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Engineering Operations

Streamline Business Communication with Google Forms

Streamline Business Communication with Google Forms

Have you ever sent out an email with a bunch of important questions and received a reply that began with "my answers are in blue".  Have you then found yourself combing through your large email searching for those answers only to discover that your email provider...

5 Reasons to Use ntop for Network Management

5 Reasons to Use ntop for Network Management

One of the most critical aspects of your network infrastructure is how well it's performing. The question that I often get asked as a provider of infrastructure services is, "Am I getting the most out of my local network and my internet bandwidth?" This is the one...

Confluence upgrading to 4.0 from 3.8

Confluence upgrading to 4.0 from 3.8

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....

Improve your build, test and deployment with ElectricCommander

Improve your build, test and deployment with ElectricCommander

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...

Outsourcing is the Best Way to Stay Flexible, Even Elastic!

Outsourcing is the Best Way to Stay Flexible, Even Elastic!

The technology industry loves buzzwords. The decade of the '80s was all about synergy and paradigm shifts. In the '90s, it was the web and the Internet. The turn of the century brought talk about virtualization and social media. Today it's all about the cloud. Of...

Macs in a Corporate IT Environment

Macs in a Corporate IT Environment

­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...

To SSD or not to SSD

To SSD or not to SSD

What is an SSD? The term SSD (Solid State Drive), can refer to any drive that uses solid state components to store information, or more to the point - has no moving parts.  When we hear terms like 'Flash Drive' or 'Thumb Drive', we typically don't think SSD, but...

Seven Attitude Hacks for Better IT Service

Seven Attitude Hacks for Better IT Service

Attitudes are important things -- they are the lens through which we filter everything life throws at us, and they can either be the secret to our success or our undoing. We've all heard the stereotype that says IT professionals have bad attitudes, and maybe your own...

Why an Automated Development Process Benefits Developers

Why an Automated Development Process Benefits Developers

Automated development, rather than just automated builds, offers a more holistic approach to automating the development process including building, testing and deployment. It is the cornerstone of Continuous Integration (CI). CI uses a model of small incremental...

A Brief History of Automated Builds

A Brief History of Automated Builds

Almost every programming book starts with an example of a small program which can be compiled from the command line using a simple call to the compiler with maybe a few flags. Known as “Hello World”, the few lines of code needed to output the text is almost universal....

5 Minutes with Windows 8 and Office 2013

5 Minutes with Windows 8 and Office 2013

Dell Latitude ST This is the Dell Latitude ST, which can be had from the Dell Outlet store for about $300. It’s a 10-inch tablet slate running an Atom Z670 and 2GB of RAM – like a Netbook without a keyboard. Instead, it has an N-trig digitizer that supports both...