SchorrTech

New Roland Schorr blogs...

We've finally got the new blogs up and running at our company site. For those of you who want to read more of our writings on tech issues you can find the General blog at: http://www.rolandschorr.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5.

The Law Technology Blog can be found at: http://www.rolandschorr.com/blogs/index.php?blog=6

We try to post to them several times a week and I can tell you that we have a couple of interesting posts on telecommuting and software as a service currently in development that we hope to post either this weekend or early next week.

-B-

Why Am I Wary of SaaS?

Here's why:

Downtime makes Google Apps customers wary (http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/28/HNgoogleappscustomers_1.html)

I'm very reluctant to be entirely dependant upon an outside hosted provider for key line of business applications. Too much distance between my users and their applications, in my opinion.

-B-

Exchange Conference Coming to a City Near You!

Penton Publishing has their Exchange 2007 RoadShow coming up shortly. Follow this link to get more information and register. I helped out with some of these shows in Europe and they were well worth it.

-B-

Free Office 2007 Training (for a limited time)

Microsoft is making some online Office 2007 training materials available for free, for a limited time. Find them here.

-B-

MIT makes OpenCourseware available to all

MIT has made their OpenCourseware, online education, available to all for free.

Full list of the classes here.

-B-

GoDaddy is now NoDaddy

So, after a week of troubleshooting e-mail bounces, during which time GoDaddy's tech support mainly laid the blame on the fact that my client's IP address comes from a dynamic pool, my client's correspondant dumped GoDaddy and moved their e-mail hosting elsewhere. This probably was largely influenced by the fact that my client's IP address DOES NOT come from a dynamic pool and is properly registered both in DNS and RDNS.

Tired of banging his head against that wall, the client's correspondant said "Enough of that" and GoDaddy now GoByeBye.

-B-

Is GoDaddy WhoaDaddy?

I've heard from at least two different clients in the last couple of weeks that say that when they try to e-mail people whose mail is hosted by GoDaddy they get cryptic rejection notices claiming their servers are using Bogus HELO addresses or other such. Curiously their mail to every other domain, including microsoft.com, gmail.com and even various government and military mail servers goes thru just fine.

Does GoDaddy have something misconfigured in their filters?

Open Relay Database (ORDB) is shutting down

FYI - the Open Relay Database site is shutting down. A lot of folks have been using it as an anti-spam measure for their servers, but according to the press release it hasn't been well-maintained and they don't believe it's that effective anymore.

-B-

Who Do You Trust?

This video on YouTube illustrates a time-honored problem in the computer business -- no real barrier to entry. Anybody can hang their shingle out as a "Computer Expert" and start charging folks for computer services. The average consumer doesn't know a kilobyte from a keyboard and can't easily sniff out a fraud.

Kudos to the guy who fixed it free. A knowing nod to the guys who fixed it but charged their minimum service charge anyhow.

A big shame on you to the guys who tried to sell the consumer a "fix" they didn't need. One take is that they simply misdiagnosed the problem. My take is that they thought maybe they could fleece the customer. They saw the loose cable and figured they'd plug that cable in while they installed the part the customer didn't need and made some cash. The problem would be fixed and the customer would be none the wiser.

Terrible.

-B-

Here Comes Exchange 2007 (But Not Outlook 2007)

A follow-up to my previous blog entry on Exchange 2007...if you've bought earlier versions of Exchange you've undoubtedly taken comfort in the fact that a Client Access License (CAL) for the comparable version of Outlook. That's changing with Exchange 2007 -- an Exchange 2007 CAL does not include a license for Outlook 2007, you'll have to buy that separately. There are some exceptions for Software Assurance customers.

Unlike prior versions, Exchange Server 2007 Standard or Enterprise does not include the right to install Outlook on devices for which CALs are obtained. (http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ProductPage.aspx?pid=111)

-B-

Here Comes Exchange 2007

Exchange 2007 RTM'd (Released to Manufacturing) today in Redmond. After the last of the streamers and empty Starbucks cups are swept up from the party the task of supprting it begins. You can get all kinds of info about Exchange 2007 here but let me point out before you start...it's only going to run on 64-bit Windows. If you're considering an upgrade to Exchange 2007 (and a lot of our clients are) don't think you're just going to toss it on that old 32-bit Server you've been running Exchange 2003 on. Won't work.

That's part of the reason why we don't spec 32-bit servers anymore anyhow -- within 12-18 months I think all new server products will be 64-bit optimized if not require it.

-B-

What is Hale Ikena?

So after my last post about winning the Honorable Mention in the Windows IT Pro Innovators awards for our Hale Ikena solution the question was posed to me....what the heck is a Hale Ikena?

Well, Hale Ikena, in Hawaiian, loosely translates to "Room with a View" and we use it to describe our knowledge collaboration system which is intended to give our people a complete "view" of what our clients have and need. It's based upon Microsoft OneNote 2007 which we have installed on all of our tablet PCs.

I'll elaborate more on it in a future post, if people want me to, but the basics of it are this:

We have a shared notebook called "Clients" stored on a secured network server. Each of our users has opened that notebook and thus has a cached copy located on their local hard drive. Any changes they make to the notebook are automatically and transparently synchronized back to/from the central copy on the server whenever they connect to the server with OneNote open.

Within the Clients notebook we have a section for each client and within each section we have pages for Open Issues, Billing Notes, pages for each of their servers and machines, a page with General information and sometimes pages for specific applications or issues the client has in use or has experienced.

We frequently capture screen shots, drag and drop content from websites, research issues, post event log errors and collaborate on problems or ideas within the product. We can do it with ink or typing, we can insert photos (which we do often; taking pictures of a client's server rack with our digital camera phone for instance) we can even record and insert audio if we choose to.

Powerful stuff, easy to deploy and it has made us much more effective in assisting out clients. I'll try to detail some more things about OneNote and Hale Ikena in upcoming posts.

-B-

We're Famous (sort of)

Windows IT Pro Magazine has honored us beyond our accomplishments - they've selected our Hale Ikena solution for an Honorable Mention in their 2006 Windows IT Pro Innovators awards. We got a nice write-up in their November issue and I've started getting phone calls from reports and various world leaders (well, reporters anyhow) asking us how we can be so cool and yet so humble.

-B-

Call in the Movers

If you remember the last time you got a new computer you may recall the bittersweet experience of migrating to it. Sure it's shiny and fast, but you have your old machine set up the way you like it; with all of your apps, settings, bookmarks, etc. Moving to the new machine can be a painful experience.

PC Mover is a tempting solution -- it promises to migrate your files and settings from the old machine to the new. BUT [Important Lesson Alert!] don't undertake this casually. Look at the machine you're migrating from and the machine you're migrating to.

This week a client used PC Mover (which we have used successfully ourselves on occasion) to migrate from an HP 64-bit laptop (one of the Lance Armstrong/LiveStrong series) to a new HP desktop machine. Problem #1: The laptop was running Windows XP Pro (64-bit) and the desktop is running Windows XP Media Center Edition. Problem #2: The laptop has an AMD 64-bit processor and the desktop has a 32-bit Intel chip.

When all was said and done the files moved over fine, her profile was created and looked good, but most of her apps (Quickbooks and Kodak EasyShare notably) needed reinstallation and there were scattered drivers and apps from the laptop that didn't work on the desktop (AMD 64-bit driver anybody?) and wouldn't uninstall. After battling pesky issues for half a day, I finally gave up on it and did a system restore to back before PC Mover had its way with the desktop.

PC Mover is a good solution if you're upgrading from a cottage to a lovely 3-bedroom home on the west side. But if you're going from a Penthouse to a quirky loft in the artsy section of town you might want to stick with professional movers.

-B-

Que Bien!

Can you believe that Venezuela may be getting the eVoting thing right, while the U.S. fumbles around with half-baked solutions?

Creo que si!

-B-