ChrisTalbot.com

Sitting in the House of Blues on Monday night, I overheard the guy a few barstools down talking about Cisco and realized that I was sitting alongside a fellow Cisco Live attendee (not unsurprising considering the more than 15,000 people at the conference). Striking up a conversation, we quickly moved onto the topic of tablets.

Tablets are a hot button in the tech industry right now. Ever since the first iteration of the iPad launched, consumers and business users have been tablet crazy. I’m not one of them. Although I’ve been a tech and gadget geek all my life, I also tend to be a skeptic, and the benefits of using a tablet haven’t seemed to outweigh their drawbacks in the way I compute.

Since the iPad, there’s been quite a few tablets entering the market, but in speaking with my new friend, I received some perspective on where the market is going and where each of the major players fit in.

Naturally, the iPad is a consumer device through and through, even though it’s made its way into who knows how many businesses and has several business applications available for it (including an iOS version of WebEx). Most of the other tablets seem to keep to the consumer realm, as well.

Then came along the RIM PlayBook and the HP TouchPad, neither of which are completely consumer or completely business devices. Tablets in this middle category are sitting on the fence a bit and providing both consumer and business experiences and applications.

Enter the Cisco Cius. Cisco, which has been mostly exiting the consumer market (I’m still sad to see the Flip go), isn’t even pretending to go after the same market that Apple and the other consumer tablets are tackling. And why should they? Cisco is refocusing on doing what it does best — serving the small and medium business (SMB) and enterprise market.

During a recent demonstration at Cisco Canada’s offices, company representatives said the Cius is not the type of table to be purchased as a standalone device. In fact, Cisco’s messaging is that the Cius is more than a tablet; it’s a mobile enterprise-class collaboration device. Maybe that’s a lot of marketing speak to set the Cius apart from other tablets, but the fact is the Cius really is aimed at being an extension of Cisco’s unified communications platform rather than a standalone device. Buying it without having a Cisco unified communications platform in place would mean you wouldn’t be getting much of the key capabilities of the device.

As my new friend (who had a Cius in his shiny, new Cisco Live backpack) said, the Cisco Cius is the only tablet designed and marketed specifically for the enterprise market. In that respect, it’s unique in the tablet market.

Are you the type to save your passwords in your browser’s built-in password storage system? If so, I hate to break it to you, but your passwords are at risk if you get hacked. As one IT security professional pointed out to me a couple of months ago, many browser vulnerabilities are based around those semi-helpful password storage systems; and login IDs and passwords are often what cybercriminals are after when they infect your computer.

Good news, though. There’s a simple, more secure and greatly effective piece of software out there that will store your passwords in an encrypted database, but still make it relatively easy to manage and access your passwords when you need them. Best of all, it’s free.

That piece of software is KeePass. It’s free, it’s open source and it’ll do a much better job of managing your login IDs and passwords than the built-in applications in Firefox or Internet Explorer. It’s also password-protected, so all you really need to do is create one password to access your database of passwords, and when you’re done with it, shut it down, thereby locking anyone who sits down at your computer out of your passwords.

I installed KeePass a couple of months ago, quickly and easily imported my passwords from Firefox (which I then promptly deleted from my browser’s history), and started using the software. I’ll admit it takes a little getting used to if you’ve become accustomed to using your browser’s password management utility, but what I found is I got into the habit of opening up KeePass in the morning, logged in and then found it easy to bounce back and forth between KeePass and Firefox when need be.

The software requires a bit of fiddling around before you’ll figure out where all the features are (such as how to add a new login ID/password combo), but I likely would have figured out how to use everything a bit quicker if I wasn’t so adamant about not reading the manual (that is, help file).

Although I mostly use KeePass for storing and accessing existing login information, it also includes a random password generator (you know, so you stop using passwords like your kid’s name or your favourite colour … or worse, “password”). It feels like I’ve only scratched the surface of the power behind what is essentially little more than a secure password management utility, but it’s become a useful and critical tool for personal and work usage.

Check it out.

In the last post on my poor, neglected blog, I wrote about the growth in cloud computing and my own usage of it. Cloud has been a hot topic for the last couple of years, although (as I pointed out) it’s really the phrase that’s new — not so much the fundamentals of the technology. There have been changes in terms of scalability, flexibility, cost and availability, but forms of cloud have been around under different names for years.

Unsurprisingly, based on the continued growth of cloud computing, I’ve been writing a lot lately about the cloud, whether it’s Citrix CEO Mark Templeton’s comments about how we’re moving from the PC era to the cloud era, Synnex CEO Kevin Murai’s message to channel resellers about the importance of getting into the business of cloud, increases in cloud adoption despite challenges, and even changing business models that are creating potential conflicts between cloud services vendors and their channel partners (basically, who really does own the customer?).

Fellow scribe Robert Dutt of ChannelBuzz.ca posted an article to his PCWorld.com blog about the apparent confusion that small businesses are dealing with in terms of cloud computing. Considering the often murky definition of cloud computing (a definition that has never been standardized and changes with each person who tries to explain it), it’s hardly a shock that small businesses are having a difficult time wrapping their brains around what exactly this cloud computing thing is.

My question is: Does the confusion around what is essentially a marketing term for a computing style really matter?

To answer my own question, yes, I suppose it does matter, but mostly because of the industry’s poor track record in defining what cloud is and its insistence on using this buzzword in marketing efforts without having a standard definition. Go ahead and market cloud all you like, but if there’s no standard explanation as to what you’re marketing, how do you expect customers to understand what you’re touting?

Even as a technology journalist covering the IT sector regularly since 1998, I can on occasion become confused by the broad definition of cloud. Most of the time, I seem to have a good grasp on it, but then I start juggling several terms at once — managed services, hosted services, software-as-a-service, etc. — and my brain goes into meltdown mode. And I’m one of the converts.

In my own efforts to use cloud computing, I’ve been at times quite impressed and at times slightly frustrated, but so far, the good is far outweighing the bad. Of course, I’m a business of one person, and the scale I require for my efforts is rather minimal.

What’s interesting to you in the world of cloud computing?

Everywhere you look any more, someone is touting the benefits of cloud computing. Visit airports, and the marketing hype around cloud computing is absolutely redonkulous. Name a major vendor supporting cloud computing, and there’s a good chance you’ll see their advertisements scattered around airports and other places that businesspeople tend to visit often.

My own thoughts on cloud go back several years when cloud was known as several different monikers. Yeah, that’s right, cloud isn’t really new. It’s a marketing term that best suits the IT industry right now. That’s not to say there aren’t new developments or the latest version of cloud computing isn’t relevant. Quite the opposite. But to call it a new technology is to call netbooks a recent development.

What’s different about cloud now than years ago? Simple. The technology supporting its infrastructure has evolved considerably to the point that what cloud today is really about is scalability and availability. It’s a lot easier to get the data centers in place to support cloud applications and storage today, and it’s possible to do so at increasingly lower costs.

Should you, as a consumer, or you, as a business owner, be thinking about cloud computing? Not to be all Canadian on you, but… It depends.

How happy are you with your current way of doing things? Happy enough? Don’t want to change? Okay, cool. Take your time, look at your options and seriously think about what a shift in the way you deal with IT would do to your business.

On the other hand, if you’re a business, your competitors might be making the move to cloud to get the benefits associated with it, and that could leave you a little behind. In this business environment, you need to make use of every advantage you can get, and a lot of those advantages come from technology. In cloud’s case, it provides a scalable, flexible IT model with predictable costs. And best of all, there are a lot of experienced vendors and channel partners out there who can help you make the best of those benefits.

Have I drank the Flavour Aid? (Do your research, man; it’s right.) Sure, in many ways, that’s exactly what I’ve done. In recent months, I’ve made the switch from installed software managing my email and calendaring to a cloud product (or, if you prefer, a solution; it sure solved a problem I was having). I’m not looking back. In fact, I’m looking ahead. If it wasn’t for the fact that there are those pesky areas where you can’t get Wi-Fi connections, I’d switch everything to the cloud, but until then, I find it necessary to do a lot of computing and storage on my various PC machines.

This really is the year of the cloud. The marketing guys and girls are right in this case. Cloud is going to continue to be impactful in both business and consumer life. Just think about how your computing needs and habits have changed even in just the last three years.

We’re headed to the polls in Canada for the fourth federal election in seven years, and that — combined with a discussion with a second year journalism school student yesterday about technology reporting — has me thinking about the first (and only, actually) election I covered as a reporter.

It was a good time to be in journalism school in Toronto. Toronto amalgamation was the hot topic, and I was learning to be a reporter throughout the entire ordeal, from early announcements and controversy to the election of the new mayor and council of the amalgamated City of Toronto. It was election night that I most remember, though. Several of us had volunteered to cover the election for the budding website of the school’s bi-weekly community newspaper (pretty cool, considering this was before online media had taken off).

My assignment for the evening? Cover the after-party of one of the gents who didn’t get elected to the new council. I probably learned more about reporting on events that night than I did from my entire time at Centennial College, and I remember the feeling of talking to an obviously disappointed East York councillor and his supporters.

It also made me glad I didn’t go into political reporting.

I like to tell people that I’m the most unprofessional writer they’ll meet. Sometimes it feels true. I speak casually. I crack jokes. I engage people in discussions unrelated to the topic at hand. I try to get people to laugh. During a phone interview for an article last week, I was asked if I had any more questions, and without missing a beat, I asked, “How are you adjusting to the time change so far?” We shared a laugh. I like to have a good time, and I think it shows.

Although my demeanour is casual and friendly, I’m also very dedicated to my work. I listen to my clients. I aim to do the best job I can for them. I meet deadlines. I follow up on professional email and voicemail communications quickly. I let clients know immediately if there’s a problem. In the end, I believe I’ve developed a reputation as someone who does good work on time, so I come across as professional in that respect.

My business philosophy is simple, really. I try to follow Wheaton’s Law in all things, and I believe that if you enjoy your work, then you’ll do good work.

What’s your business philosophy?

Note-taking seems to be changing. Or perhaps it’s disappearing altogether in favour of getting news online as quickly as possible.

In a recent news conference, I was sitting behind a fellow journalist who I noticed wasn’t actually taking notes on his laptop (seriously, who handwrites notes any more?). Instead, partway through the news conference, I noticed he had a WordPress backend opened, had his headline already written and was busily writing his news article piecemeal (there were big gaps where he no-doubtedly filled in paragraphs and quotes as information was made available).

This goes against everything I learned in journalism school, but after thinking about it for a little while, I realized this is where our world has taken us. We can’t wait for anything any more, and news outlets that are publishing too late are possibly missing out on traffic because their competitors were live-blogging from a news conference or event and then posting their story before people were being thanked for coming.

I still take copious notes during interviews and news conferences, and then I turn my stories around afterwards. Although that will likely continue for most publications, I may need to adjust my strategy for my Beer In Canada reporting. I think I could get content up a lot quicker than I am now.

I’ve made some changes to the comments on the site. I get very few legitimate comments, as it is, but I get hundreds of spam comments coming in every week. And frankly, I’m a little sick of dealing with them.

The ability to post comments to posts will automatically close after 14 days, and you’ll need to have a login ID on the site to post comments at all (assuming I’ve set up everything correctly).

This should eliminate comment spam from the site, which should save me a bundle of time.

The average person is unlikely to describe my living space as cluttered. I’m a minimalist when it comes to things like furniture and decorations. In fact, my townhouse looks (rightly so) like a bachelor lives in it. I don’t like to keep a lot of big, bulky things I don’t really need around, and I still cringe every time I look at my living room furniture (which only consists of an entertainment centre, a small shelving unit, two papasans and a recliner chair). I like open space, which possibly explains why I enjoy the outdoors so much.

On the other hand, I’m a hobbyist with a penchant for buying stuff for no other reason than to have it. I’m a packrat when it comes to my hobbies, and it shows when you look at my large board game collection (more than 260 games and expansions), my roleplaying game collection (more than 300 physical books and another 200 or so in PDF format), my DVD collection (which takes up an entire five-foot shelving unit) and the remnants of hobbies past (fencing gear, two guitars, hundreds of comic books, music CDs, painted and unpainted miniatures, etc.).

For some time, I’ve been thinking about how I could reduce the amount of unnecessary stuff in my house, in part to reduce clutter and in part to prepare for the unlikely event that I move to a different location (the less stuff I have to move, the better). Then I spotted this recent article on Stepcase Lifehack today. The gist of the article is that there a lot of people trying to be ultra-minimalist in their belongings, reducing their total possessions to 100 items or less. I’d be impressed by anyone who was able to make this happen, but with my hobbies, I know that’s simply not possible.

Still, the article gave me some tips on how to reduce the amount of stuff in my life, and over the next few months, I’m going to try to reduce the amount of clutter (including hobby clutter) in my house. Maybe I’ll even turn my office into a more livable work space by doing so.

Happy New Year, and may you have a great 2011.

As I look back to my first year of business as a full-time freelance writer, I’m happy with what I accomplished, and now that I’m entering my second year of business, I’m looking ahead at what I’d like to accomplish this year. I believe it’s important to set goals in order to be successful, and after rolling goals around in my head over the last couple of weeks, I now know what I’m going to work towards in the new year.

Have you set business goals for the year?