The resurrection of Javascript

An old programming language has made a spectacular comeback and is now at the center of many of the Web’s more interesting applications. Yes, JavaScript is back, and it is time for those VARs and system integrators to take another look. You can read my article in eWeek’s Strategic Partner here.

Here are the programming frameworks that I mentioned in the article:

• Ajile (Advanced JavaScript  Importing & Loading Extension)
• Scriptaculous and Prototype
• JQuery
• JavaScript Object Notation
• Google Gears
• Yahoo User Interface Library
• Direct Web Remoting
• Ruby on Rails

A much better, longer and more thoughtful take on the future of Web development can be found here at CIO.com by Esther Schindler.

Gmail’s contact management is the pits

I have been a big fan of Gmail for the past two years until lately when they made “improvements” to their interface — and have gone a step backwards.

For those of you still living in the stone ages, Google’s Gmail is a free Webmail service, and available for free as well for domains that you own too. Their philosophy is to have world-class search, to be able to classify messages so that you can easily find them. Oh yeah, and do no evil. They lose on all three counts by me.

What did they break? The whole contact management section, that’s all. There is no easy way to delete a contact from a group once you have more than a few groups. The interface takes longer to load and requires a more recent Web browser to work. Safari 2 and IE 6 aren’t recent enough, it seems. And, the whole search engine thing is broken: if I want to search on a term that is part of my notes on a contact, I can’t do it with the Search interface of the contacts page. For example, I am heading out to Boulder to visit my daughter next month: a search on “Boulder” comes up empty, even though I know I have entered information on several people in the area. The old interface worked just fine, and displayed things correctly, and could search across any data that you entered in your contacts.

Gmail’s contact groups have been the weakest part of the service for a while. In late June, all of my group members went missing for about 24 hours, and I — and many others — had a fit.

At the heart of any email solution for me are two things: being able to run it from any Web browser and being closely tied to my contacts. Gmail does neither: to delete that errant contact mentioned earlier, I had to bring up a version of Windows with IE6. That seems backwards.

What I liked about Gmail was being able to create ad hoc groups and mini-mailing lists of my contacts, arranged by subject, geography, or some other common thread. I must have 40 or 50 different groups of my more than 8500 contacts. I am not trying to brag, but I took the whole notion of “never throw anything away” to heart and now am stuck with this huge list.

Gmail offers ways that you can export your contacts into a CSV or a file that contains V-cards, but neither of these exports contains the group identities of the contacts. The only way that I have figured out to make backups of this information is to take screen shots one by one of the groups that are displayed. Talk about the stone ages. This is so cumbersome that I have only done it once, since shortly after the group memberships were restored from the June outage.

So what can I do? I could get off of Gmail, but that means finding something else to use for my contacts and cleaning them up. Plaxo Pulse and LinkedIn both do a nice job of keeping everyone’s contact info current, but neither have a nice Webmail solution. Apple’s Address Book can take the Gmail V-card export just fine and also do the searching across all contact information, but that ties me to a Mac when I travel. I could go with a Web-based ACT solution, but I have stayed away from ACT for this long I am not sure I want to start now. And I don’t want to run an Exchange server and use Outlook Web access either.

Of course, Google could fix their contact management module, but I am not holding my breath. I hate it when software companies succumb to adding features at the expense of usability, and turn a great product into an also-ran. I guess they are taking some lessons in becoming evil from their pals in Redmond.

Channel Cast Podcast: Trinet Systems and selling VOIP convergence

Converged network solutions can help create efficiencies in growing organizations, such as the Boston Celtics, explains Mark Damphousse, CTO of Trinet Systems, in this Channel Chat podcast.

 

Listen to the podcast here.

Should I start a blog for my business?

Paul Gillin and I have been having lots of fun doing a weekly podcast series called TechPRwarStories. Paul, for those of you that don’t know him, has been in the high tech publishing business as long as I have, starting TechTarget and running Computerworld’s editorial back in the pre-Web days. He recently wrote this post which I thought you might enjoy:

One of the most common questions I get is should I start a blog for my business, and it’s one of the most difficult to answer. Although plenty of social media consultants will tell you that business blogging is a no-brainer, the reality is that the medium isn’t for everybody. Here are some factors to consider in deciding whether to enter the blogosphere and  a little quiz you can take to determine if the blogosphere is right for your business.  Answer appropriately and then total up your score.

Do you want to do it?  A blog isn’t a short-term project.  Once you start, you need to consistently update your site, at least once per week. The novelty will quickly wear off, so ask yourself whether you have the stamina and a wellspring of ideas to keep you going beyond the first few months.

Yes: 5 points; No: 0 points

Do you have a topic in mind?  Ideally, your topic should be expressible in less than a dozen words displayed under your blog title. This isn’t always easy. Some markets (marketing, entertainment and sports, for example) have hundreds or thousands of bloggers.  In an environment like that, you need to focus your topic very precisely. Other markets (architecture and construction, for example) are nearly wide open.  Pick a theme for your blog and be sure it doesn’t duplicate what’s already being said. The more distinctive your topic, the faster you’ll achieve success.

Yes: 3 points; No: 0 points

 

Are you passionate about the topic?  Good blogs have personality and personality is a product of enthusiasm.  That doesn’t mean you need to be a cheerleader; in fact, some very successful blogs are negative in tone.  It does mean that your topic should be something that you can talk about for hours, because that’s basically what you’ll be doing with your blog.

Yes: 3 points; No: 1 point

 

Are you knowledgeable about the topic?  A public forum isn’t the place to go to school, particularly if you represent a business.  It’s important to engage in dialogue and learn something from your readers, but you should also have a point of view backed by expertise and experience that makes you credible.

Yes: 2 points; No: 0 points

 

Do you communicate well?  Some people don’t, and a blog is probably not the right promotional vehicle for them. You don’t necessarily have to be a good writer; many successful bloggers use video and sound to great effect. But you do need to be able to express your thoughts coherently in some form.

Yes: 2 points; No: 1 point Do you have a thick skin?  If you’re opinionated enough to sustain a blog, you need to accept the fact that others may differ with you.  Assuming you accept comments (and I strongly recommended that you do), be prepared for some pointed response to what you say.
Yes: 2 points; No: 1 point

Scoring:
12 or more points: What are you waiting for?
8 to 12 points: You’re on track, but you need more focus or enthusiasm
5 to 8 points: Think hard about whether this is the right vehicle for you
Less than 5 points: Don’t bother

Ten tips to secure your laptop

As more people use a laptop for their primary work PC, the chances for being compromised because of some wireless miscreant looms large. Here are ten how-to tips to protect yourself and make the best use of a wireless network, whether you are at home, at work, or in between.

Read the rest of the article posted today on Techweb/Information Week.com

Sending large files without email attachments

Sending large files as email attachments is a big pain in the neck. Most email services — and most corporate filters — place a limit on the size of attachments, or your total storage, and if you have a bunch of photos or a video or a large PowerPoint presentation, you will quickly find out what this limit is and get a message saying the file can’t be sent that way. So what are your choices?

If you own your own domain, you can transfer the file to your Web site using file transfer protocols such as FTP or SCP and then have your correspondent transfer it down to their computer. If you both have Instant Messenger accounts on the same system, you can send the file that way too. Both of these are better methods than email attachments, but your correspondent may not want to use either of them, and they are a bit cumbersome to get going. If you are using IM at work, your corporate IT department may block attachments too. And some IM “collector” programs like Trillian or Adium don’t handle the file transfers well.

Luckily, there is another method that makes use of a file transfer service. You upload the file via a Web site and a simple fill-in form. Once the file has been uploaded, the service sends an email message to your recipient, with a link on how to get the file.

There are a number of free services that you can use for this purpose that go by names such as SendThisFile.com and DropSend.com. They vary in how much storage you have, the maximum file size, how many files you can send per month, whether they encrypt the file or password protect the link so no one else can read it, and how much they charge beyond the basic free service.

My current favorite is Box.net. They offer free storage of up to one gigabyte, and have some nifty features too. Unlike some of their competitors, your storage is permanent – the others place a limit on how long they will store your files. It takes just a minute to setup an account and upload a file.

One of the more interesting things about Box.net is that they have begun working with other online vendors to complement their file storage services, what they call Open Box Services. Basically, they publish their interfaces and help develop links to other Web services applications. You can fax a file directly from their repository using their eFax link. You can send your file directly to your blog. You can edit your photos. This is all pretty cool, and is a great way to showcase Web services and do some lightweight collaboration. I like the fact that I can put a bunch of my files there for other applications to access.

Box.net isn’t the only one doing this applications sharing, of course. Notable is Google Docs, where you can edit, save and share spreadsheets, documents, and presentations, and directly post them to your blog as well. They are also free for up to 5 GB (with some caveats) and if you need more you can purchase up to 50 GB for $50 a year, which is probably the best bargain per gig around.

The downside for Box.net is that their maximum file size is 10 MB for the free service.  If you need more it costs $10 a month. Depending on your circumstances, you might want to try out one of the other free services that can handle larger files. Still, whatever you do, you now have lots of choices and don’t have to send any more email attachments.

Eight Signs of Evil in High-Tech Companies

This story, posted on CIO.com by Thomas Wailgum, is a wonderful read and a good history lesson to those of us with short(er) memories.

Channel Chat Podcast: Rob McKernan, APC

In this Channel Chat podcast for Ziff’s ITLink/eWeek, Rob McKernan, vice president of North American Channels for APC, talks about what opportunities are available for VARs interested in selling power conditioning and cooling equipment.

Listen to the podcast here.

Becoming more agile

There is all this talk about making companies more agile. And with more than two million hits on Google the term may even be more popular in some circles than Web 2.0 this week. (Well, we can only wish.) Certainly, part of understanding agility is changing how you develop and bring your products to market — write better code, make more reliable hardware, work more adeptly with Internet services, respond better to customer complaints or suggestions. But another part of agility is understanding the “softer” side of your company, such as being able to better hire, train, and retain your people. Too often management tends to forget that it is the people that make an organization, not just the products.

I thought about this recently for a story that I wrote for the New York Times that is out today about contact management software. I first got the idea from a colleague that I met at the local National Speakers Association chapter here in St. Louis. He had some computer issues running ACT on an old Macintosh. He was keeping the aging Mac around because ACT was essential to running his speaking business and he didn’t want to have to a Windows PC just to run the latest versions of ACT. That got me going on the idea for the story, and the Times was interested enough to give me the assignment.

Too often a small business gets wrapped up in the wrong technology and their agility suffers as a result. Actually, it can be any sized business. Take a look at what happened to IBM back in the 1990s when its mainframe-centric world collapsed and they had to reinvent themselves as a software and services company. I was reminded of this when at a lecture last night by Harvard biz school professor Lynda Applegate, who has done some consulting for them over the years. IBM went from the most profitable company in the 1980s to losing billions in 1991.

But a better situation is when a company builds in agility from the get-go. They don’t stay small too long because they can grow. As an example, take the woman that I interviewed for the Times who runs her own business in Orlando. When she started her company, she thought she would use a traditional model of having everyone come into a single office. But as she got clients around the country, she realized that this wasn’t a workable model.

Part of what was holding back her operations were outmoded contact and sales management tools. The assumption was that a single PC would house this information, and that everyone would create their own documents on their own PCs. As a result, there wouldn’t be much need to share data among different staffers. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Once they implemented an Internet-based contact and document system, things changed. The firm found out that they could hire anyone and that they can work anywhere. “We didn’t intend to run our business in a virtual environment when we got started but realized that we can hire people based on their skills and our needs regardless of their location,” says Lara Triozzi, the president of MarketLauncher Inc. But now that they have a taste for the “virtual environment” – meaning that their critical IT components are outsourced and available via the Internet — they really like it and it is the core of how they will grow their business going forward.

They got some side benefits from this strategy, too. The outsourced contacts vendor that they picked (ACT Remote) also handles all of their security, backups, and tech support, and the vendor also hosts all of their Microsoft Office applications and data, too. Now they have freed themselves from having stand-alone and isolated applications, and can share information around the company without having to worry if someone left something on their PC and didn’t come into work that day.

That is what agility is all about.

Lessons learned from a home networking odyssey

I first met Mike Azzara about 18 years ago when I began creating the concepts and overall editorial plan for a new networking magazine called Network Computing. Alas, the magazine has come and gone, and Mike’s career at CMP is also a fond memory, but we are still in touch. Over the years, I have served as his personal IT support guy, but when I moved out of state, he could no longer drag me over to his Long Island, N.Y., home and feed me in barter for networking chores. I still did some support for his home network, and it dawned on me that our correspondence would make for a dandy series of articles that details every step he made in going from four computers and two printers with no real connectivity among them to DADNET, a unified network where the computers can all “see” each other and share each other’s printers and hard drives (on a good day).

The result is the following series that is posted on DigitalLanding.com describing his plans, progress, and triumphs. And as Mike says, if he could figure out how to crimp and create his own Ethernet cables, so can you!
Here are seven lessons we distilled from the experience:

1. You can do it: I may be guilty of beating the proverbial dead horse, but if Strom had told me a year ago that I’d be stripping and terminating cat5 Ethernet cable, I’d have told him to quit the crack. But doing so, while daunting at first, became easy after some study and practice. (Here’s a link to the page that made it possible for me to wire my home network.)
2. Plan, plan, plan: Planning ahead and thinking through each change, especially in terms of how it will affect everything else in a home network, is crucial to disaster avoidance. I spent the first half of the summer just thinking through various network scenarios.
3. Check/verify each change: Plan in advance how to verify that a change has worked or had the intended effect. If you make multiple changes before verification, you’ll have a harder time pinpointing a problem. For instance, when I had problems with video chat, I changed just one item–the cable modem. Then I retested the video chat and it worked, so I knew it was the old cable modem that was the bottleneck.
4. Persevere: Getting network software settings right is essentially voodoo. But any relatively intelligent person will eventually make sense out of the gibberish that passes for instructions in this industry and get most anything to work—as long as you stick it out.
5. Google is your friend: Whatever you’re up to, you’re not the first. Google the words you imagine in the solution to your problem, or just ask Google your question and hit return. Sometimes you have to read several articles or forum posts before you can make sense of the solution, but you’ll get there eventually. I did. (See “Persevere.”)
6. When all else fails, check the firewall: Yes, Norton keeps us safe–by preventing communications. Some firewall settings need fiddling before your computers can get intimate over your network, particularly the “Trust” settings in your firewall.
7. Listen to your users, I mean your family: I saved a ton of time and trouble by not rigidly adhering to the model I originally planned, and instead left things the way my kids preferred. They’re perfectly happy with their printer being a whole floor away, something my wife and I can’t fathom.

You can read the first chapter of Mike’s home networking odyssey starting here.