Justin Beck, the developer that made the Parallel Kingdoms game will be talking about his experiences developing for the iPhone. This is to be at the University Wisconsin Madison on Thursday, May 7th at 4pm.
Category: Tech Articles
All technology. Would cover information technology, cybersecurity, privacy, programming or web/application development, risk, gadgets, data and more.
Information Technology – Its a Lifestyle
I often run in to people that are on the prowl for a new career, or maybe they’re just entering the job market for the first time since they worked at the local grocery store as a teenager. They do some research, talk to their friends and family, and eventually hear the buzz that IT is the way to go. Computers, that’s where it’s at. According to some institutions you can earn up to 70k a year as a starting salary after a few months of classes. Hell! It must be the way to go. Right? Yo, don’t believe the hype. Moving forward.
Some people that will read this, or stumble upon it, will realize that this will not apply to everyone within the IT field. I don’t want to insult anyone. Hear me out.
You can certainly attend a college, and I’d encourage it. You need to have the formal background. It’s the society we live in; and our society, sometimes, has standards. Formal education is one of them. However, as stated in the title of this article, IT is a lifestyle.
You can go to college and learn how to do accounting. *rolls eyes* 🙂 You get a job doing Accounts Receivables or Bookkeeping and earn a decent living. If you enjoy it, great! Most people don’t go home and do more accounting or learn how to do accounting better. Their industry may change, specifically around guidelines and new policies such as Sarbanes Oxley, certain practices, etc, but the principles really stay the same. (I may be off the mark, this is my interpretation and I’m not an accountant. Thank Buddha.) Not in IT. It’s the fastest moving industry out there. The speed in which the industry moves defines the word technology. To be on top of that, you have to not only embrace it, but you also have to plug in and immerse yourself in to it.
It is not always the case, but the best programmers out there are ones that do it all the time. The only time they’re not thinking of code is when they’re sleeping, and that’s debatable. It would not surprise me if some actually dream in code. They go to groups, attend seminars and conferences, read books, and code. The programmers that are ‘good’ do it as a job and have an analytical mind. But to be exceptional…you breathe it. The same holds true, in my opinion, for sys admins and support individuals. Sure, the help desk is what it is; but you can still go home, read digg.com, manage your own super-cool home network, and be far above the rest of your peers at work because you’re living it.
Again, I post this topic because I often go to job fairs and come across all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds. Some get it and some don’t. In the end, to be an exceptional IT professional you have to have a passion for it. You have to really be fascinated about the different technologies out there and how they work. You will progress in your field. Those that love what they do, and have passion for doing it, will excel. The money will come.
Yammer
I was listening to the Web2.0 podcast that featured an interview with Yammer founder, David Sacks. I had heard of Yammer as a buzz word, but after listening to the podcast it really intrigues me.
In brief, Yammer is very similar to twitter. Some may argue that it is a direct rip off of the microblogging web app. It’s a microblogging app. You can post up to a certain amount of characters. Twitter is geared towards anyone talking about anything. Yammer is trying to appeal to the business side of the world. The model is to register with your business email. You then become part of that domain’s group. This allows you to set up groups, and ultimately share corporate ideas and communique.
As mentioned in the podcast episode, had Yammer come before email I think it would have been more accepted. And lets keep in mind that Yammer is not to replace email, but compliment it by reducing mass forwards/replies and uncertain group emails because you’re not sure who would cover the subject at hand. It can also be administered with better control. Email can be sent to anyone. Have that corporate secret in the body? Guess what, that can be sent right out the door with very little knowledge from executives. How’s that for scary? Yammer is for the corporate users and is not ‘sent’ anywhere. It’s almost like a bulletin board system with groups. More static, without the message being flown all over the web-o-sphere. Liability itself would be more controlled. Something inappropriate gets posted and you can delete it. Try recovering that email and you’ll see the benefit.
Rumor Mill-MATC iPhone Curriculum
It’s not official, and I asked my contact if it was ok to spread the word, but he never gave me a direct no. So I took it upon myself to say that they are attempting to implement a Developement for Mobile Platforms class. Excuse the title, but it will be something similar. Basically they’re wanting to put an iPhone Development class together. This will teach folks how to develop, share, and deploy iPhone apps. The title of the class will be mobile platform development of some kind which will allow them to change the curriculum of the class to other platforms of mobile computing.
This is not in place…yet. My source is reliable and I’m not making this up. Timeline is for fall of 09.
IE7 Flaw
CNet reports another flaw in IE7. Funny, they said they just had a patch available last week to fix some issues. People using computers need to be aware of this. You wouldn’t keep driving a car if it had problems, and then still buy from the same dealership, would you?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10166151-83.html
Virtual Box
If you are looking to try out a few operating systems, I can’t recommend Virtual Box by Sun.
I own a Macbook pro and have started delving in to web design/development. I thought it would be good to run Windows and hated Boot Camp. Having to reboot to use an OS sucked, and with virtualization you can just boot the VM and switch between active windows right in OSX. The school I attend allows students to use VMWare’s product, but it’s only good for 180 days before you have to buy it or enter another key. I think. Virtual Box is free, with no restrictions.
The installation of Virtual Box was smooth and the XP installation on a virtual machine went great. I was quite surprised. The screen size/resolution was a bit off at first, but you run the tools app for Virtual Box and it takes care of the issue allowing the host window to resize the vm’s window on the fly by just dragging. Nice. You can even get sound and network to pass through the host and vm with very little fuss. No headaches = good for me and good for you.
I was stoked on how it worked that I downloaded Windows7 beta to install on a VM just because I could.
Hell, I haven’t posted to the blog for a while so you can tell how this product has impressed me.
MS Internet Explorer
Why do people insist on using this browser? It has to be lack of education. Educate someone…
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155551/internet_explorer_is_unsafe_still.html
Core i7: Fastest processor ever nearly here!
The launch of yet another new CPU architecture from Intel is nearly upon us. But what exactly can you expect when Core i7, the processor formerly known as Nehalem, arrives next month?
Zimbra Next Generation Email
I was doing a search on Wisconsin on one of the blogs and realized the University of Wisconsin was using this email collaboration suite, Zimbra. It looks as though it has been purchased by Yahoo. This open source project handles many features using AJAX and provides many advantages over traditional email clients. The back end makes it even more interesting. I have been using Gmail, but I question it’s security so I may be giving this a try.
Check it out for yourself: http://www.zimbra.com/
Open Source Alternatives
Please tell me that being in the IT profession that you’re aware of the open source movement. You may not only be aware of the movement, but you may also be working with open source technologies on a day-to-day basis. If that is the case, great! This probably does not pertain to you.
For those that have heard it, or heard of it and have not delved to far into some of the products that is provided to everyone via open source, keep reading.
The big one is linux. I won’t go in to the history and marketing of the open source operating system, but it’s the first thing that came to me when I first heard of open source. It has come a long ways since the days when it kicked my butt all over the place when I tried installing it years ago. Check out the many distributions of linux and how it can be a useful operating system to you or a friend or a family member. Oh, and it’s free.
Open Office is a great office suite of applications. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet application, presentation software, and database application that you can download for free. I have to admit that I use the spreadsheet and word processor applications the most. Oh, and I have it loaded on my mac’s OS X, Windows XP, AND my desktop pc that runs ubuntu linux! This is a must recommend to any that need a solid word processor (wp) that supports many file formats and they can’t afford $60+ for basic wp functions.
There are just too many open source products out there not to check into versus spending money on a commercial application. Don’t get me wrong, each has their advantages and disadvantages, but it’s good to know that both are available. Many people don’t even know that. As IT professionals it’s up to us to educate users about the industry and what is available.