techSOAP

“On behalf of” is no longer

One of the biggest problems with using Gmail with a custom domain email account was that you could send mail from Gmail as you@customdomain.com without recipients seeing the nasty little “From username@gmail.com On Behalf of you@customdomain.com” message with every email.  The reason for doing this was to help your email avoid being caught in spam folders and to show the recipient’s mail server that “Hey I know i’m not using my customdomain.com SMTP server but I still want to pretend this message is coming from you@customdomain.com”

Well the Gmail team has finally opened up the option for you to use your customdomain.com SMTP server for sending mail.  If your you@customdomain.com email address doesn’t have a SMTP server for you to send through, you can still send it the way that Gmail used to handle it with the “On behalf of…” message.

Here is the announcement from the The Official Gmail Blog. 

 

Technorati Tags: IT,SMB,Google,Gmail,smtp,email,server,security

Let virtualization change you!

More than ever companies are looking for ways to improve.  If you're not they you are doing your clients or your company a disservice.  I challenge you on this, let virtualization change you.  I remember being a jr sys admin and having to try and restore our Exchange 5 server by myself with my boss out of town.  I was scared out of my mind.  It took me all weekend but I figured it out, waited for the tapes to catalog, then restore, then replay the database.

That all seems so foreign to me know.  Virtualization has changed the life of an IT consultant/manager.  Don't get me wrong you can still screw up big time, but recovery (in a well managed environment) has become something that should breed confidence in a job well-done.   The flexibility afforded to IT folks by virtual machines means the hardware and services offered to your users are moving farther apart.  "The server is down." excuse doesn't fly in a virtualized enterprise.  If the "Server is down" then you drag and drop to get it up again. Every key area that used to be filled with excuses when things went wrong has been improved in a virtualized environment:

• backups
• disaster recovery
• number of servers needed
• cost
• adminstration
• uptime
• performance

Nothing replaces the good IT consultant/manager.  There isn't one thing that can make a bad IT consultant/manager good either.  Virtualization either makes the good ones look even better or helps the bad ones continue to look bad.

 

Technorati Tags: technology,virtualization,vmware,hyper-v,IT,management,CIO,change

Location based services are going to explode

I can't wait to see how the new iPhone app store from Apple is going to revolutionize location based services. I write this after having just updated my Twitter profile with my current latitude and longitude with a tap in the twitterific iphone app. Stay tuned this is going to get interesting.

Security for the SMB market. Part 1...

More and more IT industry voices talk about security for the enterprise, mostly in response to GLBA, or SOX, or HIPAA, but the SMB market is grossly ignored and under-informed about the risks they are under from a information security perspective. 

Here in Orange County, CA for the last several years mortgage companies are a dime a dozen, and now they are dying daily.  So what happens to all that information that they have had on all their customers?  Its a huge problem that has been largely untouched. 

Here is the big problem, no one can convince a SMB owner that they have information that any one would target.  They understand that some of their customer info is private and needs to be confidential, but they don't see themselves as a potential target. 

if their customers only knew, that the computer used to process their last refinance is now in the bedroom of the brokers teenager, they would faint...

Technorati Tags: security, hacking, GLBA, SOX, compliance, information security, privacy, SMB, IT

Summer Blog Break is Over....

I took the summer off from blogging in an effort to refocus myself both professionally and personally as well to just have some good old fun! 

Welcome back to the faithful followers if there are any left.

What was the best thing you did this summer?

Whats a wiki? In plain English...

Watch this video from the commoncraft show for a plain English explanantion of what a wiki is.

Click To Play

Technorati tags: wiki, web 2.0, collaboration, explanation

What is RSS? In plain English...

I frequently get asked what blogs are and why should someone start reading them.  Followed promptly by, how do you know the author isn't a nutjob just making stuff up? 

I won't go into my full monologue about blogs, rss, etc.  Rather, let me say that reading blogs through an Reader like NewsGator/FeedDemon, Google Reader, Bloglines is like building your own personal newspaper.

Watch this video from the commoncraft show for a plain English explanantion of RSS.

 

 

Click To Play

 

 

Technorati tags: rss, blogs, readers, mass collaboration

Drobo makes RAID simple....

Ok, so explaining RAID is almost as fun as explaining the OSI model, however so many people, especially designers, photographers, videographers, etc, are forced into learning how RAID will protect their prescious data.   The explaining is certain to lessen if Drobo has its way.

 

 

 Drobo attempts to simplify data management and protection by automating RAID configurations. To start it isn't happy and all green until you have some redundancy (min 2 drives), and then automatically upgrades your configuration as you add drives.

From drobo.com

Drobo upgrades capacity on-the-fly.

Add drives to Drobo at any time. Mix 'n match capacities, brands or speeds. No downtime, data migration, or waiting to access new capacity. Drobo works the way you do.

Drobo lets you "pay as you grow"

Hard drives get bigger and cheaper all the time. Don't buy storage capacity until you need it. Buy capacity "just-in-time" possibly saving you hundreds of dollars.

Drobo manages storage, so you don't have to

Just connect Drobo to your Mac or PC. No software required. No RAID levels. No management or configuration. Drobo does everything for you.

Get rid of multiple external drives. Avoid the complexity of RAID. Attach a Drobo storage robot to your system and let it manage your storage so you don't have to.

Technorati tags: RAID, drives, data, redundancy, drobo, OSI, tech, storage, simple

WebsitesForHeroes.com

Here is a great site that just recently got some press.

 

Tech2point0: WebsitesForHeroes.com Makes Love Connection for Soldier in Iraq

 

Here's a link direct to WebsitesForHeroes.com if you want to sponor a site for a military family.

Amazonunboxed to be on TIVO!!!

So just announced today is that Amazon Unbox Video Download service will be on TiVo boxes.  This comes just 24 hours after  WalMart's annoucement of a video download service.

With 4 of the 6 major studios onboard this represents a huge offereing that certainly will get noticed by the likes of Steve Jobs.  In fact it will be interesting to see how the services compare, especially with AppleTV shipping later this month.  I love my TiVo and am sooooo happy to see the folks over at TiVo starting to leverage their platform.