Blackberry Store

My co-worker told me that in the latest version of the Blackberry software has the Blackberry App store, like the Iphone has. Obviously you won't get the same apps, but at least there is some competition in the market. I have not seen the update on my Blackberry yet. I will have to do more research.

Conficker / Downadup Hoax

The Conficker / Downadup worm was supposed to hit April 1, 2009 but so far it looks like a hoax. Many IT folks that has to rapidly patch servers due to paranoid managers did all that work for nothing. Hackers are sneaky, however, and they may have gotten a laugh today but may strike later when everyone lets their guard down when they let out a sigh of relief. Friday's are good days to cause havoc. Look out for this weekend!

Systems Center Operations Manager 2007

Finally we will be installing and using Microsoft Systems Center Operation Manager 2007 to monitor the servers in our environment. Systems Operations Manager (SCOM) is an agent based monitoring program with hooks into many Microsoft products such as SQL server, IIS, and Active Directory, for reporting up time and performance. This will be welcome change from finding out a server has been down all weekend and you need to fix it Monday morning with everyone breathing down your neck.

Bakups are important

People do not realize the importance of a good backup before it is too late. It's sort of like insurance; you don't know why you have it until you need it. With so many options out there, such as USB External Hard Drive, tape drives, DVD, and even online backups, i am shocked how often backups are neglected. Computers can be replaced. Your pictures, invoices, and 40 page research paper can not.

SEO Magic

I have been really interested in Search engine optimization (SEO). It is an interesting topic and profoundly effects the flow of the internet. Before the internet you used the Yellow Pages to find what you were looking for. Now you use Google or Yahoo or any other search engine. If you are able to sway or control the results in these search engines you control the internet. Your website that contain the secrets of the internet will forever remain buried in with Anglefire web pages and websites with frames. However, if you are good at the game of cat and mouse they call SEO, then your site has a shot at being seen or maybe even utilized. I'm sure it is not as simple as this and there are others out there that have figure this out already. But, I am ready to learn the magic behind SEO. See you at the top of Google ;)

Downadup Stikes Again

I had to remove the downadup virus from a Windows 2003 server today. The server had Symantec anti-virus on it, but it could not remove it for some reason. I needed to boot into safe mode and run the Downadup virus removal tool from Symantec. The network department was also seeing alot of the traffic generated from the worm, but hopefully I got rid of it for good.

Installing Microsoft Sharepoint 3.0 SP1

I installed Microsoft Sharepoint 3.0 SP1 on a virtual machine to test out the functionality and how we can use it in the department for document management. As it turns out Sharepoint is built into Windows 2003 R2.

Too busy to update?

Ping.fm is a service that lets you update social sites and blogs like twitter, blogger, pounce, myspace, and plurk from one interface. I'm using it right now. It's in beta so there might be some bugs.

Sports Translation

I just helped a very talented young boy, that goes by the name Yankeeboy98, set up his blog on blogger. The site Yankees Kid Talk translates the baseball sports page speak of negotiations and contracts to terms young sports fans can understand. Obvoiusly Yankeeboy98 is a big New York Yankees fan and the site's content is primarily Yankees related. However, I think this a great start for sites like this and perhaps it can expand to include more sports new. Maybe Yankeeboy98 will be a sports writer when he grows up.

Brick and mortar beats the Net this time

In an attempt to beat the Christmas rush, we decided to do our Christmas shopping before Black Friday. There were a few "must have" gifts that we needed to get namely the Nintendo Wii and the Hot Wheels 4-Lane Raceway. In an age where you can find anything on the internet, we scoured our favorite sites and they we all sold out. We found a few on some unknown sites and decided not to risk it. You can't be to careful these days. I doubtfully called the local Toy R' Us and they were somehow stocked with both toys. While the net is convenient, there is a sense of satisfaction when you have the item you want at home immediately.

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