April 24, 2009
Posted by jimintriglia in Communications, Internet/Web Services, News & FYI, Personal Computing, Personal Interest.add a comment
Recently, I was motivated to setup an account and establish a profile on Facebook. While I have maintained a presence on LinkedIn for several years, not everybody that I need to stay in touch with has a LinkedIn account. Further, LinkedIn is geared for professionals and executives, while Facebook is targeted at the general population who basically want to engage in recreational social networking.
A high school buddy contacted me several weeks ago. After catching-up a bit, our dicussion turned to what other members of our circle of friends were up to of late. One of our mutual friends has done extremely well career-wise, and is currently the CEO of a Fortune 1000 ranked company. Much to my surprise, this friend did not have a LinkedIn profile, but did have a Facebook page.
Trying to contact my friend through his executive assistant would prove difficult and time-consuming. (How many people try to contact CEOs of major corporation using the guise of being a “good friend”?). His personal contact information was unlisted, not unusual for executives. So, I created a Facebook account and contacted my friend through a Facebook “friends” invitation. A few days later were were in touch and catching-up on the events of the past years.
An unexpected surprise was finding that my friend had stayed in touch with other high school friends who I had no luck in finding current contact information. Additionally, through my Facebook page, I’ve received invitations from other friends. I’ve also received invitations from people around the world that share common passions and interests.
As a person who values his personal and professional network of friends and associates, Facebook appears to be a valuable web service for staying in touch with friends and meeting people form all walks of life. While I can visualize people rolling their eyes wondering what took me so long to discover this, I would remind them that many similar services promise the same benefits as Facebook and fail to deliver anything other that an increase in junk mail.
I would also argue that some popular web services, such as Twitter, can be extremely addictive and serve to disrupt people from focusing on their own life pursuits. (For more on this perspective, have a listen to Mark Horstman on Twitter.) I have seen some unique applications of “Twittering”, so I may revisit Twitter at some future date. In the mean time, there are many other great web services rolling out that hold greater promise of delivering benefits that are of interest to me and those that I count in my circle of friends and colleagues.
JIRA: A Robust and Capable Workflow Management Tool January 7, 2009
Posted by jimintriglia in Business Process Improvement, Internet/Web Services, Management Strategies, Workflow Management.Tags: BPM, busines process management, JIRA, workflow
add a comment
One aspect of managing the development of a software application is tracking and reporting of customer issues related to the use of the software. While some organizations accomplish the task of software issue management using nothing more than a simple sprea
dsheet, there may come a time when a spreadsheet proves to be an ineffective and inefficient tool for issue management.
Atlassian’s JIRA is a robust and capable issue management system that provides managers with a powerful issue management platform. One of the key benefits of JIRA is the extent that the default workflow can be customized.
In working with the Enterprise edition, I’ve been able to customize JIRA to satisfy an organization’s need for a mission-critical software defect, software development, work request, change request, system deployment, help desk request and project management systems. JIRA’s fully customizable workflow enables me to custom-fit JIRA to any business process involving manual or automated systems.
Atlassian provides a 30 Day free trial of JIRA and also offers free use of JIRA for nonprofit organizations through it’s Community and Open Source Licensing.
The package may be installed on an organizations servers and managed in-house; smaller organizations can take advantage of JIRA’s hosted solution.
To see JIRA in action, visit Atlassian’s online JIRA development and issue management systems. You can also visit one of many customer JIRA issue management systems that are live on the Web.
Create Your Custom Newspaper with Pageflakes January 2, 2009
Posted by jimintriglia in Apple Mac, Internet/Web Services, Management Strategies, News & FYI, Personal Computing.Tags: web services
add a comment
The nature of my work demands that I stay on top of developments in many different areas. I don’t have the time (or patience) to sort through dozens of periodicals and daily newspapers searching for pertinent facts.
Pageflakes is a free web-based service that delivers pertinent news and information in real time right to my desktop. Since I can specify the topics and select the news sources for my news pages, I can control the content and layout of the information that is delivered.
Pageflakes provides custom ”flakes” that you can choose to populate your custom news page(s). You can also import other subscribers “pagecasts” (Like Jenny Zuko’s “Mac Attack” pagecast, for all things Apple) and specify RSS feeds so you can keep track of blogs of interest.
With Pageflakes as my default web browser home page, I have up-to-date custom news and information at the push of a button. In the age of information overload, Pageflakes is a valuable resource for the busy professional.
Parental Controls for the Home Network December 28, 2008
Posted by jimintriglia in Home Networking, Internet/Web Services, Learning through Fun, PC Security, Personal Computing.add a comment
Santa brought my son a Wii to replace his aging Playstation game console. The latest generation of the Wii gaming console is designed to connect to the Internet to enable updates to the Wii console and allow multi-user play with gamers all over the world. The Wii also enables users to surf the Net right on their TV.
Having a gaming console that is Net-aware presents an all new dimension in the gaming and simulation experience. It also presents a challenge for parents respective of securing their home network and protecting their children from inappropriate Web content and applications.
To continue the level of parental controls that I had established on my son’s
laptop, I now needed a home network solution that would enable me to apply parental controls to Net-enabled gaming consoles like the Nintendo Wii and DS portable gaming platforms. Enter the iBoss Internet Parental Control router from Phantom Technologies.
The iBoss is a wireless G router designed to enable parents to assert parental control over their home Internet connection. The product manages both wired and wireless Internet access by personal computers, gaming consoles, anything that can connect to the Internet via the home network.
The iBoss won the 2008 iParenting Media Best Product Awards from family organizations and was received accolades in an online parental control forum. As Phantom Technologies was running a holiday special for the iBoss at $99.95 and offered a 30-day free trial, I decided to give it a go and placed my order.
From the reviews that I have read, the iBoss looks like a terrific solution. In addition to providing parental controls for the Wii, it will also provide an additional layer of protection for my sons laptop, which also has NetNanny parental control software installed.
December 26, 2008
Posted by jimintriglia in Internet/Web Services, PC Security.Tags: internet content filtering, network security, parental control
add a comment
Many high school teenagers likely received their first WiFi-enabled laptop computer for Christmas this holiday season. While enabling a teenager more latitude to work where they choose to work in the house (thanks to Wifi), how does a parent keep their kids safe while accessing the Internet?
I’ve successfully used NetNanny parental control software on my home PCs for several years now, with excellent results. NetNanny is fully configurable, allowing administrators to set Internet access and web content filtering at a fairly granular level.
NetNanny offers a free 14-day trial, runs on Microsoft Windows or Apple PCs, offers multiple PC licensing and was a PC Magazine Editors Choice for 2008/2009.
