Article posted on Dec 19
A couple of days ago John Dragoon, CMO of Novell announced that Novell will be canceling Brainshare, which they had plans to hold this march (and, which was still planned to go forward as of Nov 12th, when I received an announcement reminding us all of it, and I blogged a reminder as well.)
Brainshare has been running in Utah for over 20 years, and is really the big tech event of the year here. But times change.
It seems that the more things we have to make our lives easier, and help us get things done quicker the less time we actually seem to have to live our lives. The mentality of the world really is changing. Information, training, and even entertainment needs o be available instantly, no matter when or where I am. Many people don’t know this, but the popular web site, DIGG, actually comes simply from DIG, which stands for Digital Instant Gratification (Actually, I just made that up, but I like it 
 )
We have learned to Tevo, Wiki, and Youtube, not to mention that we have learned to them all from our mobile device. Training like was given at Brainshare needs to be available instantly, regardless of location or timezone.
John calls out (and Slashdot seems to agree), that people and companies are under increasing pressure to control costs (and get more done with less people), and as such John and Slashdot see this as a step forward.
Article posted on Dec 09
Technology, how we use it, and what pieces we build, buy, or abstract continues to be a changing landscape. I still remember trying to get my brain wrapped around the first Object Oriented program that I ever wrote (what’s worse, it was Object Oriented Perl… wow, that was not fun stuff initially.)
We have moved to outsourcing our datacenters, outsourcing our OS and database platforms development to the communities, and now, even outsourcing our computing muscle. It’s Cloud Computing. If you haven’t followed it you should, and if you have, then you might be interested to know what its footprint is here in Utah currently.
Voonami is going to be hosting an Open House of their new Canyon Park facility on December 10th (Ya, that’s tomorrow… sorry for the short notice, I just found out) from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Everyone is invited.
Basically, the low down is that Voonami is opening a datacenter in Orem that will house up to 100,000 square feet of space that they describe as, “…part of our broader, adaptive computing eco-system with the required power capacity delivered in an green-friendly environment with unlimited configuration flexibility and on-demand services that corporations demand today.” Additionally, they have announced plans to build two more datacenters, one in Sandy, and another in Utah County.
“Our hope is to be the leader in next generation computing, including platform as a service (PaaS), high performance computing (HPC), efficient power management and monitoring, disaster recovery, virtualization and customizable dynamic capacity”, said Ben Bush, President of Voonami. “Our infrastructure will enable Voonami to offer services on the Voonami Trusted Cloud (VTC), the perfect marriage of public and private clouds.”
There is really no question that a lot of attention is currently on PaaS, and its ability to jump start proof of concept platforms, as well as it ability to help companies manage peaks and valleys more dynamically without having to overbuild their own infrastructures. I’m excited to see how Voonami stacks up in the cloud computing world.
Also, I just spoke to Ralph Yarro, Chairman and CEO of Voonami a few minutes ago about scheduling a followup podcast for any of you who want to know more. Look for that in the next couple of weeks.
Article posted on Dec 02
Getting your message across in this new world of social this, collaborative that, tweets, myspaces, your spaces, your tube, his tube, and what the heck…
What really works? It can be confusing at best, and if you’re not careful it can be a complete waste of time (and money), or even worse, a mine field filled wit bloggers looking to make a name for themselves that are taking pot shots at you.
This Friday morning the Utah Technology Council will be hosting a event titled: “PR Through the Modern Mediums: What Works? What Falls Flat?“ I gotta tell you, I am pretty interested in this event. As some of you might recall, I was a bit critical about a similar event put on a year ago. Looking at the list of people on the panel this year however, I really like that some of them are people who have come from the traditional media world, and have learned to adopt new methods and mediums. I think this will go a long way to helping the speakers and the audience connect. Specifically, the presentations will be by:
“Moderated by Chris Tunis of the Salt Lake Enterprise, this event will feature presentations from Paul Foy, longtime news reporter for the Associated Press, Fields Mosely, Broadcaster for KUTV2, and tech and social media blogger Jesse Stay, of StaynAlive.com.”
I’ll be there. Hope to see you.
Article posted on Dec 02
Okay, so about a year ago I made the big move. I went from windows to Mac. Of course, I kept my windows laptop on my desktop as well, so I could use it to do “all of the stuff I couldn’t on a Mac.” I also loaded up Parallels, for the same purpose. But all in all, I have to say that I have liked the change, and really don’t look back.
But unfortunately it appears that enough of us are making that move that the folks writing viruses are starting to take note. In a BBC New article put out earlier today, they refer to an item on Apple’s support discussion boards from November, where Apple suggests the use of one of three flavors of anti virus for your Mac.
Now, to what extent this is just a suggestion of “best practice” in order to be safe rather than sorry, or to what extent there is real, significant threat and we should be worried is a bit unclear. I do think it is a bit of a wakeup call though to us Mac users:
There are far fewer plugins for Entourage than for Outlook. Why? Because far fewer people use Entourage than Outlook… Developers and companies put their efforts where they can get the most bang for the buck. There are also far fewer viruses targeting Entourage for the very same reason. The same is true of the OS itself. As OS X gains more users it will have more people trying to prey on those users.
I guess the only way to really be safe is to be on something no one else is… Now wherre did I put that old Bee OS CD?
Article posted on Dec 01
For those of you who don’t already know Clint Savage, he is a local Linux and Open Source activist (he is really a driving force behind the Utah Open Source Conference, and many of the Open Source efforts here), plus an incredibly likable guy and a sushi guru.
Well,our good buddy Clint is hosting a Fedora 10 release party:
When: December 6, 2008, 6-8 pm
Where: Bill Good Marketing, 12393 Gateway Park Place, Suite 600 (That’s just off of 12300 south at about 300 west).
The official word (as sent out by Laura Moncur) is:
Clint Savage is hosting a Fedora 10 release party. It turns out, that
not only will it be a release party, with (hopefully) physical and
electronic media available, but it will also be an installfest!!
SO BRING YOUR MACHINES AND GET THEM INSTALLED!
Victor Villa of the Utah PHP User Group (UPHPU) and a Utah Open Source
Core Team Leader has offered his workplace as the location for the
event. It’s large, easy to find and best of all, centrally located in
Draper, Utah.
We’ll have food, fun and probably even some prizes. We’re working out
the minor details but come on down and enjoy an evening of reverie
with your Fedora friends!
