Jason Slater
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Loading ...The mouse bites back
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I was watching a programme on television last night which put certain foods to the test as to the claims they make on their packaging. This has little to do with what I am writing about except for a brief section where areas of a typical house were swabbed and tested for signs of bacteria. Areas such as the bathroom, toilet, kitchen and home computer were tested and from the results it would seem that the house was reasonably clean and pretty much passed the tests except for one thing - the home computer mouse - it turned out this mouse had traces of the MRSA superbug following one of the children’s recent visit to a hospital. Just in case you missed it - let me say that again … there were traces of MRSA on the mouse!
Now, I don’t want to be a scaremonger but how many times have you used a mouse that belongs to someone else? In case you might be curious as to what MRSA is then pay a visit to the NHS Direct website and in particular to the MRSA section at:
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=252#
The BBC website also has an interesting section called “Should I worry about…MRSA” at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/shouldiworryabout/mrsa.shtml
The programme swiftly moved on but it got me thinking - as I type this post entry I am sat in a cafe within a University campus using a public computer that is probably used by dozens of different people each and every day. I am also drinking a nice hot latte and eating a pastry so I wonder - from mouse to finger to mouse - what on earth could I be subjecting my body to?
Should I be taking anti-bacterial wipes around with me every where I go and making sure I clean the keyboard and mouse before I use it? Or should I not worry about it and simply enjoy my pastry while Gooping? Oh and just in case you might be wondering the idea of carrying around anti-bacterial wipes has nothing to do with the fact that the company I work for produces, amongst other things, computer cleaning wipes!
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Loading ...Video killing the Internet star?
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Imagine the old metaphor of the Internet being like a motorway with packets of data carrying web pages like little motor cars. Then came IP telephony and these little cars have to contend with caravans. Then came social media and the cars and caravans had to content with lorries. But wait, what’s this? Digital video is on the horizon and we are trying to run trains down the same motorway. Congestion? Tailbacks? One day we may well look back at the heady days of good old congestion and tailbacks when we are all stopped in the road waiting to move another 100 yards - even those nice guarantee Quality of Service passes your car may be displaying in the window may not help anymore. Let’s just hope those motor cyclists carrying Internet radio can get through to us.
Everyone is crawling along and the slip roads are full of new little cars trying to get onto the motorway and the interchange routers are crammed full of traffic following their sat-navs deciding which way to best reach their final destination. In the real world of course we can hop onto the paid toll road and circumvent many of these delays but we have some time to wait until they appear in the land of the Internet – and would you pay for them anyway?
You may hear about the last mile - unless you live in a new build (or techno heaven where fibre is king). The last mile for many probably consists of some old piece of wire that runs from the local phone exchange to your house. This wire had aspirations but in my humble opinion they peaked roughly when bonded 56K modems and ISDN/2 appeared. All sorts of tricks and techniques are used these days to try and make the best use of this piece of cable. Living on the cusp of the nearest exchange I really feel the impact of the last mile. In fact I prefer to think of it as the first mile - as some days I would be happy to get that far. Once I am past the first mile I then have to try and get on that slip road but wait … another train is coming. I tried to apply for Internet TV via BT (BT Vision) but was told my Internet connection wasn’t good enough – oh well I would only be adding to the tailback.
A quick search on the Internet shows that there is much doom and gloom regarding some eventual “collapse of the Internet” so I aim to be positive. I don’t think the Internet will collapse under the weight of traffic – or rather I hope it won’t as I can barely remember life before the Internet and I’m not sure I could bare life without it. I mean in those days people had to actually talk to each other face to face, they had to go out in person and drive to places for entertainment and from time to time get stuck in tailbacks on the motorway on a bank holiday.
I wrote about an interesting site for testing your broadband speed in a previous post on my other Blog: Test your Broadband speed
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Loading ...Office Live Small Business and Network Tips
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So, Office Live Small Business for free? Actually there do seem to be a few caveats especially if you want a custom domain but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Small Businesses need all the help they can get to get in the early years especially when their core business is not IT (particularly when trying to establish a successful online presence). With Firefox support broadening the potential audience it seems that Microsoft are listening to the userbase out there - if they could throw online versions of Word and Excel into the mix then they may be on to a real winner.
On my other Blog I recently talked about 42 ways to enhance and improve your network - a collection of 42 tips to make your computer network a little happier, a little easier to manage and give you a little more control and a better sense of security. You may some of them useful!
I have also decided to claim my Blog at Technorati: Technorati Profile
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Loading ...Dell Vostro
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I wrote recently about the low cost Dell Vostro aimed at the SME market and I see that Maggie Holland talked about them as far back as July 2007 in Dell unveils Vostro offerings for small businesses. There are both Laptop and Desktop solutions on offer and they do seem reasonably priced for what they are (forgiving the comparatively large delivery price!). The site is at www.dell.co.uk/vostro
Has anyone any experience of these machines? Are they worth looking at?
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Loading ...Is Sharepoint the way to go?
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Is Sharepoint worth the investment, effort and upheaval from simple shared folders?
I have been busy reducing the number of physical servers by utilising virtual server technology (which you can read about in this post on my other Blog: Slamming down the Virtualisation Gauntlet). But now I am looking at trying to improve the end user experience and in particular the way data files are stored and accessed.
For our user base, and we have worked this way for a very long time, user generated data has never really been actively managed in a way I would be comfortable with. We have issued two drive letters for file storage. The first is what we would call a personal drive (but I guess it’s really a user drive) where only the particular user can store and access their files (other than an administrator). The second is a mapping to a shared drive - the shared drive contains sub-folders that are locked down and accessible to specific groups of users. We used to have a third public read only drive but it never really got used that much as users preferred shared drives. That is about it - users have then been left to their own devices to create sub-folders, manage their files and think about which files to share with others. Some people might use the term KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) to describe this method of information management but as technology develops I keep thinking about the shortcomings of this way of working.
The problem is that these drives are filling up with information which isn’t particularly well organised or accessible. Users organise information differently leading to inconsistency when looking for information. Also, when a user changes department, or moves on, there is always great difficulty in ascertaining which information in their user folder should be retained or moved to another user. Common information is difficult to access due to it being in different places for different reasons: for example, if we need to find all user documents relating to Customer X or Product Y, it would be a huge and difficult challenge. There is also the management of information groups: if a user needs to be added or removed from a group this has to be done via Active Directory so requires some IT intervention.
I would really like to make more intelligent and structured use of this increasing amount of information rather than the old sub-folder structure that is currently in place. I keep looking with envy towards things like Wikis, Blogs, Document Management, Version Control, Newsgroups, Intranets, Image Directories, Search and the like that start to make some sense and organisation of information in a common and consistent way and I wonder if this would be a better mechanism for user generated information management. That leads me to SharePoint.
I have looked at it a few times but have yet to fully commit and drive it out to the user base as I feel the change would be quite dramatic and I guess the immediate uphill learning curve for the user base might be more of a concern than the long term benefits. However, SharePoint seemingly provides a much superior way of organising, accessing and searching information - but is this the right way to go? Will it give the huge advantages that I dream of or are there pitfalls to be aware of?
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