There’s proliferation of more and more accessible Internet connectivity, expanding bandwidth availability and movement of more services to the "cloud". Being connected everywhere makes the desire to be able to have "your" stuff everywhere more of a reality.

The Spoon website and service provides the ability to access and deliver applications instantly with no downloads, installs, or hassles. [On a side note, this seems a little odd because you do have to install a the Spoon plug-in for everything to work.]
Spoon specializes in app virtualization and delivery technology, a family of sophisticated techniques that decouple apps from the underlying operating …read more

A couple of my friends have the new Android phone and I’ve got to say, from the little bit of time I’ve spent playing around with them, it’s a nice phone. There are a number of apps available and it’s got some nice media coverage. It’s from Google so you know the phone’s gotta be perfect right? Umm…

It appears that users are experiencing a little bit of an issue with the camera that’s part of the Android phone. The Android’s 5-megapixel camera’s auto-focus feature isn’t always working. You’d think it might be some kind of issue with a faulty …read more

Will you be on the road traveling this holiday season? If so, you could take advantage of a gift of free wi-fi from Google in 47 of the nation’s airports this Christmas season. Everything is in partnership with the Climate Savers Computing organization and is an effort to raise money for their cause.

Those travelers that have the opportunity to take advantage of a free wi-fi connection will also be able to donate money to the Climate Savers Computing efforts to move toward a clean, sustainable economy through energy-efficient computing.
“We encourage all air travelers to use the free Wi-Fi access to …read more

In my recent explorations into the world of writing “regular expressions” I came across a couple of different applications that are supposed to make it easier for you to write and test your expressions.

I didn’t have that much luck as the applications weren’t really as helpful as I had anticipated or really needed. It’s been awhile since I’ve come across something that’s made me feel completely ignorant, but regular expressions seems to be the winner lately.
The two apps I found are completely free and give you quite a bit of assistance and guidance for writing your “regular expression”, but I’m …read more

I received an email today from a hosting company that one of my clients uses saying that they were no longer going to allow usage of email aliases anymore. In the email they stated that the usage of the aliases may cause their servers to be listed as spammers.

I’ve never heard of this being an issue with servers, so it was a bit of a surprise for me. I’ve been using and recommending using email aliases and forwarders for years. I’ve never read anything else about using them causing spam or causing the email servers to be listed as spammers …read more

I had a client ask me recently how she could know she was safe while surfing the Internet on the free wi-fi networks available in the various coffee shops around the city. I went through the general comments of a good firewall, malware and virus protection, but also offered a few other ideas for her to think about.

One of the things that immediately makes me start wondering about whether a wi-fi network at an establishment is legit, is whether or not the name of the wi-fi network being broadcast matches or at least is similar to the business name.
For …read more

I’ve been spending a bit of time the last couple of days trying to figure out exactly how regular expressions work. I’ve got to use one in an application I’m working on and I’m just not getting the syntax organization at all.

Although you may think it’s gibberish, the text above is the regular expression I’m using for the solution to my earlier problem. Doesn’t look very "regular" does it? Aside from the fact it’s using characters I’m familiar with, the order and meaning behind them might as well be hieroglyphics to me. So, what is a "regular expression"?
The Wiktionary …read more

This is a follow-up post to my earlier post about technology to help improve the sharing of information among a family. My original post wasn’t about these specific panels from AMX being used as my solution, just that similar functionality could be used in the home. However, what I’ve seen and read about with these AMX controls, I believe they could do most of what I would need from the user-input standpoint.

The problem with the white erase board is that the information is then only available on the white-erase board. I recently developed an application for a client …read more

As my kids get older and my wife and I continue to try and improve our communication and organization around all things family, I’ve been thinking about ways technology can help with the challenge.

I was at a meeting last week in a corporate building that has just recently been finished. Outside of each conference and meeting room is a small touch panel display that was displaying a calendar for the day.
I did a quick search for the manufacturer and found more options that are available from AMX.
After seeing the calendars, and thinking about some current challenges in my own family, …read more

If you’re responsible for the success of a website or two, then you’re probably already familiar with Google Analytics. What you may not have heard about yet is the Trakkboard desktop application that’s now available to help you manage all that Google Analytics data from a stand-alone application.

The Trakkboard application is developed on the Adobe AIR platform and is a quick download and install from the Trakkboard website. The Trakkboard application provides the opportunity to combine data from different websites into a single report, allowing you to see patterns across a group of similar websites perhaps.
For example, you can …read more