Honda's Building a Hybrid Motorcycle

Honda's Building a Hybrid Motorcycle: "You knew it would happen. Look for it in showrooms as early as 2010.









Wired.com

"

(Via Wired: Top Stories.)

Exchange Resources

A friend of mine who is one of the best Exchange administrators I know pointed me in the direction of a great blog for lots of useful Exchange information: http://gsexdev.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Jeff!

Print PDFs directly to iPod touch (and iPhone)

This is pretty cool, kind of along the lines of turning your phone into your digital wallet. Next up, I need to scan my Safeway and other member cards to see if they can be scanned at the register!

Print PDFs directly to iPod touch (and iPhone): "I frequently want to print copies of maps, directions or other things to take with me on the road. Since I found the app Air Sharing for my iPod touch, I can save the docs to PDF, and then copy them to my iPod touch for offline viewing. I put together an Automator workflow [65KB download] that allows me to do this directly from the print dialog box.

To configure the workflow, put the (unzipped) downloaded file into the /Library/PDF Services folder. Open the workflow in Automator, and then set the IP address of your iPod touch or iPhone in the first line of the AppleScript action, and set the save to location in the last action to the desired location on your iPod touch/iPhone. (Note that you need to have the iPhone/iPod touch mounted via Air Sharing to use this workflow.) Finally, save the workflo...








"

(Via Clippings.)

10 simple things you can do to improve your writing

10 simple things you can do to improve your writing: "

If you’re like much of today’s workforce, you need to have halfway decent writing skills to succeed at your job. But if you don’t have time to work on those skills, mastering a few basic rules can still make a big difference.

---

Maybe you’ve never penned a single blog entry, never been asked to write a progress report, never had to read over a colleague’s work for errors, and never had to send a critically important e-mail message to your boss. If that’s the case, you’re free to go now. But for most of us, a certain amount of writing is part of our job — and unfortunately, our efforts aren’t always as effective as they should be.

We’ve talked before about some of the big blunders — grammatical mistakes and misused words — that find their way into our written communications. Now, let’s consider some of the general best practices that contribute to clean, consistent writing. These pointers are based on TechRepublic’s in-house conventions, which are based on commonly recommended guidelines. (In other words, you don’t have to agree with them. And of course, variations may exist depending on what country you live in.)

The good thing about following a few rules in your writing, even if some of them seem arbitrary or trivial, is that it frees you up to concentrate on what you’re trying to say instead of trying to figure out why something doesn’t sound right or worrying that it’s just plain wrong.

And there’s this: People will notice when your writing is tighter and more consistent. I guarantee it.

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.

#1: Echoes

Bad practice: Repeated words or phrases set up an echo in the reader’s head or a ‘Didn’t I just read that?’ glitch that can be distracting.

Example:

• Several ‘but’s or ‘however’s or ‘for example’s in one paragraph (or in nearly every paragraph); a series of paragraphs that begin with ‘Next’


• A favorite crutch word or phrase used throughout an article (’ensure that,’ ‘as such’, ‘that said’)

Best practice: Vary the language to avoid annoying or distracting readers with repeated words. Even better, get rid of some of the repeated verbiage, which usually turns out to be overkill anyway.

#2: Nonparallel list items

Bad practice: We often use an inconsistent structure for lists or headings.

Example:

We will cover these topics:

• Backing up the registry


• The Registry Editor is your friend


• Using REG files


• Use a GUI tool


• Searching the registry


• Take advantage of Favorites


• Clean the registry

Best practice: Reword where necessary to make the items parallel.

#3: Agreement problems

Bad practice: Sometimes we lose track of what the subject is, and our verb doesn’t match.

Examples:

• Neither of the editors are very smart.


• The dog, as well as the goat and chicken, are easy to parallel park.


• One-third of the company are color blind.

Best practice: Scrutinize the subject to determine whether it’s singular or plural. It’s not always obvious.

#4: Referring to companies, organizations, etc., as ‘they’

Bad practice: A company — or any collective group that’s being referred to as a single entity — is often treated as plural, but it shouldn’t be.

Examples:

• I wish Wal-Mart would get their pot hole fixed.


• Microsoft said they’ll look at the problem.

Best practice: Unless there’s some compelling exception, use ‘it.’

#5: Hyphenating ‘ly’ adverbs

Bad practice: ‘ly’ adverbs never take a hyphen, but they pop up a lot.

Examples:

• We like to avoid commonly-used expressions.


• Click here for a list or recently-added downloads.

Best practice: Don’t hyphenate ly adverbs. The ‘ly’ says ‘I modify the word that comes next,’ so there’s no need to tie them together with a hyphen.

#6: Using ‘which’ instead of ‘that’

Bad practice: We sometimes use ‘which’ to set off an essential clause (instead of ‘that’).

Examples:

• The meeting which was scheduled for 1:00 has been cancelled.


• The option which controls this feature is disabled.

Best practice: The commonly-accepted (haha) convention in American English is to set off a nonessential clause with the word ‘which’ and a comma. One good test is whether the information is extra — not essential to the meaning of the sentence. If the clause is essential, use ‘that.’

#7: Wordy constructions; deadwood phrases

Nothing is worse for a reader than having to slog through a sea of unnecessary verbiage. Here are a few culprits to watch for in your own writing.

Has the ability to	can
At this point in time	now
Due to the fact that	because
In order to	to
In the event that	if
Prior to the start of	before

#8: Using ‘that’ instead of ‘who’

Bad practice: Some writers use ‘that’ to refer to people.

Examples:

• The bartender that took my money disappeared.


• The end user that called this morning said he found my money.


• The folks that attended the training said it was a waste of time.

Best practice: When you’re referring to people, use ‘who.’

#9: Inconsistent use of the final serial comma

Bad practice: One convention says to use a comma to set off the final item in a series of three or more items; another (equally popular) convention says to leave it out. But some writers bounce between the two rules.

Examples:

• Word, Excel, and Outlook are all installed. (OR: Word, Excel and Outlook are all installed.)


• Open the dialog box, click on the Options tab, and select the Enable option. (OR: Open the dialog box, click on the Options tab and select the Enable option.)

Best practice: Decide on one convention and stick to it. Those who read what you’ve written will have an easier time following your sentence structure if you’re consistent.

#10: Using a comma to join two dependent clauses

Bad practice: Commas are a great source of controversy and often the victim of misguided personal discretion. But there is this rule: Two dependent clauses don’t need one.

Examples:

• I hid the ice cream, and then told my sister where to find it.


• The user said he saved the file, but somehow deleted it.

Best practice: If the second clause can’t walk away and be its own sentence, don’t set it off with a comma.

"

(Via Clippings.)

Dear Sadie

Dear Sadie,


You're quite a kid, you're quite a kid. Sunday was a day filled with lots of garage time for your dad as he needed to tend to a lot of long-overlooked vehicle and chore maintenance. I brought you out to the garage with me along with some snacks, books, and toys and you were not only a good sport but you actually had a lot of fun. You pretended to drive the Jeep and the truck in the driveway while I washed them and we 'beeped' at each other. You helped out by cleaning rocks out of the hitch and I mostly got the grease off your arms. You inspected the fun-level of the bed of the truck and ate your cheese and crackers and then practiced your drums on the wheel wells. We took a break after a while and you got to ride your trike around the neighborhood, and your feet almost reach the pedals now so I know it won't be long before you don't need me to push you on your Radio Flyer.

Even after dinner you hung with me sitting on the center console of the truck while I worked on getting the iPod adapter hooked up and shined the flashlight for me, though it was mostly in my eyes ;-). Heck, your mom had to come and get us when it was past your bed time.

We had a good day, we gave your mom a break from both of us, we entertained each other, you might have learned a few things about vehicles though I didn't get to teach you the typically associated cursing as the projects went smoother than expected.

After your bath and story, I set you down on your bed and tucked you in and you, with your pacifier in your mouth, said 'Papa' and looked into my eyes. You reached out toward me and kicked off the blankets for a final hug of the day and I then put you back in bed.

Sadie, we had a great day, and possibly more than any time since the day you were born, made my heart glow at being a dad and it really makes me happy that you and I can hang out doing 'garage stuff' and we both had fun doing it. You're already a lot of fun, Sadie, and I know you're going to be the coolest kid around.

Love,

Papa

Exchange WinMail.DAT

Frequently using a Mac for my desktop I have occassionally received messages with or without original attachments but in my Apple Mail.app program I see a 'Winmail.dat' file attached. There is no default program to open it but sometimes there is valuable information inside that file. This often afflicts other receiving mail clients as I've heard it happens in Thunderbird and Eudora sometimes too.

The cause is that the sender is using Outlook and has chosen Outlook's Rich Text as the editing format. In my experience, the sender is also on MS Exchange. Of course, the sender should probably use a more standardized editor, either plain text or HTML but how would they know what they're doing, particularly if the vast majority of their recipients don't mention the problem.

If you're an Exchange administrator, probably the easiest way around it is to simply disable the 'Exchange rich-text format' on the Exchange Server itself. Below is a screen shot from one that we administer running Exchange 2007. Open the Exchange Management Console/Org. Config/Hub Transport/Remote Domains/Format... tab, and select 'never use' on the Exchange rich-text format section.

Terminal Server 2008

Okay, I'm really digging Server 2008. I just finished putting up a production Server 2008 in the Terminal Services Role including Remote Apps. This is really slick and far easier than my time in doing the same in the Citrix world. It was really slick and easy to deploy and there are 2 great little utilities for managing it: TS Remote App Manager and TS Web Access Administration. With these you can very quickly create easy ways for your users to run the apps you need. I am moving away from much reason to install any apps locally with this.

The Remote App Manager also lets you create MSI executables for the remote users so they have shortcuts on their desktop to the apps and will even associate the DLLs and file extensions with the Remote App delivery.

My biggest disappointment so far is that the shortcuts don't work for the Mac, you still have to do full RDP connections but we don't have many Mac users right now anyway so it's not too big of a deal to me.

The TS licensing was also easier than it was the last couple of times I licensed TS under Server 2003, no phone calls were necessary and it snapped right to life. No registry hacks to force the TS to go to the specified licensing server either.

And of course some of the reasons to deploy apps via TS include: single location to update or install the apps as necessary, remote desktop and application delivery--half of our employees are off-site so this makes it far easier.

Very slick!

Trent Reznor to NIN fans: Help us understand what you'll buy

Even though I'm not as avid a music fan these days as I was 10 years ago, I still have tremendous respect for Trent Reznor (who IS Nine Inch Nails). The guy has given the middle finger to most of the recording industry and has an infinitely greater understanding and empathy toward music fans of how they want to get their music. In an unprecedented move, he's advertised a survey to try to get a better sense of what the consumer wants.

The survey is here, the cNet story is below.

Trent Reznor to NIN fans: Help us understand what you'll buy: "NIN has an intriguing way of figuring out what its fans will pay for: ask them."

(Via Clippings.)

See Through Skyscrapers

Maybe a quasi-green thing, at least it can reduce the amount of visual garbage we see each day... As an owner and admirer of Airstreams and having a fascination with vintage polished aluminum planes, this is pretty cool: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/the-see-through-skyscraper/index.html

There's something about the object introduced into the environment that reflects its environment, it simply seems less offensive to me than big gray buildings....

Windows Shares and Offline Use

Recently in setting up a new file server we encountered an error when trying to synchronize a user's server home directory to his laptop for offline use when we did a synchronization, the message in the sync window was 'Unable to make available offline for \\fileserver....\sharename. Access is denied'

It sounds like a permission issue but it's not an issue with the users's home directory or any of the contained files, it has instead to do with the parent folder's permissions. Here's the MS KB article.

Essentially, all users need to have read access to the root of the file share and that will fix the issue!

Video: Five things to know about VoIP over wireless

Video: Five things to know about VoIP over wireless: "

Voice over IP can provide substantial savings on your phone service by routing phone calls over an IP network. You can even run VoIP over Wi-Fi, but you need to be aware of certain limitations. This episode of Sanity Savers for IT executives highlights the key issues to help you prepare for wireless VoIP.

You can also read the original article that this episode is based on:

10 things you should know about working with an offshore team

"

(Via Tech Sanity Check.)

iPhone configuration utility 1.0.1 ships

iPhone configuration utility 1.0.1 ships: "Latest build of enterprise-focused iPhone tools ship

Apple has released iPhone Configuration Utility 1.0.1 for Mac OS X.

"

(Via Clippings.)

Maintaining an Agile IT Organization

Maintaining an Agile IT Organization: "I tell my managers that their professional lives will be like a rotating lighthouse. The beam will pass each part of the landscape and sometimes you'll find yourself and your group in the beam.

As strategic plans change, compliance demands arise, and board level priorities create highly visible projects, each team will feel the spotlight and may struggle with timelines and resources. The beam may focus for days or even months on a particular group.

Since all IT projects are a function of Time, Scope and Resources , when the lighthouse focuses on a group, I'm often asked about increasing FTEs. Getting new positions approved, especially in this economy, is very challenging. I go through an internal due diligence process following the Strategy, Structure, Staffing, and Processes approach I use for all IT management.

Here's what I do:

1. Strategy - When IT groups are created and position descriptions written, it's generally in response to a strategic need of the organization or mission critical projects. Strategies change and projects end, so it is important to revisit each part of the organization episodically to ensure it is still aligned with the strategic needs of the organization. Imagine an application group created at the peak of client/server technology. When the spotlight shines on such a group to deliver web-based applications, it may be that the group was never designed to be an agile web delivery department. Thus, I look at the strategy of the organization, the current state of technology in the marketplace/in the community and, the level of customer demand. We can then re-examine the assumptions that were used to charter the group and its positions. For example, 2 years ago, the Peoplesoft team faced growing demands for application functionality and high levels of customer service. As chartered, our Peoplesoft team was a technology group without staff devoted to workflow analysis, subject matter expertise, and proactive alignment of new Peoplesoft functionality with customer needs. We re-chartered the group as a customer facing, business analyst driven, service organization backed by a world class technology team. Given the visibility of our financial projects at that time, the organization was willing to fund expansion of the team.

2. Structure - it may be that the team is not structured properly to deliver the level of service needed by the customers. Recently, I worked with my Harvard Media Services team to align job descriptions and hours worked with customer demand. This restructuring was entirely data driven and demonstrated that in order to meet evolving customer expectations we needed one person to work 4 ten hour days, four people to work 5 eight hour days, and one person to serve as a line supervisor, scheduling everyone and communicating to customers. The end result was a minimal increase in expense but a complete realignment of our organizational structure with the current needs of the enterprise.

3. Staffing - it may be that staff skill sets are perfect for their job descriptions as originally written, but they are no longer appropriate for the current state of technology. Training is critically important to maintain an agile IT organization so that staff can grow as technology grows. Based on expertise, levels of training, and capacity to evolve, staff in a group may be promoted or reassigned to best align them with the current strategy and structure.

4. Processes - it may be that customer service issues are related to less than optimal communication or lack of a consistent service process. In my blog about Verizon, a few cents spent on a sticker telling customers to call for router activation would markedly improve the customer experience. When the spotlight focuses on a group, I make sure we have optimized and documented our processes to serve the needs of customers.

CIOs should not assume their organization will be static. Technology changes rapidly and customer demands continue to grow. A healthy re-examination of each part of the organization to ensure strategy, structure, staffing and process are optimized will ensure an agile IT organization that grows and thrives over time. Went the lighthouse beam shines on your group, welcome it as an opportunity to renew!"

(Via Clippings.)

Fifteen great Microsoft Office optimization tools

Fifteen great Microsoft Office optimization tools: "

Whats the most popular application software in the world? Most likely, Microsoft Office. You use it, your colleagues use it, your relatives use it, and just about everyone you know uses it.

You certainly arent getting the most out of it, though. Thats where downloads can make the difference. Weve assembled 15 great downloads to help you use Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint more effectively. With these downloads, youll be able to cut through e-mail clutter, create PDF files for free, use Excel to run a business, and shrink massive PowerPoint files, among other things. And theyre all free or almost free.

[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

Its time to get downloading and boost your productivity.

General Office Downloads
The following three downloads are a great place to start if youre looking for overall help with Office. With these programs, you can recover lost product keys, kill privacy-invading information, and even replace Office with a free alternative.

ProduKey
Say you need to reinstall Office or some Office component. To do so, you need Offices product key--but if you cant locate the CD from which you installed Office, you no longer have the product key. What to do?

Get ProduKey. Run the program, and it shows all product keys for every one of your Microsoft Office applications; it also displays them for Windows, Windows Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. Once you have the key, youre ready to go. For techies or network administrators, the tool has a variety of command-line options, such as for obtaining a product key from a remote PC, and for saving product key information to a text file.
Download ProduKey | Price: Free

Metadata Analyzer
Whats hidden in your Microsoft Office documents could harm you. A lot more information than you may imagine is lurking in your Office documents, and anyone who receives and views them can see everything. Documents hold hidden text, names of authors, revision history and markup, hidden cells, hidden spreadsheets, the total number and time of revisions, and other details.

Think that doesnt matter? Think again. In 2006, Google accidentally told the world about highly sensitive financial projections because it posted a PowerPoint presentation containing notes with the confidential information. And in 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blairs top communications aide, Alistair Campbell, released a Word document with hidden information that proved that the British government had used plagiarized documents as a way to justify its involvement in the Iraq war.

This free program will make sure that nothing similar happens to you. Point it at any document, and it analyzes the file, showing you all the private information lurking within. The program will then clean up the document so that the information drops out of sight.
Download Metadata Analyzer | Price: Free

OpenOffice
Microsoft Office costs hundreds of dollars, depending on the version you buy. If youre looking for a new office suite but you dont want to hand over that much money, grab this free, surprisingly powerful suite instead. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, a database, and a drawing program, and even a 'mathematical function calculator' if you need that sort of thing.

No need to worry about compatibility with Microsoft Office formats: OpenOffice handles all of those, as well as open-source formats. Each program in the suite offers just about all the power youll require.

If this free suite has any drawbacks, its that the interface isnt as polished as Microsoft Offices, and it lacks a few bells and whistles. Still, free is free, and if youre seeking a way to avoid spending big bucks for a suite, its a great choice.
Download Open Office | Price: Free

Outlook Downloads
Outlook is the program everyone loves to hate. Its bulky, and it can be slow, but it also gets the job done. Plenty of tools promise to improve Outlook--the following are our favorites. Youll cut through e-mail clutter, find Outlook information quickly, shrink the size of this bloated application, handle attachments better, and more.

Xobni
If you suffer from e-mail overload and want more out of Outlook, you need this program, which makes finding messages, contacts, and anything else in Outlook exceedingly easy. Its the best Outlook add-in Ive ever used.

The program runs as an Outlook sidebar. For each e-mail, it shows information about the person with whom youre communicating, including all the 'conversations' youve had with them; in essence, it sets up a threaded list of every e-mail between the two of you. Youll also see a list of every file youve exchanged, as well as the persons phone number and 'social network,' a list of people with whom that person has exchanged messages. It includes icons for sending an e-mail to the person and scheduling a meeting via Outlook, as well. For anyone who lives for statistics, the total number of messages youve exchanged appears at the top of the screen, along with more information that isnt of much practical use but is interesting regardless.

The add-on offers plenty more, too, including a Xobni Analytics utility that gives you more information than you need about your e-mail use. Want to know the average amount of time you take to respond to people by day, month, and week? Its in there. So is the median time you take to respond to specific people, and to people at a particular domain.

Those statistics, though, arent the real reason for using this program: Its the only Outlook add-on Ive ever tried that actually lives up to the promise of solving e-mail overload.
Download Xobni | Price: Free

Lookeen
This add-in for Outlook 2003 and 2007 performs lightning-fast searches, and offers several tools for managing and finding e-mail.

It integrates directly into Outlook, so you dont have to fumble with a separate program when doing searches. Thanks to its various organizational tools, you can list all conversations with a specific contact, for example, and show all e-mail messages for a given day, week, or month. The program also automatically summarizes messages.

Lookeen does its job by indexing your files and then searching that index, rather than your entire data store. Because of that, youll have to wait a little while before you can start using it; the program may take up to 20 minutes to finish its initial indexing.
Download Lookeen | Price: Free

SendShield
Worried that the Office documents you send may have private information buried in them? This program, like Metadata Analyzer (see the previous page) , solves the problem. When you send a Microsoft Office document in Outlook, the utility examines the document for private information. It then shows you the results and lets you delete that information. The program deletes information only from the copy you send; the original file stays intact.
Download SendShield | Price: Trial; price not currently set

Outlook Duplicate Items Remover
Duplicate information--multiple copies of e-mail messages, contacts, and other details--tends to clutter up Outlook. It may arise because youve imported data from an earlier version of Outlook, or it may show up for no apparent reason.

The free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover solves the problem handily, adding a new Outlook menu option that will eliminate duplicates for you. Click the ODIR menu option, choose Remove Duplicate Items, and select a folder. Then click Remove Duplicate Items. The program will kill the copies, but it will also keep a backup, in case you want to restore anything.
Download Outlook Duplicate Items Remover | Price: Free

Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover
Perhaps the most common complaint about Outlook is how bloated the program becomes. It stores all of its data, including messages and attachments, in a single .pst file--and that file can quickly grow to gargantuan proportions, especially if you have plenty of attachments. As a result, Outlook loads and runs more slowly, and if your .pst file becomes too big, your machine will be prone to crashes.

What if you want to keep your attachments, but you dont want the .pst file to balloon? Try this clever program, which saves the attachments to your PC and deletes them from your .pst file. It then links your e-mail directly to the attachment, so the attachment still appears to exist in Outlook.

The program can go through entire directories, but if you prefer, you can have it operate on a message-by-message basis.
Download Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover | Price: Free

OutlookTools
Outlook is a complex program with many different options. Often these options hide beneath many levels of menus, and some features you may simply never find.

This free utility does an excellent job of simplifying Outlooks configuration. In a flash, youll be able to access all of your Outlook settings and file folders, as well as to run troubleshooting tools, such as one that fixes corrupt .pst files. You can also solve one of the more annoying problems with Outlook: the programs insistence on blocking certain file types because it considers them insecure. This app will unblock any file type you want.

In addition, it lets you start Outlook with any one of numerous switches, and permits you to customize when and how Desktop Alerts appear to tell you that new mail has arrived. You can change the transparency of alerts, as well as determine how long they should stay visible.
Download OutlookTools | Price: Free

MAPILab Toolbox for Outlook
This excellent Outlook enhancer with 18 add-ons will make your e-mail life far more productive. For example, one add-on checks to see whether youve forgotten to include an attachment in an outgoing e-mail, while another lets you determine which attachments are secure or insecure. You can also schedule certain messages to be sent out on a particular day and time, send out e-mail in batches, autofill text in messages, and more.

It integrates directly into Outlook, and you can easily turn components on and off. Its particularly well suited for anyone who runs their own business.
Download MAPILab Toolbox for Outlook | Price: $24 (Trial)

PowerPoint and Microsoft Word Downloads
PowerPoint and Word dont have nearly as many helpful downloads as Outlook does, but some useful ones are around. Whether you want to slim down file sizes, find PowerPoint slides fast, or print to PDF, theres something here for you.

Slideboxx
Heres a great tool for PowerPoint jockeys. With this program you can find specific slides from any presentation with remarkable speed, and combine those slides into new presentations. Slideboxx indexes all of your presentations, and you search through that index, rather than through the presentations themselves. That way, you can find items much faster.

When you do a search, the program shows all results as thumbnails, so you can immediately spot the slides you want. Once you find them, you can drag them to a presentation pane on the right side of the screen and then build entirely new presentations from those existing slides. Its a great time-saver for anyone who reuses PowerPoint slides.
Download Slideboxx | Price: $99 (Trial)

PPTminimizer
Sending large files via e-mail these days can be problematic. Many ISPs impose file-size limits on attachments, sometimes as little as 5MB. So if you need to send PowerPoint presentations--or even large Word files--youre out of luck.

PPTminimizer is a great solution for the problem. It shrinks the size of PowerPoint or Word files, leaving their appearance and original format intact.

With its help, you can save plenty of space. In my tests, it shrank files by about 25 percent to almost 84 percent. The program leaves your originals alone and creates smaller copies. Just select any files you want to shrink and tell the program to go about its work. It integrates with Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Windows Explorer, too, so you can even shrink files from directly within the applications.

The program costs $40 to register, and has trial limitations. You can do only 5 optimizations before paying if you dont register, and 12 optimizations before paying if you do register.
Download PPTminimizer | Price: $40 (Demo)

PrimoPDF
Adobe PDF has become a popular file format for a wide variety of uses. If you want to retain all of the layout and font characteristics of a document, PDF is great for posting files to the Web, as well as for creating documents that will be used the old-fashioned way, in print. Many printers ask that you create brochures, business cards, and many kinds of documents in PDF.

Heres the problem: Word, by default, doesnt create files in PDF. If you have Word 2007, youre in luck, because you can download Microsofts free PDF add-in. But if you have other versions of Word, you have to pay plenty for the capability.

Unless you use this free program, that is. It lets you create PDF files from any Word document--and from any Office document, in fact, as well as documents created in many other applications. It runs as a printer driver, so all you need to do is select Print and then choose PrimoPDF as your printer. After that you can choose from a variety of options for creating PDF files, such as including document properties like keywords and the author name, or encrypting the document.
Download PrimoPDF | Price: Free

Excel Downloads
You dont need to be a spreadsheet pro if you want to get more out of Excel. With the following downloads, you can create a calendar, and get hundreds of new functions for managing your business.

Excel Calendar Template
This programs name says it all: Its a template for Excel that lets you create a calendar. Included are 2008, 2009, and 2010, as well as several past years. The calendar covers popular holidays, and is elegant and easy to read; each month gets its own tab. Its great for printing, or for using right inside Excel.

You can customize the calendars look by changing the color scheme. In addition to a month-by-month calendar, you also get a year at a glance, including a space for notes.
Download Excel Calendar Template | Price: Free

Business Functions
Looking to use Excel to run your business? Then youll want this free add-in, which has 500 functions to help with just about any business analysis, budgeting, or tracking you require. Need functions specifically for real estate, such as those having to do with rent? Theyre in here. So are functions for other specific industries, as well as hundreds of general-purpose functions.

No need to run this program separately; it integrates directly with Excel, and is available as menu options. No matter what you desire for your business, it probably has something for you, including a nifty time-chart creator and much more.
Download Business Functions | Price: Free

PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

"

(Via Clippings.)

Office Customization Tool

For anyone who administers more than a handful of computers with Microsoft Office running, I consider it essential to be familiar with the Office Customization Tool (OCT).

This command-line launched GUI utility is great. You can configure a computer's profile for all Office apps. In particular, my group configured our Windows computers for Office 2007 and changed the default save format as the legacy Office 2003 .doc, .xlsx, etc. because not everyone is using Office 2007 (Mac 2008) or another office suite that reads XML documents. We also fine tune the Outlook balloon dialogs so they don't appear as frequently (those of you using Outlook in cached mode will know what I'm referring to!).

Save yourself a lot of time and headache by looking into the OCT and save yourself a ton of time and gain consistency.

10.5: Re-enable remote X viewing in 10.5.5

10.5: Re-enable remote X viewing in 10.5.5: "When you upgrade to OS X 10.5.5, remote X viewing (via X11) gets disabled. This is fine for most people, however for those of us who use remote apps, it's a pain. The following defaults setting will take care of the issue. In Terminal, issue this command:

defaults write org.x.X11 nolisten_tcp 0

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]


"

(Via Clippings.)

Video: Five ways to make your meetings more effective

Video: Five ways to make your meetings more effective: "

When you find yourself walking out of a meeting feeling energized by the ideas that emerged and the issues that were resolved, you should realize that someone took the time to define a purpose for the meeting and to manage the process effectively. This episode of Sanity Savers for IT executives explains how to plan, organize, and conduct successful meetings.

Read the original article that this episode was based on:

10 ways to make meetings more effective

"

(Via Clippings.)

10 things Linux does better than Windows

10 things Linux does better than Windows: "

If you tallied up the strengths and weaknesses of Linux and Windows, which OS would come out ahead? According to Jack Wallen, superiority in security, flexibility, interoperability, community, and command-line power (among other things) put Linux well ahead. See if you agree with his assessment.

---

Throughout my 10+ years of using Linux, I have heard about everything that Windows does better than Linux. So I thought it time to shoot back and remind everyone of what Linux does better than Windows. Of course, being the zealot that I am, I could list far more than 10 items. But I will stick with the theme and list only what I deem to be the 10 areas where Linux not only does better than Windows but blows it out of the water.

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.

#1: TCO

This can o’ worms has been, and will be, debated until both operating systems are no more. But let’s face it — the cost of a per-seat Windows license for a large company far outweighs having to bank on IT learning Linux. This is so for a couple of reasons.

First, most IT pros already know a thing or two about Linux. Second, today’s Linux is not your mother’s Linux. Linux has come a long, long way from where it was when I first started. Ten years ago, I would have said, hands down, Windows wins the TCO battle. But that was before KDE and GNOME brought their desktops to the point where any given group of monkeys could type Hamlet on a Linux box as quickly as they could type it on a Windows box. I bet any IT department could roll out Linux and do it in such a way that the end users would hardly know the difference. With KDE 4.1 leaps and bounds beyond 4.0, it’s already apparent where the Linux desktop is going — straight into the end users’ hands. So with all the FUD and rhetoric aside, Windows can’t compete with Linux in TCO. Add to that the cost of software prices (including antivirus and spyware protection) for Windows vs. Linux, and your IT budget just fell deeply into the red.

#2: Desktop

You can’t keep a straight face and say the Linux desktop is more difficult to use than the Windows desktop. If you can, you might want to check the release number of the Linux distribution you are using. Both GNOME and KDE have outpaced Windows for user-friendliness. Even KDE 4, which has altered the path of KDE quite a bit, will make any given user at home with the interface. But the Linux desktop beats the Windows desktop for more reasons than just user-friendliness. It’s far more flexible than anything Microsoft has ever released. If you don’t like the way the Linux desktop looks or behaves, change it. If you don’t like the desktop included with your distribution, add another. And what if, on rare occasion, the desktop locks up? Well, Windows might require a hard restart. Linux? Hit Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to force a logout of X Windows. Or you can always drop into a virtual console and kill the application that caused your desktop to freeze. It’s all about flexibility… something the Windows desktop does not enjoy.

#3: Server

For anyone who thinks Windows has the server market cornered, I would ask you to wake up and join the 21st century. Linux can, and does, serve up anything and everything and does it easily and well. It’s fast, secure, easy to configure, and very scalable. And let’s say you don’t happen to be fond of Sendmail. If that’s the case you have plenty of alternatives to choose from. Even with serving up Web pages. There are plenty of alternatives to Apache, some of which are incredibly lightweight.

#4: Security

Recently, there was a scare in the IT world known as Phalanx 2. It actually hit Linux. But the real issue was that it hit Linux servers that hadn’t been updated. It was poor administration that caused this little gem to get noticed. The patch, as usual in the Linux world, came nearly as soon as word got out. And that’s the rub. Security issues plague Windows for a couple of reasons: The operating system comes complete with plenty of security holes and Microsoft is slow to release patches for the holes. Of course, this is not to say that Linux is immune. It isn’t. But it is less susceptible to attacks and faster to fix problems.

#5: Flexibility

This stems from the desktop but, because Linux is such an amazingly adaptable operating system, it’s wrong to confine flexibility to the desktop alone. Here’s the thing: With Linux, there is always more than one way to handle a task. Add to that the ability to get really creative with your problem solving, and you have the makings of a far superior system. Windows is about as inflexible as an operating system can be. Think about it this way: Out of the box, what can you do with Windows? You can surf the Web and get e-mail. Out of the box, what can you do with Linux? I think the better question is what can you NOT do with Linux? Linux is to Legos like Windows is to Lincoln Logs. With Lincoln Logs, you have the pieces to make fine log cabins. With Legos, you have the pieces to make, well, anything. And then you have all the fanboys making Star Wars Legos and Legos video games. Just where did all those Lincoln Logs fanboys go?

#6: Package management

Really, all I should have to say about this is that Windows does no package management. Sure, you can always install an application with a single click. But what if you don’t know which package you’re looking for? Where is the repository to search? Where are the various means of installing applications? Where are the dependency checks? Where are the md5 checks? What about not needing root access to install any application in Windows? Safety? Security? Sanity?

#7: Community

About the only community for Windows is the flock of MCSEs, the denizens at the Microsoft campus, and the countless third-party software companies preying on those who can’t figure out what to do when Windows goes down for the count. Linux has always been and always will be about community. It was built by a community and for a community. And this Linux community is there to help those in need. From mailing lists to LUGs (Linux user groups) to forums to developers to Linus Torvalds himself (the creator of Linux), the Linux operating system is a community strong with users of all types, ages, nationalities, and social anxieties.

#8: Interoperability

Windows plays REALLY well with Windows. Linux plays well with everyone. I’ve never met a system I couldn’t connect Linux to. That includes OS X, Windows, various Linux distributions, OS/2, Playstations… the list goes on and on. Without the help of third-party software, Windows isn’t nearly as interoperable. And we haven’t even touched on formats. With OpenOffice, you can open/save in nearly any format (regardless of release date). Have you come across that docx format yet? Had fun getting it to open in anything but MS Word >=2007?

#9: Command line

This is another item where I shouldn’t have to say much more than the title. The Linux command line can do nearly anything you need to work in the Linux operating system. Yes, you need a bit of knowledge to do this, but the same holds true for the Windows command line. The biggest difference is the amount you can do when met with only the command line. If you had to administer two machines through the command line only (one Linux box and one Windows box), you would quickly understand just how superior the Linux CLI is to the vastly underpowered Windows CLI.

#10: Evolution

For most users, Vista was a step backward. And that step backward took a long time (five years) to come to fruition. With most Linux distributions, new releases are made available every six months. And some of them are major jumps in technological advancement. Linux also listens to its community. What are they saying and what are they needing? From the kernel to the desktop, the Linux developer community is in sync with its users. Microsoft? Not so much. Microsoft takes its time to release what may or may not be an improvement. And, generally speaking, those Microsoft release dates are as far from set in stone as something can be. It should go without saying that Microsoft is not an agile developer. In fact, I would say Microsoft, in its arrogance, insists companies, users, and third-party developers evolve around it.

That’s my short list of big-ticket items that Linux does better than Windows. There will be those naysayers who feel differently, but I think most people will agree with these points. Of course, I am not so closed-minded as to think that there is nothing that Windows does better than Linux. I can think of a few off the top of my head: PR, marketing, FUD, games, crash, and USB scanners.

"

(Via Clippings.)

House Call

The owner of the company I work for has a few other businesses, one being a horse ranch and training center outside of Tucson, AZ. The parent company is in the process of integrating business operations so some of our accounting and HR team and I needed to do a visit to the ranch to meet with their people and get a sense of how their business works.

Since the travel arrangements were complicated and would require all of us have a lot of time out of the office if we were to fly a commercial jet, we were able to take the owner's private jet, a Cessna CJ3. Most of us had never ridden on a private jet so we were all pretty excited. Upon arriving at the airport and getting to the hangar I saw this! The owner shares a hangar with the owner of these cool bits, a Range Rover Defender, a Gulfstream 3 (about 20 years old, believe it or not!), and an Aston Martin. The owner's jet is smaller but far more fuel efficient and uses some of the latest engine and cockpit technologies.

While the private jet was no where as large as a commercial jet, it's far more elegant and comfortable.

The pilot is an employee of the company and is a super guy. He let me sit shotgun in the cockpit and I even got to try some of the controls, including taking off. Granted, his hands were hovering all of the controls but I got to pull the trigger. Jet acceleration is unreal as we got up to over 200 mph on the ground before taking off and then you yank up on the yoke and you're off. I didn't try landing ;-).

We got to Tucson a couple of hours later and a rental car was waiting and we drove up to the ranch. It was a good visit and we got a sense of the business operations and found some opportunities to help smooth operations and accounting and we'll be working on some new technologies in the next few weeks.

It was a good trip and I do have to say that I rather enjoy private jets, certainly more dignified than flying commercial these days! We went a long distance but it was a great experience and a productive trip, much more so than a constant volley of e-mails and voice mails.

As an addendum, an anonymous poster didn't think private jets could be operated by a single pilot.  I refer him/her to Cessna's web site.

20 more IT mistakes to avoid

Lots of very good points in this article...

20 more IT mistakes to avoid: "

Back in 2004, InfoWorld's then-CTO Chad Dickerson polled the best and brightest to reveal 20 IT mistakes that were surefire recipes for cost overruns, missed deadlines, and in some cases, lost jobs.

A lot has changed in the past four years, but one thing hasn't: IT's capacity to fall prey to misguided practices, given the complexity of the responsibilities involved. So in the spirit of 'forewarned is forearmed,' we bring you 20 brand-new mistakes that today's IT managers would do well to avoid. As before, the names have been changed to protect the guilty, but the lessons learned are plain to see.

1. Overzealous password policies

A clear and consistently enforced password policy is essential for any network. What good is a firewall when an attacker only needs to type 'password' to get in?

[ Beware the original 20 IT mistakes and seven things IT should be doing but isn't. ]

But strict password security cuts both ways. If your password requirements are too complex and draconian, or if users are forced to change their passwords too often, your policy can have the opposite of its intended effect. Users pushed to the limit of remembering passwords end up writing them down -- in a drawer, on a Post-It, or on a piece of tape stuck to their laptop's keyboard. Don't undermine the ultimate aim of your password policy by insisting on unrealistic requirements.

Besides, passwords are so 2004. If you want strict access control today, think multifactor authentication.

2. Mismanaging the datacenter

Sys admins aren't exactly known for their neatness, but in the datacenter, order is essential. Spaghetti cabling, mislabeled racks, and orphaned equipment can all cause big problems. Careless provisioning can easily lead an admin to reconfigure the wrong server or reformat the wrong volume, so keep things tidy (and always double-check your log-ins).

Good systems housekeeping also means getting production servers off engineers' desks and out of their hiding places in the basement. Managing those assets is IT's job, and it should shoulder the burden with diligence and gusto. Make sure your CFO understands the importance of maintaining a datacenter that's large and well-equipped enough to grow with the business without turning into a jungle.

3. Losing control over critical IT assets

Senior management has a request: 'The marketing team needs to run ad-hoc SQL queries against the production database.' It's simple enough to implement, so you grudgingly make it happen and move on. Next thing you know, poorly formed queries are bringing the server to its knees before every Thursday marketing meeting. Your next assignment? 'Fix the performance issue.'

Backseat drivers are a hazard; handing over the keys to someone who can't drive can be fatal. The experience and judgment of IT management plays a crucial role in all decisions related to IT assets. Don't abdicate that responsibility out of a desire to avoid confrontation. A bad idea is a bad idea, even if business managers don't realize it.

4. Treating 'legacy' as a dirty word

Eager young techies may hate the idea that mission-critical processes are still running on systems their grandparents' age, but there's often good reason for IT to value age over beauty. Screen-scraping isn't as sexy as SOA, but an older system that runs reliably is less risky than a brand-new unknown.

Modernizing legacy systems can be expensive, too. For example, the State of California expects to spend $177 million on a revamped payroll system. And according to one IDC study, annual maintenance costs for new software projects typically run into the millions. In these days of tightened IT budgets, don't be in too much of a hurry to make your 'dinosaurs' extinct before their time.

5. Ignoring the human element of security

Today's network admins have access to a dizzying array of security tools. But as hacker Kevin Mitnick is fond of saying, the weakest link in any network is its people. The most fortified network is still vulnerable if users can be tricked into undermining its security -- for example, by giving away passwords or other confidential data over the phone.

[ Think like an online con artist and you increase your odds of avoiding the top 10 security land mines. ]

For this reason, user education should be the cornerstone of your site security policy. Make users aware of potential social engineering attacks, the risks involved, and how to respond. Furthermore, encourage them to report suspected violations immediately. In this era of phishing and identity theft, security is a responsibility that every employee must share.

6. Creating indispensible employees

As comforting as it may be to know that a single employee understands your systems inside and out, it's never in a company's best interests to let IT workers become truly indispensible. Take, for example, former City of San Francisco employee Terry Childs, who was eventually jailed for refusing to reveal key network passwords that only he knew.

In addition, employees who are too valuable in specific roles can also get passed up for career advancement and miss out on fresh opportunities. Rather than building specialized superstars, you should encourage collaboration and train your staff to work with a variety of teams and projects. A multitalented, diverse IT workforce will not only be happier, it will be better for business, too.

7. Raising issues instead of offering solutions

Are your warnings of critical vulnerabilities falling on deaf ears? Identifying security risks and potential points of failure is an important part of IT management, but the job doesn't end there. Problems with no apparent solutions will only make senior management defensive and dismissive. Before reporting an issue, formulate a concrete plan of action to address it, then present both at the same time.

To win support for your plan, always explain your concerns in terms of business risk -- and have figures available to support your case. You should be able to say not just what it will cost to fix the problem, but also what it could cost if it doesn't get fixed.

8. Logging in as root

One of the oldest rookie mistakes is still alive and well in 2008. Techs who habitually log in to the administrator or 'root' account for minor tasks risk wiping out valuable data or even entire systems by accident, and yet the habit persists.

Fortunately, modern operating systems -- including Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows Vista -- have taken steps to curb this practice, by shipping with the highest-level privileges disabled by default. Instead of running as root all the time, techs must enter the administrative password on each occasion they need to perform a major systems maintenance task. It may be a hassle, but it's just good practice. It's high time that every IT worker took the hint.

9. Teetering on the bleeding edge

With public beta programs now commonplace, the temptation to rely on cutting-edge tools in production systems can be huge. Resist it. Enterprise IT should be about finding solutions, not keeping up with the Joneses. It's OK to be an early adopter on your desktop, but the datacenter is no place to gamble.

Instead, take a measured approach. Keep abreast of the latest developments, but don't deploy new tools for production use until you've given them a thorough road test. Experiment with pilot projects at the departmental level. Also, make sure outside support is available. You don't want to be left on your own when the latest and greatest turns out to be not ready for prime time.

10. Reinventing the wheel

There's no better way to ensure IT agility than to take charge of your own software needs. But too often, companies employ software developers only to squander their talents on the wrong projects.

You wouldn't write your own Web browser or relational database. Why, then, do so many companies waste energy building custom CRM apps or content management systems, when countless high-quality products already exist to fill those needs?

[ Cut down your to-do list by putting users to work and letting them manage their own PCs. ]

In-house software development should be limited to projects that confer competitive advantage. Functions that aren't unique to your business are best handled with off-the-shelf software. Failing that, start with an open source project and tweak it to meet your requirements. Redundant development projects only distract from genuine business objectives.

11. Losing track of mobile users

Networked tools make it easy to push security updates, run nightly backups, and even manage software installation for users across an entire organization -- provided, of course, that their PCs are connected to the corporate LAN. But what about users who spend most of their time off-site?

Mobility and telecommuting have changed the game for systems management, network security, and business continuity. Laptops that lack current security patches are a prime vector for malware. Files that are never backed up can mean countless hours of lost productivity. And what will happen to your sensitive data in the event of theft? Automated IT policies offer no reassurance if road warriors can slip through the cracks.

12. Falling into the compliance money-pit

When it comes to complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other regulations, too many companies fall back on the Band-Aid method. But throwing money at nebulous compliance objectives only drains funds that might otherwise be used for more tangible projects. While a critical regulatory deadline may necessitate a quick compliance fix in some cases, overall it's best to take a holistic approach.

When planning your compliance strategy, think in terms of global policies and procedures, rather than point solutions targeted at specific audits. Aim to eliminate redundant procedures and manual record-keeping, and focus on ways to automate the compliance process on an ongoing basis. To do otherwise is just throwing good money after bad.

13. Underestimating the importance of scale

You may think you've planned for scalability, but chances are, your systems are rife with hidden trouble areas that will haunt you as your business grows. First and foremost, be mindful of process interdependencies. A system is only as robust as its least reliable component. In particular, any process that requires human intervention will be a bottleneck for any automated processes that depends on it, no matter how much hardware you throw at the task.

Also, cutting corners today is a sure recipe for headaches tomorrow. As tempting as it may be to piggyback a departmental database onto an underutilized Web server or let an open workstation double as networked storage, resist. Today's minor project could easily become tomorrow's mission-critical resource, leaving you with the unenviable task of separating the conjoined twins.

14. Mismanaging your SaaS strategy

Salesforce.com proved that SaaS (software as a service) has real legs in enterprise computing. When compared to traditional desktop software, the on-demand model offers customers a low barrier to entry and virtually no maintenance costs. Little wonder, then, that a growing number of software vendors have begun offering hosted products in numerous software categories. If you haven't at least considered SaaS options, you're doing your business a disservice.

Too much SaaS, on the other hand, can become problematic. Hosted services don't interoperate as well as desktop software, and the level of customization offered by SaaS vendors varies. Remember, SaaS is just a business model -- it isn't really a bargain if the software itself is immature.

15. Not profiling your code

Relative performance is a perennial debate among programmers. Does code written for one language or platform run as well as equivalent code written for another?

Here, software development dovetails with carpentry, as it's often the poor craftsman who blames his tools. For every application that suffers due to an underlying flaw in the language, countless others are rife with poorly designed algorithms, inefficient storage calls, and other programmer-created speed bumps.

Locating these trouble spots is the goal of code profiling, and that's what makes it so essential. Until you've identified the slowest portions of your code, any attempt to optimize it will ultimately be fruitless. Because who knows? Maybe the problem isn't your fault after all.

16. Failing to virtualize

If you aren't taking advantage of virtualization, you're only making things harder on yourself. Virtual machines were a key selling point of early mainframe computers, but today similar capabilities are available on industry-standard hardware and operating systems, often at no additional cost.

Stacking multiple VMs onto a single physical machine drives up system utilization, giving you a greater return on your hardware investments. Virtualization also allows you to easily provision and de-provision new systems, and to create secure sandbox environments for testing new software and OS configurations.

Some vendors may tell you that their products can't be installed in a virtualized environment. If that's the case, tell them bye-bye. This is one technology that's too good to pass up.

17. Putting too much faith in one vendor

It's easy to see why some companies keep going back to the same vendor again and again to fulfill all manner of IT needs. Large IT vendors love to offer integrated solutions, and a support contract that promises 'one throat to choke' will always be appealing to overworked admins. If that contract has you relying on immature products that are outside your vendor's core expertise, however, you could be the one who ends up gasping for breath.

Rarely is every entry in an enterprise IT product line created equal, and getting roped into a subpar solution is a mistake that can have long-term repercussions. While giving preferential consideration to existing vendor partners makes good business sense, remember that there's nothing wrong with politely declining when the best-of-breed lies elsewhere.

18. Plowing ahead with plagued projects

Not every IT initiative will succeed. Learn to recognize signs of trouble and act decisively. A project can stumble for a thousand different reasons, but continuing to invest in a failed initiative will only compound your missteps.

For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wasted four years and over $100 million on its Virtual Case File (VCF) electronic record-keeping system, despite repeated warnings from insiders that the project was dangerously off-track. When the FBI finally pulled the plug in 2005, VCF was still nowhere close to completion.

Don't let this be you. Have an exit strategy ready for each project, and make sure you can put it in motion before a false start turns into a genuine IT disaster.

19. Not planning for peak power

Sustainable IT isn't just about saving the planet. It's also good resource planning. When energy costs spiral out of control, they threaten business agility and limit growth. Don't wait for your datacenter to reach capacity to start looking for ways to reduce your overall power consumption.

From CPUs to storage devices, memory to monitors, energy efficiency should be a key consideration for all new hardware purchases. And don't limit your search to hardware alone; software solutions such as virtualization and SaaS can help consolidate servers and shrink your energy footprint even further. The result will be not just a more sustainable planet, but a more sustainable enterprise.

20. Setting unrealistic project timetables

When planning IT projects, sometimes your own confidence and enthusiasm can be your undoing. An early, optimistic time estimate can easily morph into a hard deliverable while your back is turned. For that reason, always leave ample time to complete project goals, even if they seem simple from the outset. It's always better to overdeliver than to overcommit.?

Flexibility will often be the key to project success. Make sure to identify potential risk areas long before the deadlines are set in stone, particularly if you're working with outside vendors. By setting expectations at a realistic level throughout the project lifecycle, you can avoid the trap of being forced to ship buggy or incomplete features as deadlines loom.

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"

(Via Clippings.)

open SuSE 11.0 and Cyrus

For some reason Cyrus wouldn't work for me in the kitted, as-delivered form in SuSE 11.0 so I had to edit the /etc/imapd.conf file and add a couple of lines at the end (or anywhere for that matter) and then restart cyrus with 'rccyrus restart'

The lines to add:
allowplaintext: yes
sasl_mech_list: PLAIN

NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens

NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens: "

A vast wall of swirling static dances appears on a giant screen as Trent Reznor and his band launch into their song, 'Only.' Initially obscured by this sea of visual white noise, the Nine Inch Nails front man intermittently appears to push through the particles of snow with his hands and body, popping in and out of view and opening up random tunnels in the chaos.

'Sometimes, I think I can see right through myself,' he sings.

Nine Inch Nails fans are accustomed to such sonic and visual feasts whenever Reznor and company go out on tour. But this time around, NIN has pulled out all the stops, creating a groundbreaking, fully interactive visual display that is as much a part of the show as the band's instruments.

'I'm not really a purist,' admits Reznor. 'If I'm in the studio working on an album, I try to only please myself. But when it's a tour, it feels a bit more like I have a responsibility to some degree to entertain people.'

Reznor and other band members use Lemurs during the 'electronic set.' The touchscreen devices can be used to control a range of audio and visual aspects of the show on the fly.


Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

For the band's current Lights in the Sky tour, Reznor has not only raised the bar for what's possible in an arena tour, but has also produced what could arguably be one of the most technologically ambitious rock productions ever conceived. Unlike most rock shows, the visuals for about 40 percent of the show (including 'Only') aren't pre-rendered. There's no staging, no pantomiming by band members: It's all interactive, live and rendered on the fly.

With more than 40 tons of lighting and stage rigging, hundreds of LED lights, a daunting array of professional and custom-built machinery running both archaic and standard commercial VJ software, three different video systems and an array of sensors and cameras, the tour is nothing if not a lavish display of techno wizardry.

According to Reznor, it all started with a relatively simple idea.

'I wanted to see how I could use video as an instrument,' he says, 'and try to really make the stage feel like it's organic -- like it's part of the overall set.'

Judging from initial reactions to the show, the band has done just that.

Reviews have called LiTS everything from a 'vision of splendor' to 'the pinnacle of video art,' and nowhere is Reznor's showmanship and willingness to tinker with new technologies more apparent than in the band's current tour.

src="/images/article/full/2008/09/5_630x.jpg" alt="">

NIN programmer and keyboardist Alessandro Cortini stands in back of the giant stealth screen during sound check.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Transparent Screens

The core of the show is a sophisticated trio of transparent 'stealth' screens, which are raised and lowered during the performance.

Using one high-resolution (1024 x 288) Barco D7 screen -- basically, an opaque, computer-controlled screen comprised of a tiny LED system on modular panels -- and two lower-resolution semitransparent screens up front, Reznor and other band members are able to trigger and control various video loops and effects directly from the stage. The musicians can also interact directly with those visuals onscreen during the show, thanks to a sophisticated array of sensors and cameras.

For the most part, those visuals come from Reznor and Rob Sheridan, Reznor's creative partner and the art director for NIN. But the two had considerable help from a few outside parties in putting together the production.

Roy Bennet, a veteran lighting designer who worked with Reznor on the Downward Spiral and Fragile tours, designed and put together the LiTS set according to Trent's initial specs.

It was also Bennet who suggested bringing in the other key part to the show, a company called Moment Factory.

Responsible for the technology driving most of the interactive tech elements, Moment Factory is a boutique Canadian outfit that's worked on a number of Cirque du Soleil shows and has produced other industrial visual installations.

For the interactive portions of the show, all the onscreen video is rendered by Moment Factory's custom rig, a trio of Linux-based devices collectively known as 'the brain.'

'They build what they call games,' Reznor explains. 'Each [interactive] song might have two or three settings ... or games. It's basically particle-based animation.'

Those particles can interact with any of the various inputs Reznor and the band have selected.

src="/images/article/full/2008/09/1_630x.jpg" alt="">

Known simply as 'the brain,' this rig is Moment Factory's custom-built Linux machine that runs all of the interactive visuals audience members see during the show.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Interactive Lasers

With the song 'Only,' for instance, the front, convex screen starts out as solid static. On Reznor's side of the display, a laser above him detects whenever he crosses a vertical plane paralleling the screen. On the floor, a piece of tape and two tiny LED lights let him know exactly where that plane is.

As Reznor intersects that plane with his hand or body, the laser tracks his X and Y coordinates. The 'brain' box then tells the particles to spread out to a predetermined dispersal pattern. Reznor says: 'Then it follows me around. If I leave the plane, it fills back in. If I push through, it comes back out.'

The band uses the same tech for another song later in the show called 'Echoplex,' from The Slip album.

Like many other NIN songs, it's based around a drum machine beat. After rehearsing live a few times with real drums, Reznor realized it sounded better sounded with a machine.

'We recreated a grid drum sequencer,' he says. '[Drummer Josh Freese] is actually touching and turning them on and off. But he's not really touching the screen. He's crossing the same laser on the back screen, which gets calibrated at sound check.'

The end effect is so seamless, most people assume the band is simply pantomiming to a pre-rendered video, or has actually somehow installed a gigantic touchscreen sequencer on a backstage wall.

'We went through so much effort to make this stuff interactive and people still think it's all staged,' jokes Sheridan.

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Reznor pushes through a cloud of static onscreen during the band's performance of 'Only.'
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Problems With the Hippotizer

As with any production of this magnitude, there are also the inevitable glitches and hiccups. According to Reznor and Sheridan, many of those can be traced back to an archaic Windows machine known as the Hippotizer, as well as an antiquated lightning console that it interacts with called the Grand Ma.

At one point, during the band's recent Red Rocks, Colorado, performance the Hippotizer choked and spit out some text from the machine's video-labeling system. NIN fans immediately began dissecting still shots from a video someone had taken, and a three-page discussion ensued on NIN forums trying to decipher what the secret text meant.

'It was all just that stupid fucking Hippotizer getting the wrong trigger ... something from the lighting desk just misfired,' Sheridan says.

But Reznor, who is an unabashed Mac fan, is also playful about having to partially rely on Windows boxes for some of the show's visuals.

'We purposefully put one frame of the Blue Screen of Death in this collage of static that comes up at the end of 'Great Destroyer,' and right away people caught it,' he says.

For the next leg of the tour, Sheridan is working to permanently move the entire lighting and visual system over to a Mac rig running ArKaos VJ software.

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Moment Factory's world of cameras. During a performance of 'Terrible Lie,' one camera directly records the stage and then runs that video through a special effect. That video is then re-projected back onto one of the screens, producing a cool real-time ghosting effect of the band members.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Tying Everything Together

While work on the arena show didn't officially begin until last fall, Reznor says the bones of the tour date back to his 2005 With Teeth tour.

'A trap I realized with NIN was that I could go out and play aggressive music where everyone jumps up and down. But if I wanted to try to bring in some of the other stuff I've been doing -- whether it be electronic or something ambient sounding -- it's tough to take an audience that's been trained to bang their heads to then sit back and think for a minute,' he says.

So with the help of Sheridan, Reznor stumbled on the idea of using transparent screens. That system allowed him to augment his wide-ranging portfolio of music with visuals he and Sheridan created. In turn, those visuals helped tie everything together -- or at least kept people from whipping out their cellphones or walking off to grab a beer during the 'slow songs.'

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Reznor appears backstage before the Oakland show.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Currently, Reznor and the band are on a brief two-week hiatus, before taking the Lights in the Sky tour down to South America and then weaving back up through the States, where they'll finish up the American portion in mid-December.

There are also talks between NIN and director James Cameron to film the show in 3-D ('to at least have proof when U2 rips us off next year that we did it first,' Reznor says), and the band also has been in ongoing discussions with HBO for a Year Zero miniseries which would launch in conjunction with a second album and an alternate-reality game.

When asked about his future plans for touring, after the Lights in the Sky wraps up, Reznor says the next series of shows may be a different beast altogether.

'Next time might just be white lights in a club and it's about the music,' he says. 'Because I'll be broke and that's all I'll have.'

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(Via Clippings.)