Former Nortel Subsidiary Picks Fonality’s PBXtra Over Nortel. Today, I spoke with Fonality’s CEO Chris Lyman and Amon Prasad, Director of Information Technology for BLADE Network Technologies. BLADE Network Technologies is a former subsidiary of Nortel and get this – they selected Fonality’s Asterisk-based PBXtra over a comparable system from Nortel. Even though Nortel offered… Continue reading Former Nortel Subsidiary Picks Fonality's PBXtra Over Nortel

Grace Queen Elizabeth has ruled with grace for over a half century. Her meeting with Virginia Tech people today is just one more example of that. Of course some handler suggested it—but she agreed and, I have no doubt, expressed sympathy as few could. God save the queen. [The Tom Peters Weblog]

Microsoft starts dropping Longhorn features. Microsoft has announced that several cool virtualization features will be dropped from what was promised for Longhorn release. Bink quotes a seemingly angry quote complaining about the lack of live migration, no hot-adding of resources, CPU core limitations, etc. I’m sure there are many that will be very disappointed about… Continue reading Microsoft starts dropping Longhorn features

Joey Stanford: iFolder. SLED 10 has a nifty program called iFolder. iFolder is all about file sharing – making, sharing, and backing up files easier. Emplify has some debs up. Does not work in Feisty. It probably needs some MOTU guru to work on packaging this properly. iFolder is a simple and secure storage solution… Continue reading Joey Stanford: iFolder

UN panel urges greenhouse gas reductions now. Technologies are available to significantly reduce greenhouse gases but nations must adopt them far more aggressively to avert the worst consequences of global warming, the leading scientific authority on climate change said yesterday. [Boston Globe — Front Page]

The end of “desktop vs. web apps”. Hybrid apps are no longer the future—they’re now. In my career I’ve heard lots of predictions—Apple will go out of business; soon there will be only six or seven websites; the browser is dead; we’ll all be running “thin clients”; Java will replace C/C++ everywhere—that I haven’t believed.… Continue reading The end of “desktop vs. web apps”

200th DNA exoneration tomorrow. Today’s Chicago Tribune has a remarkable article about the exoneration of Jerry Miller. Miller, an Army veteran who’d never been convicted of a crime, was identified in a police line-up by two eye-witnesses, and ended up serving 25 years in prison before being cleared by DNA collected at the scene of… Continue reading 200th DNA exoneration tomorrow

The Essence of Duct Tape Marketing. Duct tape (the tape) is simple, effective, and affordable—it’s not always the prettiest solution, but it does always work. The central theme of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch is that effective small business marketing is a system—not an event—composed of… Continue reading The Essence of Duct Tape Marketing

Scaling to multiple databases with Rails. Remember that point about Rails lacking an easy-to-use way of dealing with multiple read/write databases? Strike that. Nic Williams has released Magic Multi-Connections. It makes it dead easy to use a cluster of databases to scale read and write speeds higher than a single connection would ever allow. That… Continue reading Scaling to multiple databases with Rails

The yaTimer – a very handy utility. If you are a freelance consultant, writer, or designer, this versatile software timer may be what you have been looking for. It makes keeping track of multitasking activities almost painless. I have been searching for a better way to keep track of how much time I spend on… Continue reading The yaTimer – a very handy utility