Joe Hackman

Joe Hackman

Digital Transformation, Industry 4.0, Tesla, maker, and more...

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5 Reasons to Use Bit.ly

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URL Shortening is a must in the age of 140 character micro blogging. Many have come to learn that it is really an art form to get peoples attention, get them to read your 140 character snippet and click your link to get more. This challenge can be made a little easier with the URL shortener http://bit.ly, the 5 reasons for this are:

  1. Tidy’s up large URL’s and makes them much more compact.
  2. Provides you with robust statistics on not only who clicks your link but other bit.ly links
  3. Allows you to share your links on Twitter
  4. Provides conversational data from Friend Feed and Twitter
  5. Provides api key for other content aggregation sites such as twitterfeed.com

Check out my screen-cast for a detailed demonstration:

Your Parent’s Guide to RSS

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In my day to day travels both personally and professionally I am often encouraging people to check out and use certain social media sites and blogs. When I mention RSS it seems like a lot of my audience drops off comprehension wise. In response to this I’ve come up with a video that your parents could use to understand and use RSS and more specifically Google Reader. The video will get into detail but it will be useful for people who:

  • Might want to get updated content from certain web and blog sites.
  • Like to organize all of their media content in one place when possible.
  • Don’t know what RSS is but would like to be able to explain it to others.
  • Want to learn more about blogging and how the content gets delivered.
  • Have an interest in Feedburner for promoting their blog and RSS feed.

Windows 7 is Ready for Business

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It has been a long time since we’ve recommended an initial release of a Microsoft Operating system for business use but we’ve reached that plateau again with Windows 7. We are encouraging our clients to implement Windows 7 when replacing existing systems. There are of course always exceptions to this recommendation, the most important being resource intensive older software applications such as design and cad software. They need to be evaluated for compatibility prior to making the shift. Your basic business machine will happily function with 7, and worse case you can offer reliable compatibility through the Windows XP Compatibility Mode.

If you are considering upgrading existing machines to Windows 7 or purchasing a new computer with Windows 7 installed feel free to contact us for an honest, experienced opinion on what you might want to consider in the process. You don’t have to be a customer or become one, but we’re pretty confident that once you get to know us you will want to be one.

Has Hell Frozen Over?

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Not long ago we were reading how Mozilla Firefox had more exploits than Internet Explorer and today I am prepared to go out on a limb and recommend a point release of a Microsoft Operating system. What the heck is going on in Redmond? What happened to our churn the product out and let the customers find the bugs then patch the frequent security issues 2 months after they hit the wild company we grew to love? Apparently they have been listening to feedback and have made unprecedented improvements in product quality and security maybe we should send them a thank you card. Wait a minute, before we decide who we should thank, let’s look at some of the motivation that is driving the changes – namely competition. Apple has put up a very strong showing with their industry standard design and solid performance. This has created market share for them at a very fast pace. Google and Microsoft are also heating up the competition in a number of areas but perhaps most importantly the operating system arena with the upcoming Google Chrome Operating system. So before you mail your thank you card to Redmond, let’s remember that without strong competition they would not have been quite as anxious to improve their products.

Now on to the substance, Windows 7 is ready for Business

We skipped Vista, don’t get me wrong we used it and we knew it but we did not advise any of our customers to use Vista at any point of the product cycle. In fact we made efforts to have them avoid it, basically advising our customers that Windows XP was the way to go for business. That has all changed thanks to the fantastic work that Microsoft has put into making the point release of Windows 7 my favorite operating system ever. Yes I am excited about Microsoft product again, it’s been a long time but I am grateful because I’ve had a love/hate relationship with them for years. My relationship with Microsoft has had its ups and downs:

• DOS was ok.
• Windows 3.x was ok.
• Windows NT (3.x) was ok.
• Windows NT (4) was ok.
• Windows 95 loved it.
• Windows 98 was ok.
• Windows ME hated it!
• Windows 2000 loved it.
• Windows XP mostly loved it.
• Windows Vista mostly hated it.
• Windows 7 Love it!

So as you can see, without getting into disasters like Bob, or the security lapses, etc, the ups and downs I’ve experienced with Microsoft Operating systems have been significant. Please don’t tell Balmer that I like Windows 7, I want them to continue to think like they have been since they started working on Windows 7. Let’s let this be our secret.