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...
Some time ago, I wrote an article about CPUID’s wonderful tool, HWMonitor. Today I want to follow up on that and give a few tips on how to make it more useful. Firstly, HWMonitor is a free tool, but CPUID publishes a Professional version of the product, predictably...
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...
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...
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....
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has reported that its user database has been hacked and the encrypted passwords of 6+ million users have been stolen. Even though the password database was encrypted, users with weak passwords could be exposed with...
The time has finally come! Just a few days ago, major internet companies participated in IPv6 Launch Day – meaning from this point forward, they will be running their production systems and making their services available to you via the IPv6 in addition to IPv4....
Often times, I'm caught in a situation where an application or service is not directly accessible to me from the network I'm currently on. For instance, if I'm at a customer site, I may need VNC or RDP access to a collocated server. Sure, I could open up port 5901...
One of the more common requests I receive from users is that their computer is running slowly, or even worse, they're getting a popup saying that their machine is infected with a virus and Extreme AntiVirus 2013 can remove that virus for the low low cost of $39.95!...
I’m just going to come out and say it: I drank the Windows Phone 8 Kool-Aid. My coworkers mock me, and I accept this. But darn it, I want to believe! (and it tastes a lot better than what I was drinking before.) And it's certainly better than if I wandered over to the...
How Economizing can Hurt your Business There is a saying in some parts, “I am too poor to buy cheaply.” At first it sounds contradictory, but anyone who has bought something cheaply (electrical goods, car parts, computer equipment or any kind of service) and then...
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...
