw them back in a manner where at least in the first 20 or so I could find something that was relevant and then go from there.  Now with Bing I’m finding that I’m getting back relevant results on the first try which is really nice.

Has Microsoft finally found their footing in the search engine marketplace?  I think so, and I think in finding their footing they have also reinvented search and coined a new phrase which I predict will be around for a while to come – the decision engine.

Google, Yahoo, Ask and others – meet the new librarian.  It’s name is Bing.

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Java, The New COBOL?

Feb 11

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff | View Comments

I came across this today and just had to share.  I started my career off as a System/370 Assembler and COBOL programmer.  My first “love” of a computer language will always be COBOL.

PERFORM 550-LAUGH-ROUTINE.

The following was taken from stuffthathappens.com:

Java is the New COBOL

 

STOP RUN.

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Rotating Apache Logs – The Easy, Automatic Way

Feb 7

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff | View Comments

Many of my friends that I’m strictly a Microsoft Windows guy – they don’t know about the secret Linux guy that hides inside.  Most of the web properties that I own (including this one) run on Linux and are served up by Ubuntu.  I get my “power” from Slicehost, the best darn virtual private server provider out there.  Long before I was a Windows guy I spent many an hour writing scripts and maintaining AIX systems.

Enough about that – onto the topic of this post.  One of the things I like to do with my websites is rotate the Apache access log files every day so that I can more easily archive them and analyze them.  Unfortunately, as common as you might think this is, it’s pretty darn hard to track down any documentation on how to do it.  The thing is, once you find out how to do it, you realize how easy it is!

The trick is to use a program that comes with Apache 2.0 – rotatelogs.  This guy can be found in your /usr/sbin directory on most flavors of Linux.  You are going to take it and combine it with the CustomLogs directive in your configuration file to give you all the power you want.  If you are running virtual hosts on your sites, you will want to put this in your configuration files for your particular site that are located in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled.  (Unless you keep all your log files for all your sites in one big file, which I strongly recommend against.)

Note the following is all on one line, despite the fact it may appear to be on two in your web browser.

CustomLog "| rotatelogs /var/www/virtualdir/log/access_log.%Y-%m-%d 86400" combined

Replace your current CustomLog entry with the one above.  Notice the pipe character “|” after the quotes.  This will have Apache rotate your log files every 24 hours at midnight (86,400 seconds after midnight) and store them as access_log.2009-07-02 with the date portion changing every day.  Unlike other solutions out there, this one will not require any restarting of your Apache server every day.  You will need to use apache2ctrl restart to restart your web server after you made the changes to pick up the new configuration settings.

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What Happened in March 2006?

Jan 12

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff | View Comments

I’m always on the look out for interesting data, particularly when it comes to data dealing with either retanetcraft-surveyil or technology.  I came across a monthly survey taken by Netcraft that analyzes what software websites are running.  I was quite surprised to see in March of 2006 a spike in IIS (Microsoft) and a decline in Apache (Linux).  Furthermore it seems that for the past two years this pattern has held to the point where Apache has lost some serious marketshare to IIS.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m not anti-Apache.  I run 4 sites off Apache and only one off of IIS.  I will admit, though, the more I have to maintain the more I look at IIS because it is easier to manage than Apache.

Aside from all that, I’m left to wonder — what happened in March of 2006?  Sometimes the devil is in the details.

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That’s Life Without Walls

Jan 10

Posted by Robert Stinnett in Tech Stuff | View Comments

Enjoying my five minutes of fame thanks to Microsoft and the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show.  Read about how I use technology in my house with Microsoft Live.

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