Highly Recommended: A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

Mona Simpson's (Steve Jobs' sister) eulogy for here brother, published in The New York Times is beautiful and very moving.

I've been reading the authorized Jobs biography and so far there is a lot about his passion, his ability to drive people to make 'insanely great' products, and his tendency to be rude, harsh, and obnoxious in many situations.

His sister's eulogy tells of a totally different side of the man. The family man, husband, father, and brother side of Jobs. It also talks about his illness and his last days before passing.

Very sad,but beautifully said, and well worth a read: http://nyti.ms/vYZCpy

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http://isource.com/2011/10/31/highly-recommended-a-sisters-eulogy-for-steve-jobs/

Cool Things: Head-to-Head Siri Demo on iPhone 4S and Hacked onto iPhone 4

Two of the leading iOS hackers – @stroughtonsmith and @chpwn – have managed to get Siri, the awesome new intelligent voice assistant, to work on both the iPhone 4 and a 4th gen iPod Touch.

The video demo above – provided by Stroughton-smith to 9to5Mac – shows a head-to-head comparison of Sirin in action on an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 4S. They seem near identical – very impressive, and also very sad to see that this feature could have been brought to the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 (at least) already.

chpwn has made it clear on Twitter that no public release should be expected any time soon, and asked followers not to ask about that.

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http://isource.com/2011/10/30/cool-things-head-to-head-siri-demo-on-iphone-4s-and-hacked-onto-iphone-4/

This Amazing iPad Halloween Magic Will Blow You Away [VIDEO]

This is so far the best thing I've come across on the internet this Halloween. Magician Simon Pierro has created an amazing Halloween edition of his unique iPad magic "blending his special brand of prestidigitation with carefully constructed digital wizardry", as put into words by Mashable. According to the source, he spent 10 weeks putting together this video.

Pierro told Mashable:

"Luckily my iOS programmer Masashi Beheim again joined the project. It took him more than 100 hours of programming this time, being as fanatical about details as I am,"

"I came up with the idea to tell a story about a killer and together with my magic colleague Thomas Fraps we decided to take the clown as the usual suspect."

Go ahead and take a look at his Halloween masterpiece below:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ipadincanada/~3/Ex9AWjnnIv8/

Motorola Mobility to cut 800 jobs

It looks like the first people thy cut was the grounds crew :)

Preliminary iPhone 4S Jailbreak shown off

If you have an iPhone 4S and are wondering when, exactly a Jailbreak may be released — we don't know. But, what we do know is that the iPhone Dev Team is working on it, and they now have a very preliminary iPhone 4S jailbreak up and running as shown off by MuscleNerd.

As noted, there is still a lot of work left to be done before public release and like always, no ETA was given. You can jump past the break to catch one more glimpse of the code in action. Not that you need any more proof but hey — its been provided.

Source: @MuscleNerd

iPad etiquette pro-tips

Rather than table manners, Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz at CNN have written up a not-so-new list of tablet manners — the dos and don'ts when using your iPad in the office, on a date, or around others in public spaces.

And of course, among the droves of somnambulant screen-tappers are a goodly portion who have no manners. The confusion about what constitutes good "tabletiquette" is understandable — they're a weird hybrid between smartphones and laptops, and they're still novel enough that we haven't as a society agreed upon some codes of conduct.

Pro-tips include dealing with stares, clearing porn links from Safari's history before handing your iPad to a client — we've got you covered there — and keeping it in a case when you're out on the town. Of course this is nothing particularly new as we've all had to deal with rude people talking loudly in restaurants, playing videos without headsets in coffee shops, and the turds in movie theaters who think that it's perfectly acceptable to check email in a pitch black room while hundreds of others trying to enjoy a movie.

I digress. Ehrlich and Brartz try to address these with some instruction. I address it by becoming more of a recluse. How about you?

Source: CNN

RIM comes out with Buy 2, Get 1 free BlackBerry PlayBook promo

When RIM came out with the $200 BlackBerry PlayBook price cut we thought that was a good deal. Since then the price has crept back up, but now this offer could be the best one yet. They have put together a "Limited Time Offer" specifically for their business customers – probably to make up for the recent service outage and that PlayBook OS 2.0 won't be out until February 2012 – that when they purchase 2 PlayBooks they'll get a 3rd one free, plus customers will also receive a premium accessory per PlayBook (leather sleeve, charging pod or a High-Speed HDMI).

The promo is on now until December 31st, 2011.

Check it out here at BlackBerry
Via: CrackBerry (Thanks Todd!)

HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions with VMware vSphere Best Practices

This white paper provides detailed information on how to integrate VMware vSphere 5.0 with HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions. VMware vSphere is an industry leading virtualization platform and software cloud infrastructure enabling critical business applications to run with assurance and agility by virtualizing server resources. Complementing this technology, the HP P4000 LeftHand SANs address the storage demands and cost pressures associated with server virtualization, data growth, and business continuity.

P4000 SANs scale capacity and performance linearly without incurring downtime, enabling it to meet the requirements of small pay-as-you-grow customers to the mission-critical applications of an enterprise. This document presents configuration guidelines, best practices and answers to frequently asked questions that will help you accelerate a successful deployment of VMware vSphere 5.0 on HP P4000 SAN Solutions.

HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions with VMware vSphere Best Practices

Juan's HP resources for VMware - http://jreypo.wordpress.com/hp-resources-for-vmware/ 

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/6r9NFTvCntI/1896-HP-P4000-LeftHand-SAN-Solutions-with-VMware-vSphere-Best-Practices.html

Microsoft Office team shares vision of the future

The Microsoft Office team has put out a video showing a vision of the future where edge-to-edge, interactive, multitouch and gesture-based panels are everywhere. We've seen things like this before in movies like Minority Report and Iron Man, and even ye old Bill Gates CES Keynotes of yore. Apple would never produce a video like this — they want to surprise us with "magical" technology shipping in weeks and month. That's why it's great we have more players in the market than just Apple. You have to make the future, you can't dream it. But you can help inform and inspire it.

Now all that remains to be seen is whether most of those screens end up having Apple, Microsoft, or Google logos on the back of them…

Source: OfficeVideos via WinRumors via @stroughtonsmith

Get drastic: 15 IT best practices to kill

Takeaway: Gartner analyst Ken McGee has a radical assessment of IT and what CIOs need to do about. Read his principles of the “new CIO manifesto.”

The traditional IT department has entered a period of massive transformation and CIOs are having to completely rethink the way they lead, strategize, and manage their careers. That was the message from Gartner analyst Ken McGee at arguably the boldest and most honest session at Gartner Symposium 2011.

McGee told the convocation of CIOs that it’s time for drastic action and they need to stop doing a lot of the things that are traditional mainstays of IT strategy, and it needs to happen as soon as possible. He said that if you want to use IT to create value in your company as well as develop valuable experience for your career then you need to embrace “creative destruction.”

The idea is that you create something new and don’t worry about the fact that it will kill something old in the process. That’s a natural part of transformation, in this line of thinking. McGee said CIOs should be guided by a “new CIO manifesto” in driving these changes and he gave four principles of this new manifesto, which I’ve listed below.

McGee then listed 16 IT best practices that IT leaders should eliminate as soon as possible. The list below has 15 items because McGee had No. 4 as a two-parter (business apps + technical infrastructure). I simply left it as a single item.

Photo credit: Jason Hiner | TechRepublic

“New CIO manifesto”

1. Information is just as important, if not more important than information technology.
2. More than 50% of annual CIO project spending will be directed toward measurably improving the financial conditions of an enterprise.
3. More than 50% of all enterprise information and IT spending will directly support revenue generating rather than expense related business processes.
4. The incentive portion of CIO compensation will be derived from the amount of money created by the efforts of CIOs and their staffs.

IT practices to eliminate

1. Reject annual mismatch between CEO priorities and IT’s most funded projects
2. Terminate support of projects that will not improve the income statement
3. Abandon CIO priorities that do not directly support CEO priorities
4. Stop recommending IT mega projects
5. Abolish environment of little or no IT spending accountability
6. Terminate existing applications that do not yield measurable business value
7. End the practice of placing enterprise IT spending within the CIO’s budget
8. Eliminate IT-caused business model disruption “surprises”
9. Eradicate “cloud-a-phobia”
10. Abandon level 1, 2, and 3 tech support
11. Cancel most IT chargeback systems
12. Cease issuing most competitive bids
13. Stop holding on to unfunded projects
14. End discrimination against behavioral skills and social sciences
15. Abandon IT’s unbalanced support between front and back office

Sanity check

You’ve got to like Ken McGee’s boldness here, because it is absolutely warranted. IT is facing rising responsibilities with stagnant budgets and it simply can’t go on doing things the way it has in the past. It’s completely unsustainable. IT has to stop thinking of itself as a business utility and start seeing itself as a business catalyst. In order to do that, it’s going to have to think in business terms and economic impact for everything it does, from asking for a replacement router in a branch office to recommending a new cloud app to run customer service. That’s ultimately what McGee is getting at, and while the idea has received lip service for years, it’s time to use that principle to make some painful decisions that will reshape IT.

By Jason Hiner | October 25, 2011, 2:16 PM PDT | http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/get-drastic-15-it-best-practices-to-kill/9603?tag=mantle_skin;content

 

 

5 Things They Don't Tell You About IT Jobs in School (Duh!?!?!)

We have all heard someone say “If I only knew then what I know now.” I found myself saying that after I got my first IT job. In school you learn about all the technical aspects of IT but rarely do you learn anything about what your job experiences will be like, or how to troubleshoot a problem.

Here are 5 things they don’t tell you about IT jobs in school.

1. School work is just scratching the surface

You can read every book in a library, or on the internet, but nothing replaces on-the-job experience. The books tell you how things are supposed to work in a perfect world, but you have a job because it’s not a perfect world. It takes getting that first job (and fumbling through the first few months) before you really start grasping all of the knowledge you learned in class.

It’s good to start small and work your way up if you are just breaking into your IT career unless you are a natural genius. What you learn in school is just scratching the surface of IT. Once you experience different scenarios and start troubleshooting issues, your level of understanding will start increasing rapidly.

2. The biggest challenge will be your users

Users are crazy and they do crazy, unthinkable things to their computers, but this is why you have a job in the first place. Don’t be upset when a user has a problem; instead use it as a learning experience and think about their experience with you. Think about the way you feel when you call HP or Dell for technical support. Think about all the things you don’t like about working with other technical support people and make sure you don’t do those things.

The most challenging part of your new IT job will be helping the users. Yes, some of the issues they call you for might seem easy to you, but the users might not be as well trained as you are. Use customer service as part of your approach as described by fellow TrainSignal author R. Louis Costley III in his article on why customer service is import in the IT industry. This is a great article and a great approach to IT.

I had the experience of working in a retail store for seven years and customer service was everything. I also found myself grading the customer service at other stores I shopped at. If you help someone have a good experience they are usually grateful of your efforts.

3. Your first job out of school won’t be your dream job

Usually we shoot for the moon and aim for the stars when it comes to the game of life, but you might not want to abide by this rule when it comes to your first IT job. If you are naturally talented then you can get any job you wish, but if you are a mortal like the rest of us, it’s good to start with a basic job that you can grow into.

A job at a small company that needs a junior network admin is a great first job. This way you can follow your network admin around and watch what he or she does on a day to day basis. Another great first job would be a help desk job taking calls and being part of the first response team. Then you can work your way into another more demanding and challenging job as you get more comfortable with your understanding of IT.

Getting a job as a network administrator right out of school might be a little too much to handle right off the bat. Starting with a basic job also gets you the critical experience to put on your resume that all employers are looking for.

4. What to expect at work

Your schooling most likely won’t tell you what to expect at work from day to day or what your daily duties will consist of. It mostly depends on the type of job you get, the type of business, and the network environment.

If you are looking to be a network admin, your daily tasks are going to be fairly similar from day to day. Some days you will get to work and have a list of fires to put out and other days will be fairly uneventful. If your servers are up and running you will likely be putting out fires with different users like resetting passwords or troubleshooting their workstation.

Other than putting out little fires, projects are a big part of a network admin’s job. Technology advances extremely fast and upgrades are almost inevitable, so you will be doing many projects to implement this new technology. Checking your backups, anti-virus, and making sure your servers are running healthy is also going to part of your daily tasks as a network admin.

5. Repetition is an IT pro’s best friend

The other big thing they don’t tell you in school is that your job in IT might be fairly repetitive. When things go haywire it is anything but repetitive, but your daily tasks are typically going to be repetitive. If you do end up with a very repetitive job and you have some downtime at work, try to learn something new every day. Study for certifications, keep up with the latest technology articles, test some beta software that could benefit your company, and keep yourself busy and interested.

This way when your boss comes to you and asks about a new technology, you can answer his or her questions with confidence. If you get too buried in your work and don’t keep up with things you can fall behind quickly so try to learn something new every day even if your job is monotonous.

Are you ready?

So do you think you are prepared for your first job in IT?

Hopefully this can shed some light on the life of an IT professional and help you make a good first job decision. School is going to give you all the ground work and foundation you will need to succeed but it’s up to you to put what you learned into action.

It might take you a couple of months on the job before you start getting your arms around all the information you learned in school. If you’re already working in IT, what are some of the other things they didn’t tell you about IT?

By Eric English | October 21, 2011 | http://www.trainsignal.com/blog/career-tips-for-it-student

 

The ongoing transformation of IT in Manitoba

GTEC 2011 VIDEO REPORT John Clarkson, deputy minister of science, technology, energy and mines, explains how the public service must change the way it sees itself, and the CIO of eHealth Manitoba describes the province's eChart initiative

OTTAWA -- The public service has to change the way it views government, according to the man overseeing Manitoba's ongoing IT transformation.

“The citizen looks at government differently than we do,.” said John Clarkson, deputy minister of science, technology, energy and mines, speaking at the GTEC public sector technology conference here on Wednesday.

“They don't care who we are, where we are, what government we are. They just want the service.”

Rather than functioning as 20 or 25 siloed entities, “we have to have a single corporate view of who we are.”

http://video.itworldcanada.com/?bcpid=7044989001&bctid=1229442885001

Manitoba is GTEC 2011's showcase province. Since the late 1990s, when Manitoba was retooling in response to the Y2K threat, Manitoba's IT infrastructure has been focused on centralized corporate service for all of government. A comprehensive desktop program, the rollout of an enterprise resource management system and a centralized networks were the first building blocks in the transformation.

“These … gave us the capacities to look at things differently,” Clarkson said. The province doesn't simply use its ERP system from SAP AG for internal operations, but also builds customer-facing applications on the system. Access Manitoba, for example, began with an apprencticeship program built on SAP. That's been extended to business and social assistance programs.

The centralized network is also extended to public applications. “Those types of infrastructure don't need to be repeated,” Clarkson said.

 

By: Dave Webb On: 21 Oct 2011 For: CIO Canada

How Canadian CIOs should practice best practices

Sure, most technology executives have heard of ITIL, but too many dismiss it as more theoretical than practical. Our columnist delves deeper into the IT Infrastructure Library's real value

We’re all familiar with best practices in IT: change management, incident tracking, a single-point-of-contact for users among many. We know using best practices is good IT management. Most CIOs have heard of ITIL best practices, but few of us have taken the time to become familiar with what ITIL is and how it could help us manage IT better.

Glancing out the window as you’re settling into your seat after boarding your flight, you see the pilot doing a walk around the airplane as a part of the pre-flight checklist. Pilots are professionals and know what needs to be checked but still rely on a physical checklist (some now on tablets) to be sure that nothing gets overlooked. This is a classic case of a process to ensure that the obvious is NOT taken for granted, something that if not done can easily lead to service issues in any complex system, whether an airplane or IT service delivery systems.

The pre-flight walk around is evidence that the process is both established and embedded into the workflow. No pilot would attempt to take-off until satisfied that everything is ready to go. We do the same in IT through processes that ensure daily backups are done, checked and stored off-site, so why talk about ITIL? What about other IT processes? Is there a master checklist of everything you do, and if so, are these activities embedded into your staff behaviour or are they sitting in dusty binders or in a rarely accessed part of SharePoint to be referenced only if questioned or during the annual budget negotiations?

ITIL is a series of best practices documents – library - which initially collected the folkways for successfully managing IT services as IT grew from a small ancillary part of accounting into its current pervasive utility throughout the organizational structure. Best practices deal with “what’s” – things that need to be examined, considered, and as appropriate, developed into operational processes. Yet most of IT is focused on the “how’s.” Of course back-ups are needed; what’s the most effective procedure?

Because ITIL isn’t prescriptive, it’s been dismissed as good theory: I don’t have the time to look at it, my hands are full just serving my users and fire fighting. And besides, if ITIL’s author is government, just how useful could it be? As a result, too few IT leaders know what best practices are contained in the ITIL libraries and how these could be applied to their service management challenges, missing opportunities to improve IT’s business value and alignment to the organization. In this, we all, as an industry, lose as the perception lingers that IT is an expensive overhead rather than a critical business enabler.

Applying best practices is learning from others’ mistakes instead of having to make those mistakes yourself. Using someone else’s experience is a lot better and cheaper than your own. But best practices don’t stop there. The overall premise and promise of ITIL is a comprehensive view of the best practices for effectively managing IT service to provide business value across the full systems’ lifecycle. Given that CIO Canada and every other IT management publication, seminar, and book is focused on alignment with the business and IT as a business enabler, best practices are an important leadership tool to review, measure, and calibrate how well IT is working. Having a well thought out and widely used checklist of what those practices are allows IT leaders to focus on how their organization is working and where improvement is needed.

This doesn’t mean that you pick up the ITIL library and start blindly following it. As with the pilot’s pre-flight walk around, the checklist needs to be tailored to your business’ needs. With the business paying for IT services, IT can’t assume it knows best about what provides business value. Responding to a user request with “it’s not in the service catalog” isn’t a best practice and doesn’t ensure the CIO’s job security. Frivolous requests will occur, but it’s the business unit’s job to manage its operations effectively and define to IT what services it needs to do its job. IT’s challenges are in balancing providing service at a reasonable cost to deliver that value with all of the other conflicting demands from other parts of the business.

One set of best practices frequently neglected is continuous service improvement (CSI). Too often this is partly implemented, focusing on improving delivery of existing services, especially on reducing costs. What’s missed is that IT services have to be competitive - function, technology used, cost - in the marketplace, and deliver the business value needed today and tomorrow - which is not what it was yesterday.

And there are things in ITIL which you may not agree with. I can’t accept expressing service levels as ‘targets.’ Conventional wisdom for an IT manager is to avoid firm guarantees or if forced, water it down so it can’t come back to haunt. One large in-house provider had service level ‘targets’ of 85% - that’s about 2 months of downtime per year for delivery of basic IT services! Their internal bill-back rates were ‘competitive’ with external providers, but overlooked their 98%+ committed levels with penalties for non-performance. That’s not business value. Service levels have to be reasonable for the business to operate and for IT to deliver. ‘Target’ gives permission to fail: we’re sorry that the service was down, but we tried our best. As Yoda would say: “do or do not; there is no try.”

The best practice I’d like to see us all adopt is to do a pre-flight ITIL checklist review as the first step in the annual update of the IT strategic plan to make sure that we’re ready to fly.

By: George Gorsline On: 19 Oct 2011 For: CIO Canada

Video - vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator automatically discovers application services, visualizes relationships and maps dependencies of applications on virtualized compute, storage and network resources. It's a component of the vCenter Operations Management Suite. vCenter Infrastructure Navigator enables application-aware management of infrastructure and operations to better understand the impact of change, provide more complete disaster recovery protection and minimize downtime.

• Automatically discover and keep up-to-date the names and version numbers of application components and services


• Visualize application relationships, communication paths and backend connections at the infrastructure, guest OS and application level


• Map dependencies of application components on the underlying virtual infrastructure to understand the impact of change and build disaster recovery plans with confidence.

 The voice over of this video is done by Ben Scheerer, follow him on Titter via @benscheerer

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/H0jQVidctYc/1893-Video-vCenter-Infrastructure-Navigator.html

Sent with MobileRSS for iPhone

Apple Begins “Project Dolphin Solar Farm” To Power Its Massive iDataCenter

Apple has started working on a solar farm adjacent to its massive new data center in North Carolina, according to a report by The Charlotte Observer (via Gigaom). Dubbed as Project Dolphin Solar Farm, the solar project will be built on 171 acres of land across the street from Apple's planned $1 billion data center. It was previously codenamed Project Dolphin but is now being calle iDataCenter which will also partly serve the iCloud. The new solar farm will likely generate a significant amount of power for the facility, although the local officials have not yet seen any building plans for the new facility.

Citing from the source:

Apple has quietly begun work on a solar farm that apparently could help power its sprawling data center in southern Catawba County.

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.

North Carolina has one of the dirtiest electrical grids in the country, with 61 percent of the power coming from coal, and 31 percent from nuclear. It also has some of the cheapest power, which is likely why Apple decided to build its data center there.

There are are no specific details as to who exactly will be building the solar farm. However, it has become very important for Apple and many other companies to build data centers with clean energy, something which Google is already doing.

Apple Begins "Project Dolphin Solar Farm" To Power Its Massive iDataCenter is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog - Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

Gartner's Top 10 tech trends for 2012

The technology that makes up many of the systems today is at a critical juncture and in the next five years everything from mobile devices and applications to servers and social networking will impact IT in ways companies need to prepare for now, Gartner Vice President David Cearley says.

For example, enterprises will need to invest capital to improve network capacity and reliability. They will also need to improve wireless governance to improve wireless manageability and service levels, Cearley told attendees of the Gartner Symposium IT/Expo this week. At the annual presentation of Gartner's popular Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends presentation, Cearley offered the following as examples of the way the tech world is changing:

• 30 billion pieces of content were added to Facebook this past month.

• Worldwide IP traffic will quadruple by 2015.

• More than two billion videos were watched on YouTube ... yesterday.

• The average teenager sends 4,762 text messages per month.

• 32 billion searches were performed last month ... on Twitter.

So what issues need to be on IT's radar screen for 2012? Here's a look at the Top 10 Tech Trends and the implications of those issues, according to Gartner:

1. Media tablets and beyond: Bring-your-own-technology at work has become the norm, not the exception. With that come security and management challenges that IT needs to address. By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50% of laptop shipments and Windows 8 will likely be in third place behind Android and Apple. The net result is that Microsoft's share of the client platform, be it PC, tablet or smartphone, will likely be reduced to 60% and it could fall below 50%, Cearley says. The implication for IT is that the era of PC dominance with Windows as the single platform will be replaced with a post-PC era where Windows is one of a variety of environments IT will need to support. In the smartphone arena, prices will fall to $75 for entry-level devices in 2012 with faster two- and four-core processors, and with bigger, brighter, higher-resolution screens, plus 3D, HD video and more sensors such as gyros, compasses and barometers driving greater features into high-end devices. While iOS dominates the tablet market today, Gartner says it expects iOS/Android will dominate the market with 80% of tablets shipped by 2015.

2. Mobile-centric applications and interfaces: Here touch, gesture and voice search is going to change the way mobile apps work in the future, Cearley says. By 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year. By 2014, at least half of the tools optimized for app store application development in 2010 will have been acquired or will have ceased to exist.

3. Social and contextual user experience: According to Gartner, context-aware computing uses information about an end user's or object's environment, activities connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end user or object. A contextually aware system anticipates the user's needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service. The tipping point here could be technology such as near-field communications getting into more and more devices. Some interesting facts here: By 2015, 40% of the world's smartphone users will opt in to context service providers that track their activities with Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Apple continuously tracking daily journeys and digital habits for 10% of the world population by 2015, Cearley says.

4. Application stores and marketplace: The key here is the rise of enterprise application stores that can develop specific apps for users. This will let IT manage and control certain apps. But embracing the idea of user choice might be a difficult concept for enterprise IT to embrace, Cearley says. Enterprises should use a managed diversity approach to focus app store efforts and segment apps by risk and value. Where the business value of an app is low and the potential risk, such as the loss of sensitive data, is high, apps might be blocked entirely.

5. The Internet of everything: The idea here is that we are building on pervasive computing where cameras, sensors, microphones, image recognition -- everything -- is now part of the environment. Remote sensing of everything from electricity to air conditioning use is now part of the network. In addition, increasingly intelligent devices create issues such as privacy concerns. Eventually IT will need some central unified management of all these devices, Cearley says.

6. Next-generation analytics: Most enterprises have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs where Cearley says they can afford to perform analytics and simulation for every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhere. Going forward, IT can focus on developing analytics that enable and track collaborative decision making.

7. Big data: Big data has quickly emerged as a significant challenge for IT leaders. The term only became popular in 2009. By February 2011, a Google search on "big data" yielded 2.9 million hits, and vendors now advertise their products as solutions to the big data challenge. The key thing enterprises have to realize is that they just can't store it all. There are new techniques to handle extreme data, such as Apache Hadoop, but companies will have to develop new skills to effectively use these technologies, Cearley says.

8. In-memory computing: We will see huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment devices, equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, flash offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages -- space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them. Unlike RAM, the main memory in servers and PCs, flash memory is persistent even when power is removed. In that way, it looks more like disk drives where we place information that must survive power-downs and reboots, yet it has much of the speed of memory, far faster than a disk drive. As lower-cost -- and lower-quality -- flash is used in the data center, software that can optimize the use of flash and minimize the endurance cycles becomes critical. Users and IT providers should look at in-memory computing as a long-term technology trend that could have a disruptive impact comparable to that of cloud computing, Cearley says.

9. Extreme low-energy servers: What if you could turn 10 virtual machines in one box into 40 slow physical servers that are tiny and use very low amounts of energy? There is a call for this type of computing to handle big data. For example, thousands of these little processors could work on a Hadoop process, Cearley says. Gartner says that 10%-15% of enterprise workloads are good for this. Moving the application from 10 images to 40 slower, less capable machines will only deliver on that promise if the software will perform the same. Server technologies are going to change to handle big data.

10. Cloud computing: This topic went from No. 1 last year to No. 10 this year, but it's still an important trend. It will become the next-generation battleground for the likes of Google and Amazon. Going forward, enterprise IT will be concerned with developing hybrid private/public cloud apps, improving security and governance, Cearley says.

 

By: Michael Cooney On: 20 Oct 2011 For: Network World (U.S.)

A Photographic Evidence Of How Much iPhone 4S Camera Has Improved [PHOTOS]

Over the past few years, one area that has been steadily improving in smartphones in the mobile camera technology. Back in 2007 when the original iPhone was launched, it was fitted with a camera which could barely shoot any decent shots with less megapixels, no auto-focus and no flash. Many people quoted it as "a joke" since many smartphones from market leaders of that era, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, had way better camera specs. Since then, Apple has been spec-boosting iPhone's camera and today, iPhone 4S comes with an 8-megapixel shooter capable of 1080p video recording at 30fps. Not only this, it also sports a five-component lens that is much more sensitive to light than all its predecessors.

Photographer Lisa Bettany has an interesting post (via PetaPixel) over at Camera+ comparing the iPhone 4S camera to the previous iPhone models and a couple other cameras as well. It's an interesting look at how much iPhone 4S camera has improved since the original iPhone.

Check out the full resolution photos here for a much better idea.

SIRI's favorite answers today

Not sure if the SIRI servers were down today (or rogers was having issues) but it seemed like these were the only things she could say today.

Upcoming VMUG Webcasts Presented by VMware, HP and Symantec

	Register Today for the Upcoming VMUG Webcasts Take advantage of the networking and educational opportunities included in your VMUG membership. Register today to join us for these upcoming webcasts. Please note: You will need to log into the VMUG web site to register for these webcasts. If you have not already obtained your VMUG login credentials, please visit the Username and/or Password Help page to request your username and password. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Understanding How to Take Advantage of vSphere 5 Storage Features Presented by: Eric Siebert, WW Solutions Marketing Manager, HP Storage Division, Hewlett-Packard Co. Thursday, October 27, 2011 To register for each session please click on the time links below. 12:00 p.m. CDT (-05:00 GMT) 6:00 p.m. CDT (-5:00 GMT) The release of vSphere 5 provides many exciting new features and enhancements that are related to storage. With storage being a key resource in a virtual environment achieving a high level of integration and efficiency between the hypervisor and storage resources is very important. vSphere 5 provides better integration, management and control of storage resources to help increase efficiency and performance. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Tier 1 Applications Presented by: Cale Fogel, Senior Technical Support Engineer, VMware Tuesday, November 1, 2011 To register for each session please click on the time links below. 12:00 p.m. CDT (-05:00 GMT) 6:00 p.m. CDT (-05:00 GMT) This presentation focuses on how to virtualize Tier 1 Applications as well as configuration and customization techniques to getting Tier 1 Applications to run as close to physical or, in some cases, better than physical (MS Exchange). _____________________________________________________________________________________ No Compromises: Virtualization Security Presented by: Todd Zambrovitz, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Symantec Wednesday, November 9, 2011 12:00 p.m. CST (GMT -5:00) Most organizations have successfully pursued virtualization across non-critical data, applications and infrastructure.  While virtualization can provide some level of consolidated control over user environments, the unknown risks due to the fluid and mobile nature of virtual deployments has many organizations proceeding cautiously in extending virtualization to more mission critical operations. This webcast will introduce new innovations from Symantec that can help you confidently extend your virtualization strategy to vital infrastructure and services with mission critical protection and performance achieving a seamless experience for both administrators and users alike. _____________________________________________________________________________________ More Upcoming Webcasts Visit the VMUG Webcast page to register and learn more about our upcoming webcast. Delivering ITaaS Today with VMware Technology: Delivering User Centric Client Virtualization as a Service to Your End Users Backup in a SNAP:  Modern Data Protection for VMware Deployments vCenter Operations – What's New, What's Cool?

Hacker group Anonymous now targeting child porn sites

Anonymous, the "hacktivist" group that waged war on the U.S. government and large companies such as Apple, has shifted its focus from cracking corporations to fighting online pedophilia. The group is now targeting web host Freedom Hosting and is accusing it of knowingly hosting child pornography. "The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death," Anonymous said in a statement. "Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target." Read on for the full statement against online child pornography from Anonymous. 

1. #OpDarknet Press Release – 10/15/2011
2. ————————
3.    Timeline of Events
4. ————————
5. At apprx 8:30 CST while browsing the Hidden Wiki we noticed a section called Hard Candy which was dedicated to links to child pornography. We then removed all links on the website, within 5 minutes the links were edited back in by an admin. For this reason, we will continue to make the Hidden Wiki unavailable.
6. –
7. At apprx 8:45 CST we noticed 95% of the child pornography listed on the Hidden Wiki shared a digital fingerprint with the shared hosting server at Freedom Hosting.
8. –
9. At apprx 9:00pm CST on October 14, 2011 We identified Freedom Hosting as the host of the largest collection of child pornography on the internet. We then issued a warning to remove the illegal content from their server, which they refused to do.
10. –
11. At apprx 11:30pm CST on October 14, 2011 We infiltrated the shared hosting server of Freedom Hosting and shutdown services to all clients due to their lack of action to remove child pornography from their server.
12. –
13. At apprx 5:00pm CST on October 15, 2011 Freedom Hosting installed their backups and restored services to their child pornography clients. We then issued multiple warnings to remove all child pornography from their servers, which Freedom Hosting refused to do.
14. –
15. At apprx 8:00pm CST on October 15, 2011 despite new security features, we once again infiltrated the shared hosting server at Freedom Hosting and stopped service to all clients.
16. –
17. ————————
18.      Our Statement
19. ————————
20. The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death.
21. For this, Freedom Hosting has been declared #OpDarknet Enemy Number One.
22. By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100GB of child pornography.
23. We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting's server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography.
24. ————————
25.       Our Demands
26. ————————
27. Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target.
28. ————————
29.      Images & Misc
30. ————————
31. Dead Server Screenshot: http://i55.tinypic.com/vy9w7k.jpg
32. –
33. Freedom Host PR Screenshot: http://i53.tinypic.com/o5qlip.jpg
34. –
35. Our Manifesto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFuJp_zPIlU
36. –
37.   #Antisec | #Anonymous | #FreeTopiary | #AnonOps | #FreeAnons | #OccupyWallSteet | #OWS
38. We are Anonymous.
39. We are Legion.
40. We do not forgive.
41. We do not forget.
42. Expect us.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheBoyGeniusReport/~3/TTq9y-yqfZU/

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@NHLJets, Mark Scheifele to Barrie Colts

Winnipeg Jets (@NHLJets) 10/23/11 12:57 PM Winnipeg Jets have re-assigned Mark Scheifele to the Barrie Colts of the OHL. bit.ly/mPPh1D

Thanks Mark, best of luck in Barrie, we'll see you next season :)

How to fix battery life problems with iOS 5 or iPhone 4S

Mikes note: if you really want to save battery life, just DON'T USE YOUR PHONE :). Come on people, stop complaining and playing with SIRI, the battery isn't that bad.

According to our polls, quite a lot of you say your battery life taken a hit with iOS 5, or that your new iPhone 4S battery life simply isn't up to snuff. Anytime a new software version is released or a new devices comes to market, it seems battery life becomes an issue. Luckily, that also means we're getting better at troubleshooting it! Here are some things you can try to make sure your iOS 5 or iPhone 4S battery is lasting as long as it should, and some tweaks you can make to get it to last as long as possible.

First: Assess your usage!

Okay, this sounds funny, but make sure you're not just using your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch more than you used to. Any time we get a new version of iOS, or a new device our tendency is to never put it down. Now, with location based Reminders, Siri, and other power hungry features, we might simply be using our device more than we have in a while.

Before you do any drastic battery life fixes, put your device down and see how fast the battery really is draining.

Fixing Battery Life

If, in general, your battery life is consistently short and you're basically just watching the indicator drain down before your eyes, here are some things to try, in order of how easy they are to do.

• Restart/reset your device. If you haven't rebooted in a while, give it a try. There could be a rogue process or something else doing what it shouldn't be doing, and a restart can often fix that. (Here's how to reboot](http://www.tipb.com/2010/12/17/beginner-tip-power-reset-ios-device-hit-problem/))
• Power cycle. About once a month, and certainly if you're having problems, you should completely drain your iPhone or iPad's battery — drain it until it shuts down on its own — and then charge it back up to full.
• Restore your device as new. The single biggest cause of battery life problems with iOS 5 occurs when they are restored from backup and not set up as new devices. Whether it's cruft or corruption, a clean install as a new device — incredible pain in the butt though it may be — is usually the best fix for any battery life issues. This is the nuclear option. You will have to set up absolutely everything again, and you will lose all your saved data like game levels, but in most cases your battery life will be better than ever. (Here's how]
• Go to the Apple Store. Sometimes you do get a lemon, or your iPhone or iPad develops a real problem that only Apple can solve by either swapping it for another device or otherwise figuring out a fix.

Saving battery life

Anything running on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad uses up the battery, so we're going to go into the Settings app and turn some things down, and turn others off altogether. The more you turn off, the longer your batter will last — but of course the less you'll be able to do. It's a balancing act but one that can help you squeeze out a little extra juice when you really need it.

• Turn off Siri's Raise to Speak. Go to Settings, General, Siri. Readers keep telling us this has helped them with battery life due to accelerometer issues.
• Turn of Ping. Go to Settings, General, Restrictions, (Enable Restrictions). Again, readers say this prevents undue push. And who uses Ping anyway?
• Turn off Location Services. Go to Settings, Location Services, and turn off any app you really don't need tracking or using your location.
• Turn off Push Notifications. Likewise, go to Settings, Notifications, and turn off any app you don't care to be alerted about.
• Kill power hungry apps. Double-click the Home Button to activate the multitasking dock, hold your finger on an app to enter "jiggly" mode, and kill any apps that might be running in the background, especially VoIP (like Skype), streaming audio (like Pandora), or navigation (like TomTom). (Here's how)

Here are some old standbys as well:

• Set Auto-Lock to 1 minute
• Turn off any extra sounds, like keyboard clicks
• Turn off the iPod EQ
• Use headphones instead of the speaker if you have to listen to audio or music
• Turn down the screen brightness
• Turn off Bluetooth when not using it
• Turn off Wi-Fi when not using it
• Turn off 3G when not using it (Not possible on iPhone 4S)
• Set all email, calendar, and contacts accounts to "Fetch" (turn off Push)

Bonus tip: If you're really desperate, put your iPhone in Airplane Mode and save the radios for when you need them. If you're really desperate, you can also turn your iPhone completely off until you need it (it will still use a tiny amount of power but far, far less than anything else).

Plug in your device

Like our friend Phil Nickinson from Android Central always says, don't be ashamed to plug in your device. If you're using your iPhone or iPad a lot, plug it in to recharge whenever you can. At home, at work, in the car, there are plenty of opportunities to top up your battery.

More help

• iPhone 4S Forum battery troubleshooting thread
• iOS 5 Forum help

So how did these tips work out for you? Give us your feedback, and any other tips for saving iOS 5 or iPhone 4S battery life you might have, in the comments! If anything has worked especially well for you, we'll add it to the list!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/B_z1OmjScz4/

Go Jets Go!!!! - Oct 22, 2011

P1, its like I'm in the game :)

Siri will pour you an ice cold beer with Beeri

The folks over at Red Pepper Land came up with an ingenious way to get Siri to pour you a cold glass of beer, completely hands free, using Twitter, an Arduino controller and an R/C toy car. They call it Beeri, and I want it..

When Beeri sees a new Tweet containing the word "pour" she triggers the sequence of preprogrammed pour commands (go, stop, adjust) that interface with the truck's circuit board to control her movement. Her route is preprogrammed (drive straight) until her two proximity detectors sense her moving away from the puncture wall after impact. This allows her to halt the driving sequence and adjust to a 6 inch depth in order to get the beer to enter the funnel. With a clean pint glass underneath to collect the liquid gold, the only thing left to do is enjoy your tasty beverage.

Hey, no one promised you the cool new future wouldn't be a little messy, right?

Source: Red Pepper Land

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/232btlrzt4U/

Spectaculair Opening Video VMworld 2011

This video was shown right before the Tuesday afternoon keynote at the VMworld 2011 in Copenhagen. I was searching for a few words to describe what I was feeling when I saw the opening video but I couldn't find a good catch. Just take a look at the impression I shoot and believe me when you were one of the attendees at this keynote you could hear a lot of wow's left and right.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/PNVzW1jLTgw/1889-Spectaculair-Opening-Video-VMworld-2011.html

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Sent from my iPhone 4S

iPad 2 Vulnerable To Siri-Like Passcode Bypass

 

9 to 5 Mac is reporting that a vulnerability exists that allows anyone with a Smart Cover to bypass the passcode lock on an iPad 2 with iOS 5 and possibly with versions as old as iOS 4.3.   iSource has verified that the problem does indeed exist.

The hack works like this:

• Take a locked, passcode-protected iPad, and wake it up, but do not enter a passcode
• Hold the power button until the "Swipe to turn off" button appears.
• Close the Smart Cover (or use a magnet)
• Open the Smart Cover
• Hit "Cancel" at the bottom of the screen (to cancel the shutdown)

You will be left at whatever screen the iPad was on when it was locked.  And there's the problem; if it was the mail app, the attacker can use the mail app just as the owner would.   Ditto for any other app.   If it's left on the home screen, the attacker can browse through the installed applications, but cannot launch any of them.

At this time, pending whatever fix Apple might introduce to fix this bug, you have two workarounds:

1. Disable the option to unlock the iPad with the Smart Cover in Settings
2. Always go to the Home Screen before you put down/lock your iPad

Option number 2, of course, assumes that you don't care if anyone sees what apps you have installed.  You don't, right?

http://isource.com/2011/10/20/ipad-2-vulnerable-to-siri-like-passcode-bypass/

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@ManitobaVMUG, 10/20/11 10:43 AM

Manitoba VMUG (@ManitobaVMUG) 10/20/11 10:43 AM New Free Tool - vScope Explorer by VKernel: vScope Explorer is a free tool from VKernel that analyzes and visual... bit.ly/pa3T0I

Upcoming Jailbreak Tweak: IntelliScreenX For iOS 5 [Cydia]

Mikes note: oh how I miss jail break with the info on my lock screen :)

A cool upcoming jailbreak tweak from Intelliborn called IntelliScreenX promises to bring Notification Center alerts and widgets right on to your iPhone's Lock Screen. The tweak will require iOS 5 to function and will allow users to access system toggles, read full emails in Notification Center, view upcoming calendar events as well as view and post to Twitter and Facebook. According to FSM, there will be a beta version releasing sometime this week with full version to follow as soon as next week.

IntelliScreen is available for $9.99 in Cydia, and IntelliScreenX will likely cost the same. The source claims anyone who bought IntelliScreen and wants to upgrade to IntelliScreenX can pay an upgrade fee of $7.99. Also, if you bought IntelliScreen in the past 30 days, it will be a free upgrade.

We'll definitely update you once it's available for download in Cydia. In the meantime, take a look at the following teaser video:

[Thanks to Ken for the tip!]

Upcoming Jailbreak Tweak: IntelliScreenX For iOS 5 [Cydia] is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog - Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

Related posts:

1. Ryan Petrich Introduces TweakWeek: A Free Tweak a Day for a Week [Cydia]
2. OpenNotifier: Notification System for iPhone Status Bar [Cydia]
3. SBSettings Beta For iOS 5 Is Ready For Download [Cydia]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/iphoneincanada/~3/v05alVt8Zpg/

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Sent from SIRI on iPhone 4S