The need and desire to learn, understand and develop skills in new areas applies equally to all aspects of daily life including the use and mastering of technology. To this end, how-to tutorials continue to be a fantastic tool for passing on key information. How-to...
Recently, we performed a successful migration of around 68,000 CAD documents for one of our clients. We went from our old PTC PRO/Intralink 3.4 server to a shiny new PRO/Intralink 10 server with very few disruptions and issues. This may seem like a daunting task and...
Software companies often choose to rollout new products by having their developers work directly with beta test customers. But is this really a good idea? Not really, but let's understand why not, and then consider a couple of best practices if you just have to do it...
Evernote has changed my life for the better since I first tried it out a month ago. I have spent much of my life wishing I could keep a little notebook on me at all times to record odd bits of information that I think I might like to remember. Little things. When...
To succeed in any market, a company needs to innovate, pioneer and push out the borders. The recent one-year anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs reminds of one of the tech industries greatest comeback stories. Apple's key to success, other than the charisma of Jobs...
Ever empty the Recycle Bin on your Windows machine and regret it? Deleted a file that you really needed? These problems have a solution: Recuva. Recuva, a single purpose utility put out by Piriform, can recover files that have been lost in these kinds of situations:...
Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development methodology that uses small and frequent incremental changes to the code base, which are incorporated into a rapid build and test environment. Each change integrated into the source repository is verified by the...
Most enterprise-grade network storage systems allow you to take "snapshots" of the filesystem stored on it so you can quickly restore a single file or directory...or even restore the entire filesystem to that point in time if need be. So, what do you do if you're a...
Recently, we upgraded Confluence to 4.0, the latest revision and was pleasantly surprised by the process. The upgrade was seamless, well documented, and no major issues found. Upgrading confluence would have been really simple if we wanted to retain the same server....
Repeatability is a intuitive aspect of daily life. If you throw a ball up, it must come down. If you throw it twenty times, the same thing will happen, up and then down. When repeatability doesn't occur we get anxious. Repeatability is equally an essential quality in...
Whenever I get a chance to see any kind of motor racing I am amazed at how many displays the engineers use to watch and monitor all the data coming from the cars. Modern performance racing cars produce a lot of data about the engine, tires, fuel consumption,...
Macs running OS X have been around for quite some time, but only recently have they gained enough traction with our customers at SPK to be used as their day to day desktop environment. Historically, IT organizations have been reluctant to embrace this change. This...
