10 Tech Tools to help your professional speaking business

There are lots of consultants who will gladly sell you expensive technology for your speaking business. But you don’t have to spend a bundle to get some really productive tools. Here are 10 top tech tools and services that can help you handle your speaking business. Even if you purchase everything on this list, you will still spend less than $1,000 a year. Plus, many of them have free versions that likely will work just fine for your purposes.These include eFax, Wistia.com for video streaming, and others.

My column for Speaker Magazine can be downloaded here (PDF).

Webinar: How to Deal with Today’s Multi-Platform Patch Management Mess

These days aren’t easy for enterprise patch management. Keeping the wide variety of desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets and other end user devices up-to-date with the latest operating system software, drivers, and security updates has gotten more complex. And the rise of mobile computing devices and applications, along with the growing use of virtualization, is making things more complex too.

If this interests you, I am putting together the slides for a webinar that will be held March 8 at 2pm ET and sponsored by Lumension on patch management issues. You can register for the event here.

Webinar: Integrating Cloud Services Management Into Your IT Operations

Getting into the cloud is a lot easier than understanding how to make it a part of your overall IT operations. In this webinar, I look at ways that you can better govern your cloud deployments and make use of the best practices of IT that you use for your own servers. I will show you more than a dozen different services that can help you understand your cloud computing costs, figure our better ways to make your cloud infrastructure secure, and better manage your cloud deployments.

The webinar is held this Thursday at 12:30 pm ET.

You can register for the webinar here, download the white paper Dec Cloud Integration here, and view the slides that I will use for the event here.

MSPtv Webinar: How the Private Cloud Can Be More Secure

Security concerns remain one of the biggest obstacles to cloud computing adoption, even as spending on cloud-based solutions accelerates. Users welcome the affordability and scalability of cloud offerings, but many remain fearful about the potential for network breaches and leaks. These fears typically focus on public cloud offerings, and as such, they open opportunities for IT service providers to extol the virtues of secure private cloud environments.

Today I will be doing a webinar for MSPtv on this subject. You can tune in here.

You can download my slides here.

How to outsource your helpdesk

Next Thursday I will be doing a webinar for MSPtv on how to outsource your helpdesk. You can register here. 

As long as there are IT users, there will be a need for helpdesk support, and that is not about to change any time soon, no matter how reliable and user-friendly the technology gets. For solution providers, the service is a must to deliver value to their clients, but it’s expensive and can be a drain on staff resources. Fortunately for them, there is a low-cost alternative: outsource your helpdesk to a trusted vendor partner. The trick, of course, is finding the right partner.

Here are my slides for the webcast.

Live text chat today on storage virtualization

I will be moderating a live text chat at 1pm ET today on behalf of ReadWriteWeb, with guests from NetApp and VMware, to talk about general storage virtualization topics.

Some of the topics we plan to discuss include:

• How do you allocate storage appropriately when you don’t know what your needs are?
• How important is thin provisioning for your storage solution, and where do these features need to be integrated?
• Does your backup solution need to be virtualization-aware?

Feel free to join us by clicking here.

Two speaking gigs this week: MSPtv and MediaSurvey

I have two engagements this week: my regular gig at MSPtv in Pittsburgh, talking about how MSPs can better use email lists to promote their businesses, on Thursday.

And on Friday, I will be doing a live podcast with Sam and Christy Whitmore about how websites should better use community managers. (You will need to register for this or be a subscriber, email me if you aren’t.)

MSPtv: How the channel can win with cloud computing

Now more than ever, cloud computing has become the single most important factor in helping boost the reseller channel to new heights. No matter their specializations or backgrounds, all channel players can leverage cloud computing to become more profitable, competitive and widen their reach with acquiring new customers and business opportunities.

You can register and watch live this MSPtv event on Thursday June 23rd at 12:30 ET here.

RWW 2Way Conference: Real-time Web communications

Next week, at our 2Way conference in New York City, I will be moderating a panel to address issues surrounding real-time communications. To help illustrate where we have come and where we need to go, I have assembled for my panel four representatives of companies that are pushing the envelope. The companies include:

• Tokbox Inc.,which enables group video chat apps on a website,
• Radish Systems,which sells ChoiceView, an iPhone/iPad app that enables real-time communications to call center agents,
• Twilio Inc., sells its Cloud Communicator which enables voice and texting interaction with a website using a variety of programming languages and tools
• 5 Min Media, is a leading how-to video repository and syndicator that is now part of AOL.

All of these vendors have various programming interfaces, widgets and tools to make it easier to share audio and video content on a website: the goal is to make the site more engaging and keep a visitor browsing and have a site stand out from others that are more static. The bad news is that we are still in the early days of how a particular browser supports this content: if we are going to post something in Flash, for example, that cuts out all the iPad users out there. If we embed a video player, that means we tie ourselves closer to the source site that serves up that content.

Yo Adrian! Lamo on Wikileaks and Cablegate

I first met Adrian Lamo about ten years ago. Back then, I was teaching a high school networking class and I thought it would be cool to have the kids experience a “real” hacker, since so many of them aspired to learn how to get into the computerized grading system that the school ran.

Lamo at the time had been arrested for breaking into several different computer systems, including that of the freelancer database of the New York Times. His method was to find an open Web proxy server and use that to gain entry inside a corporate network. (It is still a common entry point, although many companies have finally figured out how to protect themselves.) At the time, he was called the “homeless hacker” – not because he was living on the streets, but because he was young and had no fixed address, and would go from couch to couch as the mood took him. I offered him a place to stay and a chance to get to know him better, thinking how cool could that be?

When I told my then-teenage daughter about his impending visit, she was rather incredulous (you have someone wanted by the police staying with us) but ultimately she was won over by his geek cred – she had a problem with her cell phone that she recalls him fixing in a matter of seconds.

Well, Lamo went on to settle his lawsuit with the Times, and got a degree in journalism, ironically enough. I went on to become one of those listed in the NYT freelancer database (thankfully now more secure, I hope), having written a few articles for them on technology over the years. And he then went on to become one of the important figures in the Wikileaks/Cablegate case last year, when he divulged the name of Private Manning to the feds as the leaker. At the time, his decision was vilified in the hacking community, with threats and other nastiness expressed online.

“Who would have thought that when we first met ten years ago that I would have been involved in the single biggest intelligence leak in history,” he told me. How true. He continues to work as a security consultant, helping corporations understand better security practices as well as going out on the speaking circuit. Ironically, his preferred method of communications these days is FedEx! “I’m a little bit of a Luddite these days,” he said. He also thinks that his actions were justified for the greater good of our nation’s overall security posture, and to help ensure further freedoms. An interesting position for a hacker to take, to be sure.

I had a chance to speak to Lamo last week and record the interview for ReadWriteWeb, where you can listen to the 13-minute podcast here.