I have written several hundred news stories, features, and interviews about many facets of the high tech space. Topics include:
- 3-D Video and Display Technology
- Apple (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iTunes, Software, Enterprise, and so forth)
- Call Center and IVR Technology
- Compliance Issues
- Data Security Strategies
- Microsoft Antitrust
- Company Mergers
- CRM and many other acronymic [sic] solutions
- PDF Functionality
- Publishing Workflows
- Mobile Device Management
- Social Networking Services and Trends
- Virtualization (Server and Storage)
Whew, the list is seemingly endless. Instead of listing everything I have written about, please use the side navigation and check out my clips and links.
I have posted some links to some of my latest tech articles below:
TidBITS Feature, “Third-Party SDKs: The Future of iPhone Apps”
Last modified on 2009-12-08 05:51:23 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
My first article for the venerable Mac e-newsletter and Web site TidBITS (http://db.tidbits.com) looks at the ways in which third-party SDKs are being incorporated into other iPhone apps to obtain certain functionalities that Apple doesn’t provide in the iPhone OS:
An excerpt from the article:
I’m glad I waited both for the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone OS 3.0. I won’t bore you with the many reasons why I’m thrilled with the former (passable camera, video capabilities, and GPS are among them), but I needed copy and paste for my iPhone to be more than an expensive toy. So thank you Apple, for making this available across multiple apps.
However, the iPhone OS still lacks text expansion capabilities, something that is almost as important as copy and paste in my work as a freelance technology reporter and writer. On my Mac I use a combination of Rainmaker’s Spell Catcher for short expansions like “ffct” for “functionality” and SmileOnMyMac’s TextExpander for boilerplates, signatures and HTML tags. As a freelance writer who writes primarily about data centers (or “dctr”) and other IT (or “iit” so that I don’t need to use the Shift key) topics, text expansion has reduced my RSI symptoms and saved my sanity, especially when transcribing interviews.
When SmileOnMyMac released the iPhone version of TextExpander in August 2009 at the sale price of $1.99 (vs. $4.99), I bought it immediately even though initially you could access its capabilities only by typing your text in a composer window and then by copying and pasting the text into your notes, text, or tweet. SmileOnMyMac had released the SDK of its app at around the same time, so I was optimistic that other developers would eventually integrate TextExpander’s iPhone SDK into their apps, and I would experience even greater joy with this pocket-sized computer that also happened to make phone calls.
You can find the complete article here: Third-Party SDKs: The Future of iPhone Apps
Law.com Case Study, “Case Study: E-Mail as a Managed Service”
Last modified on 2009-11-24 20:37:37 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
A recently published case study for the Legal Technology Section of Law.com. It was posted on November 4, 2009 and delineates Florida law firm Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson’s decision to use Azaleos to migrate its Exchange databases and manage its email:
Law firms have a reputation for being document-intensive, and Miami-based Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson is no exception. Over the last several years, this full-service firm has worked diligently at becoming a paperless operation, and more than 95 percent of everything it does now is computer-based, says Eugene Cabreja, IT director at Stearns Weaver.
Until recently, however, Stearns Weaver’s e-mail system was hobbling in their digital transition. The firm was using an outdated Novell GroupWise installation that was buckling under the massive amount of e-mail going back and forth between attorneys, staff and clients. To make matters worse, it didn’t integrate well with the firm’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Given that most of the firm’s 120 lawyers use BlackBerry devices as a primary means of communication, an outage on that end could mean the difference between getting a 200-page M&A agreement to the client with time to spare and missing the deadline altogether.
The firm decided to migrate from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange 2007, but Cabreja had several concerns about both the migration and the subsequent management of the new Exchange site. First off, neither Cabreja nor his staff was well-versed in Exchange, and even if any of them were, the task of administering Exchange and BES in a proactive fashion would have been an onerous one at best.
Then a fellow IT professional told Cabreja about Seattle-based Azaleos and their Managed Exchange Services. Not only could Azaleos map out the migration from GroupWise to Exchange, it also offered the 24/7 proactive monitoring and management Cabreja wanted and integrated managed services for BES. “Azaleos had exactly what I needed,” Cabreja says.
Complete Article: Case Study: E-Mail as a Managed Service
Processor Article, “Real-Time Data: Adobe Turns To Terracotta To Meet Its Needs”
Last modified on 2009-11-14 06:36:29 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
A “Case Study” article from the November 6, 2009 issue:
Adobe needs little introduction. The multimedia giant has launched everything from Photoshop to the PDF, and as the years go by, it continues to design products for individuals and enterprises around the globe. One example is the company’s LiveCycle product (www.adobe.com/products/livecycle), a collaboration service that Fang Chang, group product manager for Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service, describes as a platform as a service for both developers and enterprises.
“It’s an SDK (software development kit) backed by hosted services run by Adobe that enable companies and developers to create these multiuser types of social, collaborative applications and rich Internet applications,” explains Chang. LiveCycle incorporates chat, video, Web cams, whiteboards, and other collaborative features that might be used in a virtual room or environment, making it easy for customers to create and add these collaborative applications into their products.
When Adobe engineers began building the LiveCycle SDK, they were seeking to design it so data would be available in real time without having to store it in a database. Raffaele Sena, senior computer scientist in the business productivity business unit at Adobe, says that his group started looking around for caching solutions and found that the Terracotta Distributed Cache solution (www.terracotta.org) was the best fit for LiveCycle.
Complete Article: Real-Time Data: Adobe Turns To Terracotta To Meet Its Needs
Variety Article, “USC to offer stereoscopic 3D program: Focus will be on using technology to tell stories”
Last modified on 2009-09-27 23:17:12 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
3-D technology is (finally) no longer a gimmick–and in fact is something that can enhance all movies, not just animation, horror, and the usual blockbuster stuff. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) technology has the potential to revolutionize the way movies are filmed much in the way the advent of color and sound did.
“If it’s well done, you forget there’s anything unusual about (S3D). It just broadens the gamut of what you can use to express things,” said USC professor Perry Hoberman.
Hoberman and Scott Fisher, chair of USC’s interactive media division, are setting up an interdisciplinary program at the School of Cinematic Arts that will address how the technology can be used in narrative-based production such as movies and scripted television, as well as in gaming and immersive media. According to Fisher, the program should commence next fall.
Complete Article: USC to offer stereoscopic 3D program: Focus will be on using technology to tell stories
Variety Article, “ESPN, Pace Prods. get into 3D game: USC-Ohio State football match marks public debut”
Last modified on 2009-09-27 23:02:25 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
The first public testing of ESPN’s 3-D live action production coincided with the recent 3-D Entertainment Summit last month:
With Disney committed to S3D at the corporate level, it was natural for the Mouse House’s sports network, ESPN, to look into the format for live broadcasts.
The net has been quietly experimenting with S3D for months, including an internal test of last year’s Kansas at South Florida NCAA football game.
Last Saturday, it unveiled the result, producing an S3D telecast of the USC-Ohio State football game that was shown at a handful of venues nationwide, including theaters, arenas and ESPN Zone sports bars.
Complete Article: ESPN, Pace Prods. get into 3D game: USC-Ohio State football match marks public debut
Processor Article, “Keeping Track Of Email: Sonasoft Helps Napa County School System Stay On Top Of Email Archival & Backups”
Last modified on 2009-11-14 06:45:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
A “Case Study” article from the March 27, 2009 issue:
The Napa County Office of Education, or NCOE, had been looking for an effective solution for archiving email for some time. However, unlike medical and financial industries, the NCOE does not have specific regulations and rules on archiving email.
“There is no agency that sets guidelines for us to follow, so we have to do our best to archive email and follow everyone else’s rules because we don’t know what we’ll find in a court situation,” says Brian Dake, director of information technologies at the NCOE (www.ncoe.k12.ca.us). Although Dake says that later this year the NCOE may get some substantive guidelines about how long emails need to be archived and how they are to be accessed, right now, these issues are up to individual interpretation.
Dake says cases against the NCOE have taken place where plaintiffs were awarded on whether the NCOE had the appropriate emails and then archived and presented them correctly in court. Because of the risk of incurring punitive damages, not to mention e-discovery and court requests, the NCOE needed a concise system that records all incoming and outgoing email, provides easy retrieval for e-discovery purposes, and ultimately limits liability.
Although the NCOE researched other solutions, Dake says his office finally chose two solutions from Sonasoft (www.sonasoft.com): SonaSafe for Email Archiving as its email archiving solution and SonaSafe for Exchange Server as the backup and failover solution for its Microsoft Exchange server.
Complete Article: Keeping Track Of Email: Sonasoft Helps Napa County School System Stay On Top Of Email Archival & Backups