25 Cool Things

I've used about half of these and they are pretty cool. Too bad it's got me thinking about other things now though!

read more | digg story

Cisco Router [self] Training

At my present employer we're a heavy-duty Cisco shop. We have an environment large enough to support several remote offices and easily a thousand or more employees. Our network engineer built the operation with multiple redundancies following most of the Cisco best practices. The problem though is that we no longer have a dedicated Cisco engineer on staff and we've reduced the number of offices and employees so the sophistication is big-time overkill for our present size and needs. If we change locations I'll re-design the network but in the mean time there's not much point in changing anything unless something breaks. However there are some changes we might need to make (i.e., routing external RDP traffic to a Terminal Server box) and instead of calling in a consultant I'm delving into the Cisco routers. My experience with the Cisco products is limited but I've worked quite a bit with various Linux-based routing, both software and embedded Linux routers and firewalls. While the concepts are similar there are the requisite idiosyncrasies specific to each brand and operating system.

With that said, I am in the process of training myself on the Cisco IOS this week. While self-training may not be a suitable alternative to classroom formalized training for everyone, it should be enough to help me find my way around the Cisco gear a little more effectively.

To train myself I've installed a simulator on my Mac that's built for Linux. To do so, I needed to download the following:

Apple's Xcode 3.0 Developer Kit (lots of compilers and cool SDK stuff)
The Cisco 7200 Simulator
The libpcap compiler
I also used this reference to help me get the bits installed

My biggest thing has been to familiarize myself with the commands and utilities to get around and so far this has worked great.

Job Search Update

This past week represented a sizable amount of activity on the job search front. It started off with two interviews with very notable academic organizations. Both were for director-level positions. I also had another interview scheduled with a noteworthy online library service although I withdrew from consideration on that one--the scope and size of the position wasn't what I was hoping for although I'd be proud to say they were my employer. The big surprise of the week though was being contacted by a recruiter from a company in the Sierras. It was a long but comprehensive phone interview. The company's business model is interesting and they're rapidly growing. The particular position isn't as high level as what I would consider ideal but on the other hand there are some great technical projects coming up that could be a lot of fun to work on--ones that I know I'd personally enjoy quite a bit.

I ended up withdrawing from one of the searches with higher education--the pay was okay (not enough to live in the town itself, I'd have to live in an adjacent town) but the scope of the position in the near term is smaller than what I'm accustomed to and the area itself is not very attractive to me.

In about a week I'll be heading to Portland, OR for an interview up there with another higher-education organization. It's not as prestigious as the two from this week past but the scope of the position is greater. It looks like they've started to implement some of the technologies I've worked with. Could be interesting... I hope to hear back from the company in the Sierras--I'd like to look at this one a bit more. I like the location, although, ideally I'd like to stay in Petaluma but unfortunately I don't have any good leads on anything in the area yet.

Interview Question

So I was interviewing with a prominent university recently and one of the predictable questions came up--why do you want to work here in this position? It's something of a standard interview question but it made me think of a totally appropriate question to ask at the end of the interview--why would I want to work here in this position. I think it's a fair question, though be careful how you tone it, you certainly don't want it to come across as arrogant but in most instances it may lead to a better discussion.

My Personal Headhunter

I have to say that I've not had the most encouraging fortune with recruiters and headhunters. For the longest time I've experienced seeming tremendous interest initially and as soon as the one position didn't turn out to be a match they seem to lose your contact information. As I and many people can tell you, the job search process is not a quick one, at least not for me. I truly believe it needs to be a good fit and my personal professional history is staying with an organization at least 4 years; I'm not one to jump from job to job every year or two.

A week or two ago I copied an article to my blog written by an individual named Dean Tracy who is an independent recruiter. He is based out of the southeast Bay Area and has written some really good stuff that's been published on MSNBC and TheLadders. So Dean came across his article on my blog (with full credit to him, of course) and dropped me a note about his services. We started to correspond and he critiqued my resume and my own branding/marketing of myself. Clearly my blog is part of it but really, not a lot of hiring mangers or recruiters look much past the resume and that's what needed the most immediate work.

Dean shared with me some of his insights and suggestions, as well as examples, and I took them to heart. I stayed up until 2 AM that night starting from the ground up. Some of his suggestions included creating an executive profile section--just a few sentences, some formatting changes, quantifying the value of my projects and responsibilities, and detailing some of the skills. With a couple of exchanges after that first big re-write I have a resume that I am really proud of. Dean later did most of the writing for my longer profile that I posted to my web site and he's got a great sense of style and writing capability. With that said, he's an excellent asset with great sense of presentation, has some great connections, particularly in northern California, and is a really good guy. He's not just a resume/profile writer, he's a well connected recruiter who lets you exchange ideas to get things dialed in just right and then presents you.

Dean's contact information is: www.DeanTracyJobs.com

His list of publications and blog is: http://www.deantracyjobs.com/publications.html

Leaders I Respect and/or Admire

Job-searching has enhanced my large-picture view to look toward companies and individuals I respect and admire, and I view the terms as mutually exclusive. I'm sure I'll be revising this list but here's a start....

John Chambers of Cisco--John Chambers in recent months seems to have had an epiphany and has become more insightful and truly aware of social networking and collaboration. He is one of the least assuming or arrogant leaders who still manages to motivate his troops on many levels. I just watched the video of the interview with the San Jose Mercury News on the official Cisco blog and it only confirms my belief. Chambers, with his accent, comes across as humble but the guy has vision. I really want to see his company demonstrate it with goods and services that reflect that vision. The difficult thing is that Cisco is a huge ship and has a long reputation of being very conservative in product design and highly proprietary so re-directing that ship to get on course with Chambers' vision will be a tough thing. Sometimes I wonder if Chambers wouldn't have more fun with a new company. I respect AND admire John Chambers.

Jack Welch, formerly of GE--Jack Welch while with GE was almost exactly the opposite of what I wanted to emulate as a leader. As a classmate of mine in my MBA program described him, he was a chair-and-whip sort of lion tamer showman. He instituted some pretty ruthless management and business styles. I can't say that they were bad per se because the business was highly successful under his leadership, however I do believe that there is more than one way to get the job done. Since he retired from GE, he and his wife, Suzy, have been answering business questions in the back of Business Week every week. I have to say that it seldom strikes me that this is the same Jack Welch; he actually has glimmers of compassion and is incredibly insightful. Occasionally the 'cut off the bottom feeders' statement comes out but for the most part I really like his advice. While with GE I respected him, now I respect and admire Jack Welch.

Steven Jobs of Apple--Steve Jobs is a mixed bag for me. He is more arrogant than the leaders that I see as ideal (but so are most of them) and his showmanship is almost too over the top for me on the marketing side. I generally prefer someone who is a little more subtle. To his credit though, Jobs knows what he's doing and he's thinking far beyond just Apple. He has changed the way consumers think about cell phones. Wired Magazine did an excellent article on how Jobs and the iPhone are shaking up the cell phone industry. In a couple of years, I assure you that the cell phone industry will have so many cool products and services it will make pre-iPhone days look prehistoric. Even the Apple-haters can't deny that what Jobs did for the cellular industry isn't huge. Jobs is also trying to do similar things in the video (movie and network) arenas. Knowing the little that I do about the industry, it really strikes me as being a mafia-like empire and Jobs is making notable inroads in getting media distributed the way the consumer wants to see and use it. Some have likened him to being the largest advocate for entertainment media for the consumer. That's huge, keep in mind that this industry has a long history and the major studios have long had an alliance that hasn't been broken by many and Jobs has made the biggest inroads as an outsider. While he's first looking out for his own company's interests (and profits), he's the intrepid explorer wielding a machete and is finding the treasure and distributing the prize (although you do have to buy admission to get the prize in the form of iTunes/iPods/AppleTVs). Do you think Amazon would be selling MP3s if it weren't for iTunes? No way, not yet or at least not in the volume it is just out of the gate. I definitely respect the guy, I kind of admire him because he is borders on being too much of a marketer and is a little too full of himself.

Oprah Winfrey of Harpo--Oprah Winfrey embodies the story of someone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to a level of success that is unrivaled. Winfrey has on many occasions demonstrated that she has a tremendous humanitarian side to her. While I personally don't care much for the daily show, it's really only one of many parts of her self-built empire. Winfrey credits her staff and she loves her audience. She has hundreds of thousands of devotees and has often been considered one of the most influential women in the world. She is compassionate but still has a tremendous business acumen. I don't necessarily appreciate her products but I do respect her for getting to where she has from nothing and I admire her passion.

Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek, Next Generation--Jean Luc Picard is a fictional character, yes, I know. No, I don't go to Star Trek conventions and I'm not about to get into a debate about Kirk v. Picard. What always struck me about Picard was his very collaborative management style. When the tough decisions needed to be made he would pull in his usual top brass and often a subject matter expert. They would discuss the matter as equals and if the obvious choice didn't become clear, Picard would make the decision, explain why, and lead the team cohesively. When you use this style of management, you tend to get greater buy-in to the decision and long-term support in executing a decision or project. It's not natural for everyone and certainly won't work if your thinking is to tell someone to do it and if they question you, you tell them your mind is made up and you're the boss. Picard gave his managers a high degree of autonomy but he held them accountable. This style doesn't work for everyone but it's a style I admire, respect, and try to emulate (sans the outfit and bald head).

This Week's Job Search Update

So this week a couple of new prospects popped up. One is a CIO position to which I applied back in October, the other was one with a prominent California university to which I applied last week. Both are interesting in their own regards and I'm flattered to be considered for both. I'll be doing on-site interviews with the two organizations, one will require plane travel and we'll make a family outing of it because Carrie and Sadie will come along. Carrie will check out the real estate and activities in the area while I'm in 2 days of interviews. Should be a good time for her, 2 days of interviews will be interesting. When I interviewed with UNR I think that was about 14 hours of interviewing from start to finish so this could be even more quite the time!

On top of that, I received a note from a company right next to SF who came across my information so this is another unsolicited inquiry where they found me. We've exchanged pleasantries now and we'll see how the rest goes. Earlier in the week a couple of prospects I was excited about didn't pan out for various reasons but it seems like the week is wrapping up a little more interesting. Now if only we could do something about the stock market.....

Successful Companies

So now I've interviewed with a few different organizations and I continue to learn more about them and have noticed some trends....

One is a fairly young company started by an individual who is certainly capable but does not strike me as the most profound individual. I would credit much of the company's success to being in the right place at the right time, and timing is everything (or at least a lot of it). Unfortunately it lacked some of the organizational structure and acumen that would be difficult to instill in a company that has 300 employees and seems to be oblivious to rationale for a logical architecture.

A couple of others were interesting because while they were very very different (industry, size, etc.), they have some common themes. Both have been in business for many years and have had some flat or down times in business recently and are trying to build things back up. In discussions with both though it became apparent to me that neither are truly looking to change things dramatically and that they have a pervasive mentality of maintaining the status quo. When I asked my questions during the interviews (and in an inquisitive tone, not judgmental), the responses and interest in new methods or ways of looking at processes were tepid at best.

So, the search continues and gratefully I'm not pressed to settle for the first thing. I really do want to work with an organization that is progressive, creative, and receptive to new ideas.

Customize Your Mac with Leopard Power Tweaks

Now that Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard's been out almost three months, several apps, tweaks, and plug-ins have emerged that can customize (and sometimes re-Tigerize) your Mac.

read more | digg story

State Your Business

I was reading last week's Business Week and I always enjoy Jack & Suzy Welch's advice at the end of the magazine. The question had to do with a startup company and its mission being its competitive advantage but it didn't work out that way. The part I liked, in the response, was toward the end where they give an example of a good mission statement and what makes up one.

Here's my favorite part:

To answer your question, then, here's how we'd suggest you create a new mission for your company, and just as important, a new set of values.

Basically, the mission starts with you, the leader, since you'll be held accountable for it. Yes, listen to everyone with something smart to say about your market and product— especially contrarians and customers. Gather and grok data galore. But then make a choice about how your company will win. Don't mince words! Remember Nike's (NKE) old mission, "Crush Reebok"? That's directionally correct. And Google's (GOOG) mission statement isn't something namby-pamby like "To be the world's best search engine." It's "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That's simultaneously inspirational, achievable, and completely graspable.

With your mission set, more of your team must get involved in establishing values. After all, you are trying to describe the best behaviors of your best employees on their best days with enough clarity to make those behaviors easy to emulate, measure, and reward. Consider some of the best values we've heard: Never lose a superstar. Communicate bad news quickly. Take personal ownership of results, not process. Unlike the usual drivel, those mean something. They compel action.

This is good stuff here, it really sums it up. I think it's a small percentage of companies who really get this but those who do tend to do lots of stuff well.

Read the full story in Business Week.

Go Fish

Why does my profile show me wearing a tie and holding a fish?

The photo was taken around 1995 when I worked for Soundstream Technologies. We had a marketing manager, Mark Spinella, who had a very creative and often unorthodox style for marketing. If memory serves, we used that photo for a newsletter picture for an article I had written.

I've kept the photo around for more than a decade now because it's an excellent reminder to never take myself too seriously. Regardless of your role, it does wonders to sometimes take a step back and laugh at yourself. If you have a function that is often stressful it's even more important. Besides that, if you can't laugh at yourself, I believe you have a tendency to take other people's criticism to heart and it disturbs the creative flow.

If nothing else, it makes for a great icebreaker when you meet a business partner or potential employer who has done a simple Google search on your name...

Updating the Resume

After a couple of discussions with professional resume writers, I've now completely overhauled my resume. A couple of the summary highlights of the discussions included the branding through a professional profile/summary of skills, experience, and strengths as well as revamping the experiences into quantifiable accomplishments. In the case of the latter portion, an example would be instead of saying that you have increased sales, provide a specific number ('improved sales through new low cost methods resulting in 25% increase in sales within 6 months' or such). It took some time to do this as I had to research documents and think in terms of how my accomplishments resulted in quantifiable improvements.

In some areas this was more difficult because it's hard to quantify how my efforts to improve relations between central university administration and the academics resulted in something other than good will and greater cooperation and alignment with administrative goals but I did it wherever I could.

In reviewing my old resume it was clearly written more so with an 'in the spirit of...' mentality than quantifiable accomplishments. I still believe there is quite a bit of value in many of those accomplishments, particularly when it comes to organizational change and strategic initiatives which may not often have specifics that can be tied back to numbers.

Either way, I left a few of the non-quantifiable items in there but I otherwise overhauled the format and content. It's not a small task and it probably took about 10 hours with the greatest amount of time spent on two short paragraphs providing an executive profile.

It will be interesting to see how that works out, I'll continue to update the blog with the results....

Methods for Charging for IT Services

A recent article on CIO Magazine titled "How to Make IT Allocations Work" reminded me of a model I proposed for the university for which I worked. At the university, a state public school, data storage space was in constant demand. As we had built up the technology infrastructure we implemented a fast, highly accessible SAN. Originally we set it up without quotas (because, at the time, Windows only allocated quotas by user name, not partition). We found that the space was being eaten up quickly by departments and users putting their personal data on the space (lots of photos and MP3 files). A few months after installed we added quota management software and notified users of the quotas and that worked well. We did anticipate and receive requests for larger space, in the neighborhood of TB increments. As it turned out, most of these needs were not for the frequently accessed, mission critical data but more for research data--large images and data sets that needed to be network accessible but not necessarily by several people simultaneously or backed up with the same frequency. To do this on our tier 1 storage systems would have been cost-prohibitive and previously departments were often operating their own home-grown Linux servers that weren't being patched or maintained with any regularity.

It was at a vendor presentation that I came up with a viable solution. I was at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino and the presentations included one on server hardware. While they were presenting a combined Apple Server with their disk storage array, it gave me the idea to use their storage array (14 drives in 2U) and use the fiber connect to go to a Windows NAS-head. It was the least expensive enterprise-worthy but Windows native solution.

With that said, I proposed a lease model for allocating space to the departments who wanted it. Under the proposal we would buy the equipment from the IT budget and then carve out TB slices for the departments who wanted space and charge them a monthly rate based on a 3 or 4 year cost of the equipment and related expenditures. It really worked out to be quite elegant but unfortunately other state auditing guidelines said that if we had the equipment we shouldn't charge for the use of it. The point that the state guidelines fail to realize is that we could expand and provide service. There were some workarounds so were finally able to implement but not with the elegance of a monthly fee for the service but that would have been my preference nonetheless.

Judgment Calls

With our downsizing at work, one of my projects is to find buyers for excess IT equipment. A couple of weeks ago I sent a list of equipment out to a handful of wholesalers who purchase used office and/or computer equipment and asked for bids by the end of the week.

I heard from most of them by Thursday morning (actually I thought I had heard from all of them at that point) and they were all close and the one that won the bid was one with whom I had formerly done business and had a good experience. I told them that they were the high bidder on Thursday and we started coordinating a payment and pickup of the equipment, originally scheduled for Friday morning. Come Friday morning, the big Bay Area storms were in full swing and they postponed pickup (and payment would occur at pickup). I then got a bid from one more wholesaler that was more than double of what the next highest bidder offered. I left messages for the former company and didn't get a call back by the end of business so I sent an e-mail that evening and didn't hear back. I tried calling again first thing Monday morning, the date they had rescheduled the pickup and left a message.

At about 9:00 AM on Monday morning the pickup crew arrived and I explained that we had a problem because I had a much higher offer. Of course their position is that we had agreed (via e-mail, no signed agreements) on a price and that they would get the bid. I completely sympathize with the position but at the same time I'm working for a struggling cash-strapped company and getting $11k more for the equipment means a couple more days that people get paychecks. Of course, to get technical, the original bid request said the end of the week and we didn't have a signed agreement but that is getting into details. I spoke with the CFO about the situation and her sentiment was that we needed to take the higher offer.

So the decision essentially came down to honoring an informal agreement or keeping people employed a couple more days (and following instruction from company ownership). I consider myself an honorable business person but rules of survival came into play on this one and while it would still be a difficult decision, I would still do the same. I think this is a prime example of the Kobayashi Maru.

Harvard's Healthcare CIO and Blackberry's Poster Child

CIO magazine did a piece on John Halamka, CIO at Harvard's Medical School and many other things. While most people can't cope on 3-1/2 hours of sleep a night and 600 e-mails, there are some interesting suggestions, particularly on his blog about dealing with lots of e-mail.

The Week Thus Far

I had a very intriguing interview with a well-known company in the North Bay area this week. They have undergone some huge changes and were recently acquired by a business partner. They have shrunk in size dramatically and are reorganizing. For the past year their IT has been outsourced but that contract is about to expire and they are looking to reestablish their own internal technology positions, including CIO, for which I interviewed. I believe the interview went well and while the position, at least for the near term, would be far more hands-on than what my primary role has been for the past several years, it could be a lot of fun. In my current job it's become more hands-on because we've laid off so many individuals and there's a lot of work that goes with downsizing.

This position would be fun in many regards because it's kind of a start-up mentality, it's a brand most people would recognize, and as far as the public is concerned their issues have gone unnoticed (they've always been privately held). In many aspects I'd be able to build IT from the ground up and work with many new individuals. I think there are huge opportunities for the company and I could certainly contribute. I most immediately see developing their already loyal-base and adding more personality to the company through social networking elements and given their location and the general perception that they're a fairly 'green' product, there are some key elements that could be leveraged. Of course, like any organization, IT shouldn't be the end-all be-all for these developments; it requires a level of commitment from senior management and marketing to make these particular things happen but I think it would be a lot of fun to help put them into place.

When I finished with that interview I had an e-mail from a corporate recruiter for a company in Palo Alto (CA) for a CTO position. I didn't have a chance to call back on it that day but I got a call from them the next morning. This is a much larger company and they are looking for a CTO to head up a 110 person IT shop. Much of the systems are UNIX/Linux-based and it's another well-known brand, though in a much different industry. I'll be talking with them soon.

So, sometimes when it rains it pours, and it certainly seems, at least for me, that lots of things are starting to pop and the volume of open high-level IT positions has increased dramatically.

Professional Courtesy

It's an interesting thing, basic professional courtesy.....

In the past couple of months I've spoken with several recruiters and HR personnel (direct employees of companies) and discussed opportunities. In some instances the position may not have sounded like a good fit to me but it was interesting to hear the recruiter/HR person say that they would be back in touch with me. I've heard this more than once and it's interesting because most of the time they don't contact you back, even though they said they would. I also don't believe they had any intention of calling me (or any candidates who didn't fit the bill) back.

None of this breaks my heart and I'm not really surprised by it but I was thinking about it on the way to work this morning after someone cut me off another car on the road. There seems to be a general lack of professional courtesy in job searching. In recollecting previous job searches I've seen this before and if you think about it, it's really a lie because they have no intention of calling you back. It's like a date that doesn't work out and one person tells the other they'll call, even though s/he has no intention of calling.

Now I'm not upset about it but I am disappointed that this sort of behavior has become the norm. Honestly, I would never tell someone I'd call them back if I had no intention of doing so.

If anything, consider this a request for the basic courtesy that if it doesn't look like it's a good fit, be honest and upfront and say so.

Must Haves for Your Next Interview

Must Haves for Your Next Interview
By Dean Tracy

After many years in the recruiting business, I’ve learned that candidates often lack preparation when facing a career transition or job change.

Here are six simple steps to take before an interview to help you land the job.

1. Prepare Your Story
Throughout your career, you may pursue different directions. Be prepared to discuss the reasons for which you’re taking your career in a certain direction.

Organize talking points that help you tell your story. It’s important to touch on reasons why you may have left a company without bashing your former co–workers or supervisors. Explain with confidence the reason that you are making or have made a career change.

Remember that a lack of conversation reflects lack of interest. Be prepared to incorporate the storyline of your background into their organizational challenges.

2. Calculate Your Compensation
Know the difference between your needs, your value to the company, and market trends. Your financial needs are of no importance to the hiring manager or the hiring company. They care about your success, but they are not accountable for your financial responsibilities.

Investigate the market trends for the position for which you’re interviewing. The dollar amount is usually defined by what the market will bear for your position. This information can be collected from a variety of websites and market research. Keep in mind that this will also depend on the company’s size, revenues, headcount, geographic location, etc.

The value that you bring to the company is one that only you can define and present to your prospective employer. This will be based upon your demonstrated experience as determined by contributions you’ve made in previous roles. Capture and reflect revenues that you generated, incorporate costs and expenses that you managed, and/or numbers of people or clients that you have supported.

Understand acronyms such as OTE and MBO.

• OTE = On Target Earnings. This is what your total compensation package is, including annual base salary, bonuses etc.
• MBO = Management by Objective. This is typically used to identify a percentage of your annual base and may be paid quarterly or once a year.

3. Articulate Your Value
You need to be able to address the value that you bring to the company. Be prepared to share your skills and accomplishments and discuss how they benefit the company. Articulate these accomplishments in a problem–action–results sequence.

• Problem – This will reflect the specific problem, challenge, or situation that you are faced with. The way you would describe this is in the form of an overview or summary.
• Action – This represents the steps that you took to address the problem, challenge, or situation. Describe the methodology that you followed to drive results and deliverables.
• Results – This is where you define the success or accomplishment of your action. Use this as an opportunity to share how you evaluate the end result.

4. Determine Your Commute Threshold
Estimate how far are you willing to commute to get to work every day. Some candidates will use this threshold to represent miles and some will use it to measure total road time.

5. Determine Your Willingness to Travel
This will usually depend on the position for which you’re applying. Your previous experiences with work travel will be a true indicator to consider. You should also carefully consider the impact that this will have on your family and personal lifestyle.

6. Articulate Your Management Style
Be prepared to share and discuss the environment or culture where you can be the most productive. Are you most effective in a chaotic, fast–paced, high–stressed environment? Do you bring a calming influence in a chaotic setting? Are you detail oriented, driven by reports in a micro–managed structure? Be prepared to describe your typical activity in a normal work day.

If you do your homework well, you will be extraordinarily successful in your interview. It will become easy for you to open new doors of opportunity toward landing the job of your dreams! Go get ‘em!

Dean Tracy is a Professional Recruiter, Public Speaker and Career Coach based in Northern California with an emphasis on Placing and Coaching IT Professionals at a National Level. He also serves on the Leadership Team for Job Connections, which is recognized as one of Northern California’s largest and most reputable Professional Networking Groups.

Which Free Mail Service? Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AIM?

I've been using free mail service since about 1993, starting with Yahoo!'s mail service, shortly after it became free. Since then I've also signed up for nearly every other major free mail service as well, including Hotmail, Gmail, and AIM, as well as the semi-subscription based .Mac mail service. Part of the reason that I signed up for them was to hang on to the asmetana account name, which I guess I claim as my own. The funny thing is that my brother's name is Andrew and it turns out that asmetana would often times have been his first choice but I got it first so it was an accidental bit of comedy.

When I worked at the University of Nevada, I had a project where I researched the possibility of running student mail through a hosted service. At the time, only Microsoft (with their live@edu, a variant on the Hotmail service) and Gmail were the only ones available as a no-cost option. I looked closely at features and performance and determined that between those, for the academic setting, Microsoft's offering had some very worthwhile advantages, such as blogs and photos integrated, along with hooks to Active Directory for simplified account management. Gmail was more attractive to many of the academics just because it wasn't Microsoft (many academics think Microsoft is the true evil empire). I had reservations about both because neither had an interface as elegant or rich as Yahoo!'s but Yahoo! wasn't in the business of free hosted mail for a college or university. Of course, at the time, neither had IMAP connectivity for a fat mail client (such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Mail or Entourage). It really came down to being a judgment call but if you were using Microsoft's Active Directory, their solution, while still a little buggy, would be easier to maintain and had more accessible features.

As time has gone on and I continue to look at each of them critically, I become more enamored with Gmail. Gmail recently added IMAP functionality, the spam filtering is the best of all the free services I have used, you can use your Gmail account to receive and send mail from other accounts, and the quotas are growing daily (mine is now at more than 6 GB!). I just configured my freshly hacked iPod Touch to access my Gmail account via IMAP and there's a nice little application for my BlackBerry to access a mobile version of Gmail that works great. There's a large community behind Gmail and its related features so it is quickly becoming a favorite.

I am still not in love with the whole idea of the labels but since Gmail added IMAP access, I don't need to login to the Gmail web interface very often so I don't have to worry about it. The IMAP implementation leaves much to be desired technically but as far as most people are concerned, it works just fine.

Speaking of IMAP and fat clients for mail, if you're using Eudora, STOP IT! Until it's adopted and integrated with Mozilla's Thunderbird, it's a dinosaur. I don't really understand why but in academia it's still wildly popular, even to pay for it (and this is the land of people trying to violate licensing agreements)! I asked one professor how attached he was to Eudora and he said, in all seriousness, more than he was to his own children.

So, where does that leave us? It really depends on your priorities. If you're looking for a hosted business solution, Yahoo! has the richest web interface as far as I'm concerned but its spam filtering is very weak compared to the others. Hotmail has a nice web interface but like most things Microsoft, only when viewed through Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Their spam filtering might be slightly poorer than Yahoo!'s based on my personal experience. Hotmail's advantage is the nice integration of additional features and services, such as the blog, web pages, and photo hosting, although I think I'm probably one of about 12 people who know about it due to poor marketing. Gmail has the least attractive web interface as far as I'm concerned and even after 3 or more years I still don't like the label system but again, if you're using a fat client, who cares? They also have lots of other services tied in but it's not as obvious how to use them but they will improve their accessibility. For me, it's Gmail. I've even started routing my personal e-mail domains and my other free services to it. I only want one mail box, and Gmail has it.

P.S. I mentioned AIM in the title but haven't mentioned it until now. It's actually a really nice service with good spam filtering and secure IMAP access. If you're looking for a nice unlimited quota and traditional, standards based IMAP access (their web client is average), AIM is also worth a look. There's not much status in the domain name and there's a part of me that wonders when AIM free services will dissolve or charge for them as well. Gmail/Google seems to be more solid financially using the current business model, at least for now.

P.P.S. About.com has a write-up about the various mail services and mail programs.

Recommended Mac Apps for Personal Use

I recently wrote a post about having given my dad a Windows laptop for Christmas and setting it up with the core applications that seemed appropriate for personal use. In turn, I feel obligated to mention the other computer gift my wife and I gave this Christmas--a G5 20" Apple iMac (pre-iSight) to her parents.

I'm not sure why exactly but I kind of like building a fresh Apple computer. The installations tend to be elegant and you can stack several software installations so they install one after another. I also like that the OS is hardware agnostic and I can copy the image after I build it and either run it or lay it on top of another Mac and it works just like it was built for it. Some people bemoan the fact that Apple doesn't license its OS for other vendors but on the positive side it dramatically reduces maintenance because you can build a single image for use on any like-processor laptop or desktop.

So, with that said, here's what I put on that computer...

After doing the initial complete install with all options but the multiple languages, I add anti-virus in the form of ClamAV for Mac OS X. It's free, lightweight, and quick. It's not as full featured as others but it does the job for me. Since the Macs thus far have a low rate of being a malicious target I'm a little more relaxed on the anti-virus. I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be but considering that I'm religious about keeping the computers patched daily and well firewalled, there isn't any empirical data that suggests that I need to do more.

Just because I am a Linux guy at heart, I install Apple's excellent Developer Tools. It's a whole kit of compilers, SDKs, WebObjects, and more. If you have an Apple Developer account, it's a free download. After that goes on I add a few command line *NX applications like wget, lynx, etc. which are handy for troubleshooting. While I'm in the terminal I usually activate PHP and SSL for Apache (the built-in web server).

For productivity, I installed Apple's very good iWork '08. I bought a Family Pack when I purchased it for just a few bucks extra and it lets you legally install it on 5 computers and I still have a couple to spare. It includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (word processing/layout, spreadsheet, and presentation software). For me it's still not quite a complete replacement for MS Office but the value is hard to ignore if you're on a budget. Of course you can also get Open Office or Star Office or use Google Apps but I prefer iWork over those alternatives.

Of course no Mac would be complete without the famous iLife suite. Like iWork there is a Family Pack option as well for only a few bucks more so on it went. iLife includes iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and iWeb. iPhoto is the strongest in the suite in my opinion but I also don't do a lot of video editing. iWeb is still a little light for me and tries to do too much automatically and I personally use DreamWeaver for web pages but for your average user iWeb makes sense. With this suite you can manage and edit photos quite a bit (still not like you can with Photoshop but that's overkill for most people), create template based web pages, edit movies, and create DVDs for playing in a home DVD player.

While Safari is my preferred Mac browser, I still install Firefox and Internet Explorer (v. 5.x, although it's no longer available for download from MS). I used Camino for a while but the lack of support for it is disappointing. I usually install Opera although I don't know that I've ever used it....

I put Skype on it because it's great VoIP software. I'd be hesitant to use it for business purposes because I wouldn't want to eat up my own bandwidth being a super node for other people but for home use behind a firewall, I'm comfortable with it. In my own case, I also signed up for Skype Out service and I use that for making calls to land lines in lieu of my cell phone when it's still peak times (that runs $30 year for unlimited US and Canada calls to landlines).

Lastly, I install the Google Software for Mac, which includes Google Earth and a plugin for iPhoto to upload pictures to PicasaWeb. It's not as much stuff as they have for Windows but most of the other stuff already exists in iLife or native to the OS.

I didn't mention IM because I usually just use the native iChat--it's hard to beat for video and audio chats. It doesn't work with all the services out there yet but it does work with AIM, ICQ, and Google Talk and those three services represent 80% of my friends on IM.

If I'm building my own computer, I include

• Parallels for virtualization
• Toast Titanium for disk burning and image creation
• MacTheRipper for importing the DVDs I own
• HandBrake for converting the DVDs I own to MPEG4 so I can put them on the network; incidentally it's also available for Windows now!
  
• EyeTV 2 by Elgato which, when using a hardware TV tuner, allows you to watch and record television shows
• Microsoft Messenger, just because I do have a few friends with Hotmail and MSN IM accounts.
• Microsoft's new Remote Desktop client, it is actually a really good client if you need to connect to a Windows computer
  

Over time I usually add other little networking utilities and tools for updating lyrics on my iTunes music, however these are the highlights!

Recommended Windows Apps for Personal Use

For Christmas I gave my dad a low-mileage Windows laptop that I had purchased from work as excess inventory. We delivered all of the sold computers with a basic Windows XP Pro image without an anti-virus or productivity applications. It had been a while since I had prepped a computer for personal use before and it's always something of a balance between reliability and functionality in selecting your software ensemble but I was pretty happy with what I set up for my dad.

Before anything, I of course did all the Windows updates and being a Lenovo (previously IBM), I downloaded their system updater. Between updates for the two, it probably took a good 3 hours before I could install anything interesting.

I started with anti-virus. Seeing as how I didn't want to spend any money and I've been quite happy with ClamAV for Linux and Macs, I got it for Windows for my dad's computer.

As people who know me and my philosophy on personal computing, one of my biggest complaints about Windows is the relative lack of an elegant free or inexpensive suite to do the neat stuff that many home computer users want to do outside of mail and web. The best suite of applications I've found thus far is the Google Pack. Google Pack includes Picasa for photo editing and organizing, Skype for A/V voice over IP (VoIP) free calling, Google Talk for IM, Acrobat reader, Google Earth, Google Desktop, optionally Star Office, and other stuff. With this suite someone can get quite a bit more substance from the Web and the applications are all really easy to use to find/learn stuff, communicate, and manage photos. One of the other nice things is that by getting the stuff through Google Pack, it will take care of updates for all the products

For an office productivity suite, Microsoft Office is the logical and prevailing choice, but it's far from free or inexpensive. Alternatives include the aforementioned Star Office, OpenOffice.org, Google Apps, and other lesser known options. I had a license that I wasn't using for Microsoft Office so I put it on my dad's computer and it's really my preferred productivity suite, be it Windows or Mac.

Lots of people like being able to generate PDFs so I included a nice bit of open-source software for that purpose called PDF Creator off of sourceforge.net. It's very lightweight and far faster than the full version of Adobe Acrobat, and it's free!

Just because I don't like to be tied to one browser, I also install Firefox and Safari for Windows. I do like IE7 for functionality far better than its predecessors because it finally added tabbed browsing and integrated RSS feeds, although its implementation of the latter seems almost Beta-like.

I would have been a big proponent of Google's Desktop Search a year ago but since then Microsoft came out with their own Windows Desktop Search application and it works wonderfully. It indexes quickly, is easy to use, and allows you to index network drives as well.

For media management I put iTunes on the computer. I know a lot of people, particularly Winamp users don't like iTunes because the default nature is to reorganize and rearrange your music folders. After I spent quite a bit of time with iTunes and began to see how it works and understand the logic I grew to accept it and am just fine with it. On my media computer I did tell it to NOT copy the files to the iTunes directory because there simply isn't room and I do want to manage the directory structure on that one myself but for most basic music users it works fine with its default settings. It's one of those things where it makes assumptions that it knows better than you but the reality is that for most people it probably does.

My dad is one of those guys who has managed to sign up for every mail and IM service possible and has friends and contacts on just about all of them so I installed Trillian which has a free basic version and a paid full-featured version. Besides that, AOL's client is a pig and loaded with adware. I also put Skype on his computer via the Google Pack. I like a couple of things about Skype, in particular it's the only Windows A/V client that works reliably. I can't begin to recall the number of hours my staff and I have wrestled with various Windows clients trying to get video chat working reliably and even if we could, it would be a support nightmare. On the other hand, Skype works elegantly and easily out of the box after the initial setup.

The only thing I didn't do was set up a mail client for him. I'd like to see him use Gmail because I do and there are some nice collaboration functions with it but mail is a very personal choice.

After making sure everything was updated and only the right things were launching at startup, I gave my dad the laptop. He got it last night and was tremendously excited and thankful. I guess both hinges had broken on the old Dell I gave him a few years ago but he still propped it up on his lap with the screen resting on his legs and used it several hours a week. There might be some improvements in quality of life for him with his low-mileage Lenovo T60 now!