Currently I have a laptop, an iPhone, an iPad, a desktop at home, and a desktop at the office.  I  have a number of documents, notes, etc that I want to keep synchronized among all those different devices.  For example if I am in a meeting with a client and want to take notes, I will often times take them using the iPad, however once I take those notes I do not want to have to recreate them on the office computer, or on my laptop.  Recently I came across a wonderful application that takes care of that issue and makes syncing the notes as easy as typing them up.

Enter the elephant in the gadgets – Evernote (http://www.evernote.com).  This service which has different levels starting at FREE is a great resource to sync your notes across a multitude of devices.  Their website says that they have applications of their service for the:

Mobile Devices:
* iPhone/iPod Touch
* iPad
* Android
* Blackberry
* Palm Pre
* Windows Mobile

Computers:
* Windows
* Mac
* Web based (for linux or other operating systems)

To learn more about it you can check it out for free at http://www.evernote.com

If so you should check out PdaNet by June Fabrics.  This software installs a program on your computer that is compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7 both 32bit and 64bit versions as well as a version for Mac OS 10.5/10.6.  This software installs a driver for your mobile device, and then puts a program on your phone to link the two together.

There are versions for the iPhone, Android based phones, Blackberry’s, Windows Mobile, and Palm based phones.

The program allows for tethering of the phones through either Bluetooth pairing, or a hardwired usb connection.

I have installed the PdaNet for Android onto my phone and laptop and tested it a little bit and so far seems to work very well and is very easy to install, configure, and get connected to the internet.

Hope this little tech tip is helpful.  To learn more check out June Fabrics website  – http://www.junefabrics.com/index.php

Enjoy!

We apologize if there was ever any confusion there but that is not a service we can or do provide.

Now the Droid natively syncs with Google (duh!) and with Microsoft Exchange over the air. My biggest concern that I had regarding the Droid was whether or not I would be able to sync the calendar and contacts on the phone with the calendar and contacts on the server.

After doing some searching came across a program called CompainionLink that syncs GroupWise with Google. Once you have the data synced between GroupWise and Google the Droid will automatically sync between itself in Google. The nice thing is that the whole process is automated so in a way it is like having Exchange Activesync or a BES in that it does all this over the air so you don’t have to connect your Droid to the computer to sync like you would with a Blackberry.

Yay problem solved.

Here is a link to the article.

http://www2.wspa.com/spa/news/local/article/internet_scammers_still_a_growing_threat/29169/

The main screen for GtkPod

When you plug in your iPod it automatically see’s it and displays the music and playlists you have on it.

You are not able to play songs through GtkPod like you can iTunes however, using a combination of GtkPod and a program such as Banshee you can have the ability to use and sync your iPod with your linux machine with almost as much ease as using iTunes.

Hopefully this is a helpful piece of software to those of you out there reading this.

OES, which runs on top of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) still has all the tried and true Novell services such as eDirectory, iPrint, Remote Manager, NetStorage, iFolder, and a number of other services you may remember from the Netware days.

Also just as before with Netware OES is capable of running Groupwise 7 and the new Groupwise 8 systems.  For those who don’t know, Groupwise is an  email system that is an alternative to Microsoft Exchange, that provides email, calendar, contacts, tasks etc and allows the sharing of that information.

Other benefits to using the Novell OES server is their iPrint server which makes setting up network print servers and making them available to end users very easy.  iPrint allows you to securely and deploy and install printers across your network regardless of the operating system.  There are iPrint clients for Windows, Linux, or Macintosh.

Also available is the iFolder server.  The iFolder server allows you to securely share amongst multiple computers your files in a way that when you make a change on one computer, it automatically update the file securely through the Internet to all your computers. The iFolder system

So far the migration to OES from Microsoft Small Business Server has been very smooth and easy.  I plan on updating the blog after having the OES server in place for a little while so check back.

All your documents are spread amongst a number of different computers or perhaps the receptionist’s computer is the “server” but if she is not there and nobody remembers to turn on his/her computer than it is total chaos till it is turned on since no one can get to the files?
Do you have files that you need to give access to some people but restrict others from?

If are asking yourself these questions over and over again it may be time to consider a server of some kind. Now I know that you may think a server means you are going to have to shell out thousands upon thousands of dollars. Although you can spend yourself into the red on a server if you so desire, there are many ways to cost-effectively solve your need for a server, depending on what kind of server you need.

This can be as simple as an “inexpensive” Western Digital Networkable Hard Drive which may also be known as a NAS or Network Attached Storage.  This acts as a mini file server, even doing very basic access control to the files.

The next step up is an actual server that provides file and print sharing services.  You actually have a couple of routes at this poing that you can take. IF you are looking for a way to control users access to different folders etc then your options have jumped up to an actual server system such as Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Server 2008 or Novell Open Enterprise Server.    Both are server systems that allow you to have separate security permissions for each individual user.  Both provide a number of other services as well such as Printer sharing, Network services such as DHCP and DNS, as well as a number of security and update features.

The next step up is if you are looking at doing in house email with collaboration such as calendar, contacts, etc.  The best options for those would be to use either Novell Groupwise or Microsoft Exchange.

In addition to the types of servers mentioned above there are also application servers such as a terminal server, or database servers etc.

These are all things to consider as you grow beyond passing files around to each other using USB sticks and email. If you are curious about any more of the different options please feel free to post comments.

I personally like to tinker and play with new version’s of operating systems when they come out, whether it is a new version of Windows, or a flavor of *nix, I like to play. Problem is I haven’t don’t have a machine to always play with them on. In addition to that, I like to have a machine that is a “throw-away” in other words if I want to try a specific piece of software or someone is wondering if a specific site gave them a virus etc, I will use that “throw-away” machine to check out and try to recreate whatever issue they are having.

When I ran a Windows OS as my primary operating system I used VirtualPC, which I was very pleased with, to do this. Wen I moved back to using OpenSUSE as my primary OS I had not come across a Virtualized environment that I liked as much as VirtualPC – till now!

VirtualBox works very much like VirtualPC except one really cool thing is that VirtualBox will run on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris and OpenSolaris. Once installed on your computer there is a very easy to use GUI

Above is a screen shot of mine. As you can see it gives a status of the different machines on the virtual boxes.

This GUI allows you to with a couple of clicks, create from scratch a virtual hard drive. Within minutes you are on your way to installing whatever OS you are wanting to play with. As you can see from the screen shot I have an OpenSolaris box and an Ubuntu box, both of which I can use to learn more about those distros or I can use them for testing a change without breaking my OpenSUSE host machine.

Virtual Box makes for a wonder virtualization environment since it will run on Windows, Linux, Macintosh or Solaris allowing  you to have virtual computers that you can move between different hosts, regardless of the host machines os.   Hope you enjoy!

There are a number of ways though that you can counter-act this increase in power usage. Some are very simple physical changes that you can do to decrease power consumption when the computer is idle.

For example, use a surge protector to run all of your equipment through; which should already be the case to protect your equipment from power surges. When you go on your lunch break or leave for the day, hibernate or shut down your computer, and then turn off the surge strip, since even when your computer is “off” it still draws power. If you turn everything off, you will be amazed at how much money you can save. Other things that you can do is set your computer to put the monitor to sleep after five or ten minutes, again causing power to be conserved.

When it comes to your servers, there are also a variety of things that can be done such as setting up your server to be “headless” or in other words not have a monitor attached to it. If you need to manage your server on a regular basis you can set it up so that it can be remotely managed from another workstation or share monitors with another server if you have multiple.

You can also do things in the physical environment to promote natural cooling and airflow to a server room to help save on the cost of cooling a server room. Instead of constantly running the building air conditioner to cool the one room, while freezing out everyone just to get the server room cool, you may want to consider putting in a high efficiency air conditioner that controls the HVAC to that room only. By doing that you keep the building unit from constantly running just to keep one room cool, and the server room HVAC unit won’t have to run as often as well since it is a high efficiency unit dedicated to that room. You can also get the HVAC units so that they control the amount of humidity in the room, which is better for the servers anyway.

When it comes time to purchase new equipment, make sure that you are purchasing Energy Star certified equipment. Companies are also now coming out with “greener” servers and workstations that consume less power anyway, so you should try and watch for those and get them whenever you can.

Something that goes hand and hand with purchasing newer more efficient and “greener” equipment is what to do with the old equipment when you replace it. Don’t just chuck it in the trash, you can donate, sell, or recycle it. Some equipment such as CRT monitors have chemicals inside of them which can be very harmful the environment, people, and animals. Often times there are companies in your area that will help you recycle the old equipment properly instead of trashing it. A simple Google search will bring them up. An example of one in the Greenville, SC area where we are located is Ever-Green Recycling (http://www.ever-greenrecycling.com).

There are a number of other things that can be done, but this is hopefully just a simple overview that will give you some easy techniques that you can implement to help your company cut costs, and become more “green.”