Aron Smetana

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Macworld How a news junkie uses the iPad | Tablets

http://www.macworld.com/article/160499/2011/06/ipad_news_junkie.html

Brief message sent from a handheld device.

Monday, June 13, 2011

This Week's Reading - 20110613

Must-have data center utilities: Picks by IT pros

10 IT positions ranked by prestige | TechRepublic

The making of King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle | Geek Gestalt - CNET News

Getting started with document management

Apple iCloud vs Google vs Amazon Cloud Drive vs Dropbox vs Microsoft SkyDrive - Pocket-lint

Yosemite's Tenaya Lake restoration coming up

Monday, June 6, 2011

This Week's Reading - 20110606

Cloud CIO: Yes, Your Job Is At Risk - are things going to change, absolutely, will lots of IT people be out of work? Yes and no, what I believe we'll see is a shift in responsibility and a move in the role of IT from being strictly a service provider to being one that is more integrated and involved with the business and is able to identify and find appropriate resources, as well as adding efficiency to the equation. For the died in the wool hard-core server administrators/programmers, the transition may be challenging.

Spectacular Lightning Show As Volcano Erupts In Chile : The Two-Way : NPR

How to burn a Lion boot disc | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Egg Freckles | Burning A Lion Boot Disc

5 tips on how to optimize your infrastructure

5 tips for getting better results from your IT contractor

The German Example - Economic Scene - NYTimes.com

Infinity Blade creators say they've cleared $10M | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

How to Upgrade to iOS 5 Today, Without Any Developer Account | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

My Top 10 Business Travel Tips - NYTimes.com

How the Apple iCloud compares to Google's cloud

Six things geek dads REALLY want for Father's Day | TechRepublic

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Web Analytics

In my role in working with technology in the e-commerce business, many people want to view analytics usage of people viewing the web store, where people exit, how long they visit, etc. This is nothing new and it seems that more and more people are moving toward Google Analytics. In the past, a very nice albeit expensive solution was Web Sense.

The way that these external analytics services work is that bits of web (HTML) code are embedded onto the web page that report back to your analytics provider with information about how you got to a certain page (from a link, keyed into the address bar directly, etc.). So what happens is if you view a web site with an outsourced analytics service, you're also sending your request information to the analytics service. This has been going on for years and it's nothing special or surprising.

AnalyticsGraph

What we've been seeing for a while on the business security systems but increasingly on consumer security systems (both higher grade routers as well as software firewalls) is blocking of sending the information to analytics services. Earlier today I was at a workshop discussing network security and over half of the businesses represented are already or beginning to block the data being sent to analytic services. While this small sampling may not be entirely representative of the world, it does reflect the trend.

Now what this means to those who are using external anayltic services, such as Google Analytics, Web Sense, et al. is that the accuracy of the numbers in the reports is waning. I believe that as time goes on and the operating systems of computers and security services proliferate, less and less data will be provided to the analytics services.

So, for those of us who wish to be able to review our data and turn that into useful metrics and graphs, we'll have to retool how we analyze our data.

Virtually all real web servers log the exact same information that the analytics services provide, but few people actually review those logs. There are commercial and open-source software that can live on the same server or network as the web server and can capture all that data and turn it into something useful. Another possibilility is that we may start to see 'log shipping' taking place where the web server logs are shipped or accessed by the external anaytics services.

In the mean time, if you, as someone hoping to garner useful data from external analytics services, you need to start thinking about an alternative immediately. Already there is less and less web usage information going over and that's going to continue to decrease in the not-too-distant future.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

This Week's Reading - 20110530

Warrantless cell phone searches spread to more states - CNN.com - should you worry if you're not doing anything wrong?

Comparative Review: Mac-to-AD Integration Solutions

Lesser-known Android tips and tricks | TechRepublic

Windows Phone "Mango" Preview 2: New Consumer and Business Features

Real-life computer crimes investigation: It's not like on TV | TechRepublic

Drag and drop data between applications | TechRepublic

Five Word tips that could change your life | TechRepublic

Configure server, desktop, and laptop power options with Group Policy | TechRepublic

Hidden - The most advanced theft tracking software for your Mac.

VIDEO: How to use Actions in Photoshop | MacMerc

VIDEO: Capture Screen Shots on your Mac | MacMerc

How to use the Photoshop clone tool | News | TechRadar UK

I'm not a Photoshop user at all, however I just discovered Photoshop Actions, wow!

60 Photoshop Actions for Photo Touch-Ups and Enhancements - Web Design Blog – DesignM.ag

Use social media to better serve your customers | TechRepublic

Face it: Organizational charts don't work | TechRepublic

What to expect from Mac OS X Lion | Operating Systems | Macworld

Monday, May 23, 2011

This Week's Reading - 20110523

Get Into the M&A Game - Computerworld

How to protect smartphones and tablets - Computerworld

Office for Mac 2011 - IT pros, developers, end users | TechNet

Microsoft Office for Mac Help and How-To

How We Tested Mobile Device Management - Computerworld

Four Ways to Make Your Battery Last Longer - NYTimes.com

Quick tips: Four things to nail down early in the web design process | TechRepublic

10 tips for deploying new wireless access points | TechRepublic

Two SSH clients to consider for the iPad | TechRepublic

15 essential tips to get the most out of Outlook - Office.com

Get ready for summer travel with a free National Park guide for iPad/iPhone

Stop being duped by the 3D scam | TechRepublic - Thank you, at last! It's not just my imagination...

10 add-ins that make Outlook easier to use | TechRepublic

Very cool computer/iPad cases Products - Twelve South

Movie Watching Is a Scavenger Hunt - NYTimes.com

Monday, May 16, 2011

This Week's Reading - 20110516

Attention, data center managers: Copy these innovations

Catch a clue from an EDU: Universities that get security right

GoFlex Satellite Wireless | Seagate

Six unexpected uses for the Application Switcher | Business Center | Working Mac | Macworld

Run your own Software Update Server with Reposado (Mac)

Log out current user (forcibly) from the command line, i.e., if the currently logged in user(s) sessions have frozen but you can still SSH to the Mac in question, login in to it via SSH and issue: