February, 2012
-
“Haters Gonna Hate” or The World According to Vlad Mazek
It’s true, I’m leaving my Editor post here at Looks Cloudy and my VP role with the ExchangeDefender family. I’m moving on to new adventures (to be announced shortly). You may have read Vlad’s “flattering” post from earlier this week sending me off in true Mazek style. I don’t mind, I think it ended up [...]
-
Kate Cloudy (Guest Post by Steve Noel)
As you may have heard today, Kate is moving on to a new position. The good news is she isn’t really going away from the channel. The bad news is she will be missed here. By here I mean Looks Cloudy which is where I really got to know her. I knew Kate when she [...]
-
Rain Makers, The Weather Report
Are the Trucks Still Rolling? (Guest Post by Brian Sherman)
When managed services were first introduced to the IT industry, several pundits suggested that this new technology would eventually put onsite support companies out of business. Of course, that prediction required that devices and network components would never fail, and basically assumed that the client’s staff would have a role in maintaining the systems, and [...]
-
More Musings on the Post-PC Era for Business IT: When the User Shouldn’t Have Control
Sarah Perez wrote on TechCrunch yesterday that we are already in the Post-PC era. This, she contends, is evidenced by what I’ve called the “rogue” mobile device trend in workplace, and some new Forrester research illustrating that trend. The key point that the Perez made was that the post-PC era means more devices, and means [...]
-
Application Kill Switch: Coming Soon to A Windows 8 Machine Near You
A kill switch is a security mechanism used to shut off a device in an emergency situation in which it cannot be shut down in the usual manner. Not only is it an exciting and dangerous sounding term, but a kill switch is also kind of a scary concept when we combine it with our [...]
-
The Red Queen’s Hypothesis And Your IT Business
In a scene from Lewis Carroll’s classic Through the Looking-Glass, known as “the Red Queen’s Race,” the Red Queen herself famously says: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” The scene and the line have been used to illustrate a number of different situations in different fields, but [...]
-
Google Tracking Cookies May ALSO Be Bypassing IE9 Browser Privacy Settings…More Questions Raised About the Search Giant’s Practices
We wrote at the end of last week about a breaking item from the Wall Street Journal that Google Has Been “Bypassing” Safari Browser Privacy Settings to Track Web Browsing. Last week the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Google (and others) have been bypassing the privacy settings of Apple’s popular Safari web browser [...]
-
Quest Software Enters Crowded PSA Market: Is RMM The DMZ for MSPs? (Guest Post by Steve Noel)
Quest Software, makers of PacketTrap MSP announced in a press release that they have purchased BlueFolder, and are launching a new product called PacketTrap PSA. Below is a quote from their press release. “With this acquisition, Quest will offer the first end-to-end managed service provider (MSP) business management solution that will provide robust, remote monitoring [...]
-
Rain Makers, The Weather Report
Google Has Been “Bypassing” Apple Browser Privacy Settings to Track Web Browsing But Stopped Once Someone Figured It Out (?!?)
Yes, we all want to believe that when we “opt out” of things like having our web browsing activities tracked, our wishes are respected. However, the reality of this actually happening, at least with Google, may be in question today. The story is on The Wall Street Journal’s tech page today that Google (and others) [...]
-
Author Karl Palachuk to Host 3-Day Online Conference for Computer Consultants
Everybody is buzzing about today’s announcement that best-selling technology author Karl Palachuk is hosting a 3-day online conference for computer consultants in June 2012. The conference will focus on building successful business processes and will feature some of the best business and technology speakers in the U.S. The conference will focus on building successful business [...]
-
iPhone and iPad Apps Need to Be Different Because People Use Them Differently
Today CNET published a piece discussing some research from Zite, the maker of a popular magazine app that was named one of the New York Times’ best iPad apps of 2011. It shows very different usage patterns for the company’s digital magazine app on the iPhone and iPad, which I find very interesting. Mobile technology [...]
-
Could Twitter Be the Future of Breaking News?
Twenty seven minutes before the “real” media got a handle on the news, Twitter lit up with news of singer and icon Whitney Houston’s death. According to this piece on Mashable, the very first report was from a man who tweeted it to his 14 followers, at 430pm PT Saturday. And from there it grew. [...]
-
Dispelling Two Major Misconceptions About “Big Data” and the Future of SMB Data and Application Continuity with Justin Moore, CEO of Axcient
I recently got to speak with Axcient’s CEO Justin Moore, regarding the company’s performance in 2011, plans for 2012, and their mission of protecting SMBs from data loss and business downtime. As we chatted, we discussed two ideas about “big data” in general that seem to be influencing SMB adoption. Moore addressed them both. 1) [...]
-
When is a Value Proposition Not a Value Proposition?
When it’s not customer-focused. I’ve done quite a lot of learning about sales, customer service, and relationship management, but personally happen to be fond of the Question Based Selling series written by Thomas A. Freese, which is the general inspiration for what I’m about to share with you: Being customer-focused really means just one thing: [...]
-
If You Keep Looking, You’ll Find It
Marketing is hard for everybody. It doesn’t matter who you are. In every industry, selling every kind of product and service, to businesses and to consumers, Marketing…is…hard. The most common mistake that derails many marketers from the get-go is failure to really understand who the customers are. If your customers are anything at all like [...]
