2010-08-23 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

In an effort that is purely technical, I am switching from GREGORYTUCKER.us to GregoryTucker.com. This site is staying up while the other one is under construction, but new updates are going there. Please update your bookmarks.

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2010-05-18 (Tuesday) by Gregory Tucker.

Apple and Adobe are currently fighting out the future of video on the Internet. Apple advocates the new HTML5 standard, while Adobe is attempting to protect its dominant Flash. Apple claims Flash is resource intensive, and based on my recent experience with a relatively lightweight Flash-based video presentation, Apple is right.

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2010-05-03 (Monday) by Gregory Tucker.

Endagdget has reported today that Apple has sold its millionth iPad just 28 days after its release. Way ahead of my prediction, Apple will sell 2 million of these in less than 6 months, and there is little evidence they are cannibalizing sales of its other products. Hooray for Apple, but Endadget also reported that Apple’s licensing restrictions on 3rd party tool kits may draw anti-trust scrutiny from regulators. (In the darkest days of Microsoft’s dominance, I never imagined two competitors–Apple and Google–and I never imagined one of them would begin with an A.)

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2010-01-28 (Thursday) by Gregory Tucker.

The criticisms of Apple’s newly announced iPad seem to coalesce around 3 points:

1. The name iPad. Most commonly it is written in some variation of MaxIpad. I agree that I don’t like the name–I prefer iTablet–it seems Jobs cannot get over the failure of the Newton MessagePad. This criticism is otherwise superficial.
2. It is expensive. The base is $499, while you can get a Netbook for $250. As always you get what you pay for. The Asus Netbook has such a high failure rate that one customer had to stop supporting them. Retailers hate them because customers hate them and return them at high rates. One naysayer on Facebook said he doesn’t actually own a Netbook because he can’t find one he wants. Apparently the rest of us aren’t supposed to buy an iPad because, in theory, we could get a Netbook with a faster processor for less money (but we won’t because they suck).
3. It single-tasks. However, the Kindle DX, at $489 also single-tasks, and the iPad will actually do more (like browse the web or play videos). Why don’t they direct their ire at Amazon’s bestseller? Do they target Apple and Jobs because he is so successful at marketing and at packaging products that (us foolish) people want? Please note I am not attacking the Kindle–I want to of them too, and in a head to head comparison the epaper is visible in direct sunlight, the unit is lighter and more durable, and ebooks on Amazon cost less than on the iTunes Bookstore.

I believe Apple will sell close to 2 million of these units within a year of introduction. However, I believe Apple will cannibalize its own products in order to do so.

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2008-10-11 (Saturday) by Gregory Tucker.

Having graduated from high school in the late 80’s, I was not “around” the early online scene. At that age we had better things to do, or so we thought at the time, so my awareness did not develop until the early to middle part of the following decade. What a joy it was to read Michael A. Banks’ On The Way To The Web to fill in the gaps.

We met some interesting characters on the way. The most memorable character whom I had never heard of before was William F. von Meister, or “von Scheister”, the serial entrepreneur and son of European royalty who started CompuCon in the late 70’s, which became The Source in 1979. From there, we also learned about the origins of CompuServe, and we experienced how the entire online industry developed, given the technical and competitive constraints. We learned what made CompuServe popular, and what differentiated AOL (as if this weren’t obvious).

In Chapter 2 “In the Money” Banks introduces us to timeshare computing, but most importantly he introduces us people like Larry Roberts, Vint Cerf, and Bob Kahn, who were major players in the early days of the ARPA/DARPA project that became the Internet. In the opening chapters of the book, my main criticism is the shallow portrayal of these people. Where did they work? What did their offices look like? Or smell like? What restaurants did they frequent? Such details, while seemingly mundane, turn these legends into real people with real thoughts and real limitations. Banks deflects this criticism in the Afterword by emphasizing the intent to focus on the services that preceded popular adoption of the Internet, but this gap still feels real to the reader.

Similarly, having built up a wonderful cast of characters and companies, Banks kills them off rapidly and ungraciously in the final Chapter 15 “Moving to the Net”. The same deflection applies—by 1994 the web was well established and hence outside the scope of the book—but Banks would have done well to spend some more time on how these pre-web pioneers dealt with the Internet, how they adjusted their competitive strategies, and how and why those strategies succeeded or failed.

While the first two chapters and final chapter were weak, the center of the book provides a fascinating journey through a period of time that has not been well discussed elsewhere. The book fills in gaps, but it also puts our current Internet into context.

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2008-04-30 (Wednesday) by Gregory Tucker.

Add the following command to your .htaccess file:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

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2008-03-16 (Sunday) by Gregory Tucker.

Although I generally dislike Microsoft Windows Vista, because it is slow and buggy, I have discovered one new feature that I really like. Because Vista is so buggy, I find I have to reboot a lot. I wanted to enable the Automatic Login feature, while retaining security. It turns out, a gentleman named Ryan Baker has already figured it out.

http://tech.norabble.com/2008/01/secure-automatic-login-for-vista.html

At a high level, you do the following:

1. Run netplwiz to enable automatic login

2. Run the Automated Tasks wizard from Administration Tools to lock the terminal upon login, using these values: %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\rundll32.exe. Last, in Add arguments, type user32.dll, LockWorkStation

However, I believe all my Microsoft headaches will go away if I just upgrade to a Mac. The new MacBooks look very tempting right now. More on that later.

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2007-07-06 (Friday) by Gregory Tucker.

Apple and AT&T stocks appear to be doing well as a result of the iPhone launch. However, superior returns are always accompanied by greater risk. However, Steve Jobs has a knack for understanding risks and making wise decisions that maximize return while minimizing risks. Napoleon Boneparte was exceptional in this regard–he was not afraid of turning away from battles he possibly would not win.

In Apple’s case, the screen technology is new and untested. They could incur significant replacement and repair costs if there are unforeseen problems. Additionally, given the hype, the size of the product launch was larger than anything Apple had done before. There were logistical issues building and distributing a significant number of units in a short period of time. Additionally, there was a requirement to train both Apple and AT&T staff on the product prior to launch–with limited availability of product for training purposes.

All this required significant investments by Apple and AT&T that could have been wasted had the product had the product flopped. AT&T stores sold out and Apple stores seem to be selling well. There were activation problems with some units, but customers seemed to be tolerant of the glitches.

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2007-06-28 (Thursday) by Gregory Tucker.

It is important that the help desk understand the requirements of the business. This is not as easy as it sounds for several reasons. The business consists of individuals who have different requirements. Additionally, there may be a gap between requirements as the business and the help desk understand them.

As a consequence, it is important to have a regular dialog between help desk and the business, both structured and unstructured. Unstructured communication may include making calls periodically to end-users to verify they are satisfied with the closure of a recent incident. It may include taking a department head out to lunch. Structured communication may include defining Service Level Agreements and providing regular reporting of help desk metrics.

Another critical success factor is defining the scope of services the help desk provides. I learned this from personal experience at Credit Suisse. When I joined my department was defined as “any IT-related work the developers don’t want to perform”, and I failed to redefine infrastructure support more proactively in terms that were meaningful to the business. In retrospect, what I needed to define was a service catalog, but a service catalog is not a prerequisite to running a successful help desk. At the very least, it needs some kind of formal definition to the services it provides (and doesn’t provide) that is communicated with the business.

The successful help desk also defines its processes, because its services must be professional and repeatable. This does not mean the help desk support members are little more than trained monkeys following a script—high levels of knowledge and professionalism are required too. However, it does mean the help desk organization strives for some base level of consistency that can be improved over time.

The final two critical success factors are ones I already mentioned here: reporting and training. Training of the help desk is important. The agents must be educated in the organization, its business requirements, its technologies, and its goals. Technical training is important, but not sufficient. Understanding the needs of the end users is equally important. Reporting is also important to the success of the help desk. Reporting goes beyond the simple generation of some reports. The reporting requirements must be analyzed. In some cases, new data fields or changes to data fields are required in order to create the required reports. The reporting results must be analyzed in order to draw lessons and make improvements. For example, the help desk may see that one department consistently has more incidents than others. This information can be used to recommend improvements that may reduce the number of incidents in the future.

Posted in ITIL, Technology | Print | No Comments »

2006-11-04 (Saturday) by Gregory Tucker.

Top 25 Projects:

1. Gaim
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gaim
Gaim is a GTK+ instant messaging application. It supports multiple
protocols, including AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, IRC, Napster,
Gadu-Gadu, Zephyr, and SILC. It has many common features found in other
clients, as well as many unique features.

2. ZK - Ajax but no JavaScript
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zk1
ZK is Ajax Java Web framework enabling rich UI for Web apps with no
JavaScript and little programming. With event-driven feature-rich
components, developing as simple as programming desktops. With markup
language, designing as simple as authoring HTML.

3. phpMyAdmin
https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin
phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the
administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop
databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any
SQL statement, manage keys on fields.

4. Adempiere Bazaar
https://sourceforge.net/projects/adempiere
Adempiere is a collaboration of Open Source Developers that contribute
vertical application add-ons and improvements to the Compiere ERP/CRM in
an open and unabated fashion. Focus is on the Community.

5. Gallery
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gallery
A slick, intuitive web based photo gallery. Gallery is easy to install,
configure and use. Gallery photo management includes automatic
thumbnails, resizing, rotation, and more. Authenticated users and
privileged albums make this great for communities.

6. FCKeditor
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fckeditor
Online text editor (DHTML editor), for ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, PHP,
Java and JavaScript brings to the web many of the powerful features of
known desktop editors like Word. It’s XHTML compliant and works with
Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and IE.

7. FileZilla
https://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla
FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of
features.FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.

8. PhpGedView
https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpgedview
PhpGedView parses GEDCOM 5.5 genealogy files and displays them on the
internet in formats and charts that you are familiar with.It also allows
relatives to edit their genealogy online and collaborate together on
their research.

9. KeePass Password Safe
https://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass
KeePass Password Safe is a free, open-source, light-weight and
easy-to-use password manager for Windows. You can store your passwords
in a highly-encrypted database, which is locked with one master key or
key-disk.

10. MediaPortal
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaportal
MediaPortal opens the portal to all your media. Listen, record and
organize music, movies, radio, streams, pictures and even pause TV! Use
internet sources to enrich your media with album art or song names.
Enjoy your media center or HTPC like never before!

11. Openbravo ERP
https://sourceforge.net/projects/openbravo
Web based ERP for SMEs, built on proven MVC & MDD framework that
facilitate customization & maintenance of code. Already in production,
it encompasses a broad range of functionalities such as finance, supply
chain, project management, manufacturing & much more.

12. ScummVM
https://sourceforge.net/projects/scummvm
ScummVM is a cross-platform interpreter for several point-and-click
adventure engines. This includes all SCUMM-based adventures by
LucasArts, Simon the Sorcerer 1&2 by AdventureSoft, Beneath a Steel Sky
and Broken Sword 1&2 by Revolution, and many more.

13. Covide CRM-Groupware
https://sourceforge.net/projects/covide
Covide combines great Groupware (shared email, calendars, files) and CRM
(sales and support) in CRM-groupware. The most efficient way to work
together. Integrate it with VoIP PBX Asterisk and OpenOffice and you can
create a complete Virtual Office.

14. Inkscape
https://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape
A Linux, Windows & OSX vector graphics editor (SVG format) featuring
transparency, gradients, node editing, pattern fills, PNG export, and
more. Aiming for capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, Visio, etc.

15. Stellarium
https://sourceforge.net/projects/stellarium
Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. It
displays stars, constellations, planets, nebulas and others things like
ground, landscape, atmosphere, etc.

16. Azureus
https://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus
Azureus is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform bittorrent client.

17. MiKTeX
https://sourceforge.net/projects/miktex
MiKTeX is an up-to-date implementation of TeX & Friends for Windows (all
current variants).

18. TinyMCE
https://sourceforge.net/projects/tinymce
TinyMCE is a platform independent webbased Javascript HTML WYSIWYG
editor control, developed in JavaScript/ECMAScript, higly customizable.
Works in Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, MSIE and Safari (partially).

19. DC++
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dcplusplus
This is a project aimed at producing a file sharing client using the ADC
protocol. It also supports connecting to the Direct Connect network.

20. 7-Zip
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip
7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program
supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO,
RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50%
better than ratio in ZIP format.

21. MegaMek
https://sourceforge.net/projects/megamek
MegaMek is a networked Java clone of BattleTech, a turn-based sci-fi
board game for 2+ players.Fight using giant robots, tanks, and/or
infantry on a hex-based map.

22. Jameleon
https://sourceforge.net/projects/jameleon
Jameleon is a data-driven automated testing tool that is easily
extensible via plug-ins. Features of applications are automated in Java
and tied together independently in XML, creating self-documenting
automated test cases.

23. Ares Galaxy
https://sourceforge.net/projects/aresgalaxy
Chat/File sharing p2p client. Network is organized into leaf/supernode
topology featuring broadcast-type searches. Ares delivers broader search
horizon by means of DHT technology.

24. KoLmafia
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kolmafia
KoLmafia is a cross-platform desktop tool which interfaces with the
online adventure game, Kingdom of Loathing.KoLmafia is written in Java
(J2SE 1.4 compliant), with binary releases in JAR format.

25. Anathema
https://sourceforge.net/projects/anathema
Anathema is an exhaustive suite for all aspects of Exalted series
management, featuring character and campaign management, media library,
script notes and more. Supports both First and Second Edition. Exalted
is (c) by White Wolf Publishing.

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