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Showing posts from May, 2008

Buying Servers

How hard can it be to buy a server? I've been buying servers for years and I've experienced several types of purchases. The Cheap and Nasty This is where you go out to your local computer shop and buy a no-name, unbranded "glorified PC" server. Luckily, this practice seems to have completely disappeared from medium and large size business but it still goes on in small shops. The thing to remember about this approach is that they end up costing you in the long run. The best I can say about this approach is ... don't. If you really have to go down this track, then don't buy a server. Spend the same money on a good "brand-name" PC with a decent warranty - at least 3 years on site, and 4 hour response time. Also, make sure that you have good backup software and that you backup often. The Enterprise Special This is the exact opposite of the "cheap and nasty". You end up effectively paying $30,000 for what is essentially $10,000 worth of har

How to Get a Cool Google Chat Icon on Your Blog or Web Page

I love Google Chat As a strong Lotus supporter, I know that I should be shouting "Sametime" but the fact is that I secretly love Google chat. Sure, there's no way it's as powerful as sametime and it's not as useful in the corporate sense of the word but as a family and friends tool, it's unbeatable. So, wouldn't it be nice to be able to put a "presence-aware" link to google chat on your blog or web page? The way to do this is surprisingly simple; You need to already have a google chat account (a gmail account). Go to this site http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New Play around with the settings on this page - there are several different types of "badges" When finished, copy the HTML Code from this page to your blog or website. Group Chats One thing that google chat didn't do until recently was group chats. It's all changed now and there are plenty of articles about how to start a group chat with Google Talk. The problem