FindTech Blogs Helps Find Blogs on IT Topics

FindTech Blogs from KnowledgeStorm is the simplest way to find a wide range of quality blog content on topics that matter to business and IT professionals. Visit FindTech Blogs to get perspectives on topics such as CRM, Security, Compliance and much more. Or, weigh in with your own opinions by commenting on posts or creating your own blog.

Check out FindTech Blogs so you can:

• Tap into the Experts—Get first hand thoughts, commentary and ideas from the most prominent bloggers out there.



• Search Efficiently—Instead of conducting endless searches, FindTech Blogs pulls all of the relevant blogs together, by topic, so you can search in one place.



• Share Ideas—Share your knowledge and perspectives with thousands of your peers.

Want to build an audience? You can also create or import your blog. Check out the latest postings at FindTech Blogs.

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Cool New Tool for Tagging Radio Content

Ever hear a new song on the radio and want to know who sings it? And maybe even buy it? Or, ever hear a radio ad while you're in your car and think "I should check into that" but you've mentally lost the phone number before you write it down?

A new online service called Nabbit solves the problem.

As explained in this Your Tech Weblog post, you simply sign up online for the free Nabbit service, program your phone, and you're off: anytime you hear a song, ad or anything else on the radio you'd like to tag, you simply press the key on your phone that corresponds with the station you're listening. Later, you log in to your personalized Nabbit portal to see song titles, artist info, lyrics, concert dates, and the option to download the song through iTunes, Napster or other online music services. If you've "Nabb'ed" an ad, you'll get more information plus promotional offers and ecommerce site links.

You can also check out this podcast (see November 5 entry) about Nabbit in RealAudio, MP3 or iTunes format.

How this could change the world: it's a value-add for radio stations, providing "trackability" for radio ads somewhat similar to online ads. This could bring a whole new class of advertisers into the radio market. It also makes life easier for radio listeners (and it's cool).

The biggest challenge: the people behind Nabbit have already overcome the two biggest hurdles: cost and ease of use. Nabbit is a free service, and it's as easy as programming your speed dial. Now the company simply faces a chicken-and-egg challenge: consumer adoption is likely to be limited unless there are a lot of radio stations signed up, but the stations won't sign up without an addressable market.

What could kill it: Someday, someone (Sirius, and GM with OnStar, are likely suspects) could build this capability right into a radio: you hear a song you like, you press a button on the radio, your account is automatically debited 99 cents or whatever and the song is downloaded automatically to the hard drive in your vehicle. You plug your iPod or other MP3 player into a jack on the radio and grab it from there. It's feasible—maybe—someday.

But for now, Nabbit looks like a free, easy-to-use, extremely convenient way to tag radio content rather than forgetting it or dangerously trying to scribble a note while driving.

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Yes, The World Does Need Another Staffing Software Solution

If you look at lists of staffing software vendors on sites like Capterra or Recruiters Network, you may well wonder why the world needs another vendor in this space. Well...because may of these companies have been around for a long time. Their software is "robust"—which one of my bosses in a former life said is an acronym for "really old but ultimately stable techngology."

But needs change and technology (constantly) changes, which is why four former executives of TempWorks recently formed Avionte Software, a new staffing software company dedicated to producing recruiting software that's web-based, fully integrated with other front and back office applications, and that's actually easy to use.

Staffing types can check out the new software at its official launch at Staffing World 2007 in San Antonio, October 9-12.

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Magenic Community Blog - Excellent Stuff

Though a lot of technology companies now have blogs, I'm constantly amazed at the number who don't realize what a key driver blogging is for thought leadership (which enhances credibility and, indirectly, increases sales). There are a number of excellent corporate tech blogs out there of course, such as Dave's Blog, written by NetApp CEO Dave Hitz.

Another outstanding tech blog I recently came across is the Magenic Technologies Community Blog. Magenic, a Microsoft-focused IT consulting firm with five offices across the U.S., has a great developer blog covering topics such as IT events, SQL Server, code testing, .NET, system mods, C# and other software development subjects. Definitely worth checking out.

The main page is actually a collection of postings from consultants such as Jeff Knutson, Aaron Erickson and Sean Schade. Doesn't look like there's a FeedBurner feed for the main blog page, which is kind of odd, but these guys are smart—I suspect this will get added sooner than later.

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"Onshoring" Support - A New Trend?

In a drive to reduce costs, IT companies have increasing turned to offshoring in recent years, to countries such as India and the Philippines. First went development, and later tech support. But while offshoring support has been popular among IT vendors, it has been less so among customers, who often have difficulty understanding the heavy accents of offsore support personnel.

Now, some vendors are bucking the trend. Redundant Internet access appliance maker Astrocom even makes its onshore tech support a selling point. As one customer put it, "If you can understand a Minne-soowta accent, you can understand their tech support people."

Finance and accounting (FAO) outsourcer API Outsourcing understands that it is handling sensitive client data as it processes payments, invoices, billing and other backoffice documents. While some competitors seem to have no problem sending such work overseas, API seeks to protect this information by doing all of it's backoffice processing in Minnesota and Wisconsin (okay, some Vikings fans may consider Wisconsin a foreign country, but most Americans accept its statehood).

Finally, enterprise content management consultant MBS Technologies avoids the accent problem by providing tech support from South Dakota.

Smaller tech vendors are often more nimble than their larger counterparts; could there be a trend here?

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Fiefox Ad-Blocking Plug In Raises Questions

Per this article from the International Herald Tribune:

"Adblock Plus, an easy-to-use free addition to the Firefox Internet browser that deletes advertisements from Web sites is still a niche product for the niche browser. But it is potentially a huge development in the online world, and not because it simplifies Web sites cluttered with advertisements."

The article goes on to point out the dilemma this raises for Microsoft, which is both a major beneficiary of onlind ad revenue as well as, of course, the most widely-used browser. Microsoft has opened up IE to third-party extensions, but would be unlikely to tolerate an effective ad-blocker.

A few questions and observations of my own:

• This strikes me as unnecessary. Pop-up blockers are one thing (both Firefox and IE now have affective blockers, and pop-ups really ARE annoying), but most website ads are reasonably non-intrusive—they don't prevent a site visitor from getting the content he or she came for, they just sit off to the side to the clicked or not, based on interest.



• The first step is another technology arms race. If ad blockers become more common, advertisers will develop workarounds, which would require a new round of ad-blocking technology to address. The advertisers ultimately have more money to throw at this development.



• Be careful what you wish for. If effective ad-blocking ever does become widespread, publishers would have to find a new way to monetize their content. This could lead to greater reliance on subscription revenue. As is usually the case, the pioneers would take the arrows, but eventually most if not all publishers would have to follow suit. Everyone has to eat.

The bottom line is that ad-blocking plug-ins may be clever programming, but they are a bad idea. Looking at a few ads off to the side of content is a small inconvenience for keeping the vast majority of web-based content free.

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American ITIL

For anyone not familiar with it, ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of IT service guidelines put out by Britain's Office of Government Commerce (OGC). Like the Beatles back in the 60s, ITIL is a Brit export that's gone global; except that this time it's IT managers that are screaming rather than teenage girls, and they are screaming for very different reasons.

For example, most organizations aren't even measuring the returns on their ITIL investments. In addition, according to BMC Software global best practices director Ken Turbitt, "ITIL is not a methodology for implementing ITSM processes, it does not contain detailed process maps, and...does not, and cannot, provide work instructions."

Some vendors are trying to help. Kinetic Data, for example, provides practical software tools and applications built on BMC Remedy that enable IT to build and implement ITIL-recommended service catalogs fairly quickly, as well as to automatically survey users once requests are fulfilled. The company's Kinetic Request product is a service request management system (SRMS) built on BMC Remedy that is used to build actionable service catalogs (and even fulfill simple requests), and Kinetic Survey is an application for creating and automating user surveys. The whole process works something like this:

Other service catalog applications include newScale (a bit pricey, but broadly functional and a good choice for organizations that don't use BMC Remedy) and BMC itself, though their SRM system has received mixed reviews.

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Snarls and Purrs #1: "Top" Websites

Time magazine's recently published list of the 50 Best Websites for 2007 is a mix of hits and misses. On the plus side, they included social tagging site StumbleUpon (an excellent choice, though Zimbio and Searchles, two of the best tagging sites, are overlooked), Netvibes and Stockpickr. Online backup service Mozy took the top spot; it's a very useful and reasonably priced service, but THE BEST website? That may be a stretch.

On the other hand, some picks are highly questionable. INGDirect? One of the better online banking sites, but "one of the best 50 websites" seems mighty ambitious. Global warming propaganda site Ecofoot.org is a just plain bizarre choice for anyone intelligent enough not to buy Al Gore's inconvenient fantasy wholesale. (There have been half a dozen ice ages on earth over the last 600,000 years, punctuated by periods of warming—one of which we are in right now. SUVs and "carbon footprints" didn't cause any of the preceding warming periods, and they aren't causing this one.)

The worst pick of all, however, has to be NowPublic. On this pathetic site, "citizen reporters" post "news" items about George Bush making himself dictator and a five-year-old Austrian artist relieving his bladder on a photo collage of world leaders. Post anything remotely related to capitalism, however, and the powers that be will threaten you with banishment from their site.

NowPublic is worse than irrelevant; it is a prime example of the arrogance of the web elite, the phenomenon of arrogant self-appointed arbiters of what's important squashing individual freedom on the web. The absurdly named Open Directory (a.k.a. dmoz.org) is a prime example; their human editors often take months to add a new site (if they add it at all), then penalize site owners for submitting their site more than once (even if the owner submitted it months ago and is wondering why it isn't appearing). Worse, many categories have no editor, and qualified volunteers are routinely rejected.

Another prime example, sadly, is the once highly regarded Slashdot. Ruined by success, the now pompous rulers of the site routintely reject suitable articles (reference this, this, this, or any of other 711,000 hits you'll get on Google for "rejected by Slashdot").

Granted, any "best" list is hard. DZone (which is now what Slashdot used to be when it was cool) belongs on the list. Beyond that, it's tough. Most of the sites I visit are valuable for some narrow purpose, but wouldn't belong on a general "top 50" list. FindTechBlogs, for example, is a great site if you're looking for technology bloggers (though dougmcclure.net is conspicuous by its absence, a definite oversight).

What sites make your top (or bottom) 50 list?

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Why Redundant Internet Access is Critical

As the cost of Internet connectivity has dropped, while the dependence of organizations on reliable connections has increased, more businesses (and schools, government offices, non-profits, etc.) are taking a hard look at strategies for redundant Internet access (also know as Internet high availabily systems or ISP failover).

Businesses and other organizations are growing increasing reliant on dependable Internet connectivity for access to hosted online services, email, VPN connectivity to remote sites, e-commerce and other applications. Astrocom, a maker of bandwidth management and Internet load balancing appliances that provide uninterrupted Internet access through multiple ISPs, has written a great overview of redundant Internet access.

As Astrocom puts it, "Redundant Internet access (the ability to switch traffic among multiple Internet connections through a technique called multi-homing) is something more and more small and medium-sized companies need. When one link goes down, you get WAN/ISP failover that automatically switches your critical Internet traffic to a functioning link. Meanwhile, bandwidth management guarantees bandwidth to your most important applications."

The company's site also provides white papers that compare their solution to the more expensive and complex border gateway protocol (BGP) approach, as well as competitive comparisons.

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Slash7 on Pimpin' Your Products

Slash7 has written a great post about the right way to promote technology products, Pimpin' Products Ain't Easy. She shows how pimpin' (no "g," that's important) is different from marketing (or at least what technology folks often view marketing as). Then she goes on to describe what pimpin' is and why it's important:

"The act of pimpin’ products (as opposed to 'marketing') never involves any kind of questionable tactics. Pimpin’ means putting your product’s best foot forward. Accen-tuate the pos-it-ive. It means not shirking from self-promotion, and shouting your product’s position, features and benefits loud and clear. It means making the acquisition (download, purchase, whatever) process as simple as possible."

The post provides a helpful list of "Pimpin' Missteps" to avoid (such as "Don’t… be vague so visitors go “huh? what the heck is this?” when they load the page.") as well as a number of "Pimpin-est Examples" to illustrate her ideas. Read the whole thing.

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Jumpnode Network Monitoring Featured in eWeek

eWeek recently published a piece titled "'Tiny Metal Box' Woos VARs and MSPs" on how Jumpnode is attracting VARs and MSPs to sell its network monitoring and remote access product. "Looking to bring appliance-enabled software services to smaller companies, Jumpnode Systems has created a reseller program and also began signing MSPs to use its appliance for monitoring and remote management."

Jumpnode has also just released a new white paper titled "System Architecture—A Critical Element When Evaluating a Network Monitoring System" which outlines the advantages of its Appliance-Enabled Software (AeS) services architecture for network monitoring. Worth checking out.

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Network Monitoring with Belkin Pulse

SmallNetBuilder recently published an interesting article about the new Belkin Pulse network monitoring system. The piece starts with a primer on why network monitoring is important and the most important devices and services to monitor, followed by a comprehensive review of the Belkin offering, which is based on the Jumpnode AeS architecture.

Author Doug Reid concludes by saying, “Pulse is surprisingly powerful and functional. The Pulse communicates over 168-bit encryption to a centralized service, enabling a network manager or administrator to access a very informative network Dashboard from anywhere they have an Internet connection. The Pulse even enables remote access to network devices behind a firewall, if you choose to set it up. Moreover, the Pulse provides a nice level of redundancy, enabling alarming of your network even if the network itself goes down! The built-in analog modem provided excellent network alarming capability, successfully notifying of a loss of broadband connectivity…Belkin’s Pulse is an easy ‘NOC-in-a-box’ solution to network monitoring, providing the small network manager with capabilities typical in much larger networks. The Pulse makes it easy to get an alarming solution up and running quickly, and it provides a high degree of functionality…Pulse may look simple, but it really has a lot under the hood!”

What I found most fascinating however were the comments—a lively debate the cost-effectiveness of the solution. I think the pro-Pulse forces won the day, but the great thing about feedback like this is that it enables you, ultimately, to judge for yourself.

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Gotta Start Somewhere

Welcome to the TechMarketCentral blog, which will eventually be heavily populated with posts about B2B technology topics - software, hardware, services and telecom. My current interests include network monitoring, anything related to ITIL, VoIP, security and outsourcing among other topics, but will vary and likely expand over time. Hope you enjoy it.

A little about me: I'm a technology guy with 20 years of experience as an engineer and marketer in B2B IT software, hardware and services companies. Old enough to understand these areas yet young enough to still be passionate about innovations.

BTW, I take no position in the Microsoft vs. Linux vs. Mac wars. Between the five computers in my office, I’m running Mac OS, Linux and two versions of Windows. Choice is a good thing. I don’t care how much money Bill Gates has—I just think he could afford a decent haircut.

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