It never works out the way you want

Hi... I'm Tim. I am the blogger who works for the UW Tacoma Library, Gary introduced me a few weeks back. Anyway, I had hoped to get a story from Sound Transit on the expanded wi-fi service that they have introduced, but, unfortunately they have been very, very slow in getting back to me about the questions I have.

I guess I'll have to write about Amazon's announcement today that they are targeting the Kindle to the college crowd. I have previously written about the Kindle for my work blog and if you scroll through those articles you'll see that I'm not overly enamored with the device. Basically, my complaint is that it's a uni-tasker and in a world where people have hand held, touch based , multi tasking computing like the iPod Touch I can't see anything beyond a niche market for these devices. But I will admit that this new idea of selling e-textbooks on the Kindle seems like it holds a lot of promise.

Imagine, you're doing a group project and you show up to the meeting with a single device that has not only all the textbooks for this class, but all the textbooks you have used throughout your program. They are searchable, you can write notes in the margins, and they are the ultimate in a portable library. That's pretty heady stuff.

But stuff like that is probably 10 years away.

In the mean time, they will have to overcome an academic culture that is generally slow to adopt new technology. Already it's difficult to get many faculty to assign e-books to their students (though that's already happening at a faster and faster rate) in order for it to be a "mobile library" a majority of the faculty will need to assign e-books. Otherwise the Kindle is just another thing a student has to carry around in their already overloaded bookbag.

Students too might be wan to adopt the new technology. I can't see faculty assigning students to read e-books as the only option and so, unless the e-book is significantly cheaper, many people will opt for the handy old paper version. A paper book has some cache still; it can be resold, lent, borrowed, bent, marked, and is a generally sturdy storage device.

At $350, the Kindle unit is too is costly and since it's a uni-tasker students will again need to see a significant savings on their textbooks if there's any hope on Amazon's part that they will adopt them. In a day and age when a eeepc is a mere $500, why on earth would a poor college student want to buy a Kindle?

Which brings me to the last hurdle; technology is changing rapidly. Just look at the next generation OLPC; there's a folding screen, it's touch activated, and it already looks and acts just like a book. Not only that, but it's also a computer. A student can use that to read an e-book, write up their paper, chat with their group, email their professor, and play a video game.

As good an idea as selling e-textbooks to students might seem at first glance, it's devices like the next generation OLPC that are going to be in every college student's hands in 10 years.

If you ask me.

Strikes from the Cloud

The internet cloud has produced the first strikes: the first cyberwar coordinated with a shooting war.

The New York Times has reported the war began as early as July 20, well before Russia invaded Georgia. And, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported hackers were waging war on Georgian websites, email and communications services.

It is difficult to determine whether an attack on a nation's cyber infrastructure is an act of war because "we have not yet defined what that is." Gen. Victor Renuart, Northern Command, Defense News, Aug. 20, 2008

In a discourse, Gen. Renuart identified "must do" new security policy to address the cyberspace threats (along with changes in sea conditions in the Arctic). This view comes virtually simultaneously with reports that the Pentagon is suspending manning and budget to establish the Cyberspace Command. Quickly condemned as an unwise action by recently fired SECAF Michael Wynne, other defense sources say the mission is better housed in the U.S. Strategic Command, which has the military responsibility for cyberspace across all services and commands.

With current perils demonstrated for all to see, it is unfortunate that the recent firings of USAF leadership ostensibly over nuclear safety, but conventionally understood to be expanded to include KC-X tanker procurement, now seems to include cyber defense.

Virtualization for the Small Business, Part I: Introduction

Virtualization. Virtualization. Virtualization. That's the vendor-chant enterprise IT professionals have been hearing, and heeding, for the better part of a decade now. But what is it? And what does it mean for the small businesses' bottom line? In this multi-post series, I'll be exploring how virtualization can benefit smaller companies, as well as specific products appropriate for use in these environments.

Generally, the term "virtualization" in the computer sense refers to a layer which abstracts resources from resource demands. This series will focus on server platform virtualization, which turns a powerful server computer into a virtualization server. This virtualization server can host multiple logical servers (Windows, UNIX, Linux, etc) on the same hardware.

Server platform virtualization achieves this by providing each logical server with "virtual hardware". Logical servers could be your e-mail server, web server, payroll server, servers for specialized industry applications, even test servers. To the logical servers, the "virtual hardware" looks just like real computer hardware, and they function normally. Some virtualization vendors even provide tools to migrate existing physical servers to logical servers for loading onto a virtualization server. At any rate, all of these different server types can now reside in the virtualization server, providing the same services to your network as when they were separate physical servers themselves.

What does all this technical jabber mean to the small business owner? When my clients ask that very same question, the basic answer is nearly always the same:

1. Cost savings
2. Flexibility
3. Fast, simple disaster recovery

In my next post, I'll go into more detail about these advantages of server platform virtualization. After that, we'll be off to investigate just which products meet the cost and administration needs of small businesses.

Until next time!

Michael O'Brien is a partner at Praece Strategic Technology Consulting, helping small and medium businesses align technology plans with business goals.

Going for the Gold

If this were the Olympics, we wouldn't know if we were going for gold, silver or bronze with our three new bloggers. Kristine Strange is the newest blogger to join this writing menagerie.

She has a Bachelors of Science in Computer Information Systems from DeVry University. During school she was a Promotion/Department Manager at what she still considers a wonderful company, Metropolitan Hardwood Floors.

Since then, Kristine has done contract positions with Microsoft. One position was as a Build Engineer on the Visual Studio Developer Team. She's currently a Content Writer for Live Meeting Support Team. Her ultimate goal is to become a full-time/permanent Technical Writer or Program Manager, where she can use her technical, writing and management skills to the fullest.

Kristine says that she loves writing user manuals and other types of documents, strives to create websites, and enjoys trying different technical skills. She lives in Tacoma and is always looking for opportunities to work locally. Becoming a blogger on Tacoma Tech Connect is a great way to help her technical writing skills blossom.

Another New Voice

This blog welcomes a second new writer to the mix, offering our readers ever more perspectives and a broader range of knowledge base.

You'll soon be seeing work from Tim Bostelle who is currently the Head of Library Information Technology for the University of Washington Tacoma Library and the author of several blogs both tech related and not.

Tim has been working with technology since he first laid hands on an Apple IIe in 1984. This is the first acknowledged confession from a blogger on this page to Apple experience!

Living in Tacoma now since his discharge from the Army in 1991, Tim graduated from the UW Tacoma with a BA in Liberal Studies in 1995. He has worked for the UW Tacoma since 1996 in various capacities and currently is the Head of Library Information Technology as mentioned above.

Appropriately, he's interested in emerging technology, innovation, information technology, information freedom, and human-computer interaction.

New Blogger

We'd like to experiment with this blog a little more now that it's been online for several months. Of course, we owe a lot to Paul Ellis, who started it, and is still welcome to contribute. For those of you who don't know, Paul has decided to follow his dream - his granddaughter, by locating in Missouri.

In our experimentation, we are open to local (Puget Sound) bloggers who would like to contribute to a discussion of technology. If you are interested in being a blogger on this blog, let me - your administrator - know.

First in line to join is Mike O'Brien, who some of you may already know. Mike:

• Graduated Pacific Lutheran University w/ Business Degree. Had small personal business tech consultancy in high school / college.
• Oversaw customer and press relationships at XKL during startup phase, designed optical networks for “household name” companies. Stories in WSJ, Christian Science Monitor, Network World, etc.
• Founded Praece Strategic Technology Consulting in early 2008 – Focused on helping small/medium companies align technology plans with business goals, bringing fortune 1000 level “strategic technology focus” to firms of all sizes

Dough for the Starter

The Technology Alliance has begun the interview process for their vacant webmaster/IT whiz position. If you know of anyone who may be interested (or know someone who may know someone…) please pass along the link to the job announcement on the Seattle Chamber of Commerce's web site.

They'll consider anyone with the right combination of skills, of course, but this might be a good "starter" position for a recent graduate who can fulfill their fairly straightforward IT equipment and service needs, likes to do HTML and work with digital photos, would relish the challenge of a major project involving a major migration of the Alliance of Angels web site, and would benefit from working in a collaborative environment as part of a small, close-knit team and getting to know the technology movers and shakers in our state.