Mariannes Motifs

Are you a Techie? Check out my Newest Site - Beyond Messaging

I have been blogging here since 1996, but I always avoided blogging about technical subjects.  I felt that my technical expertise (I am an email administrator and collaborative computing specialist) was the property of my employer and since I didn't want to mention them in my personal blog it was best to just avoid the entire subject.

Since I am one of the many people they laid off in the past year (including people with 25 years and plus experience) I no longer have an employer to worry about.  Therefore I started a blog called Beyond Messaging.  In actuality I started the blog to help my jobsearch.  I have my resume (Domino and Exchange Administrator) posted, and have written some great posts about cloud computing, email, system administration tools, mobile devices for enterprise, as well as new features in Exchange 2011 and Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5.

So if you are interested in email architecture and collaborative computing give Beyond Messaging a look.

Musing About Clout

Seth Godin has an interesting post on his blog today entitled "Clout."  He discusses the idea that somewhere out there are statistics on your followers, readers, friends and contacts, and in general those could in some way calculate your web clout.  Then by knowing who of your readers/followers/subscribers/friends has the most clout you could write content that would speak to them.

This idea is a little bit disturbing to me in a world where rich people and actors achieve celebrity simply by virtue of...  well sometimes I don't know what they are famous for.  Ashton Kucher, any "star" of The Hills, John and Kate Plus 8, the Octomom....  these folks have people hanging on their every word.  They have tons of web clout as defined by Godin.  Yes, scary.

The web does not have any filter for quality.  Like our society, it is a mish mash melting pot and sometimes sinks to the lowest common denominator.  (A polar bear pooing in the water is one of today's viral videos for example.) 

Well to me some of the "cloutyest" people on the net are just polar bears pooing in the water.  Yes, I said it.

Professional Website Now Open For Business

I am ramping up my jobsearch by creating a professional website/blog called Beyond Messaging.  I am posting tech tips for IT managers and network administrators.  The site also contains links to my resume, and LinkedIn profile.  Where this blog will remain my personal weblog, Beyond Messaging will be my professional face to the world.

While the primary focus might be from the viewpoint of an Email Architect the site will branch out into emerging technologies such as social media, instant messaging, and mobile devices.

Who's Running Out to Get Windows 7?

I spent the last few days learning about the new features coming in Microsoft Exchange 2010.  (They have a beta out now).  Some of the cool features include built in support for archiving, and something called "mailtips," which is kind of a pop-up to stop people from doing dumb things like replying to all to a large group of people by mistake.

Microsoft is never resting in it's efforts to make us forget how sucky Window's Vista is, so they have released Windows 7 today.  Run don't walk to your nearest retailer.  Or on the other hand, maybe wait until other people try it and figure out what's wrong with it first.  :-)

Cobian Backup Review - Free and It Really Works

Remember back when my house was hit by lightning.  Twice.  Yeah, that was me.  Wiped out my entire hard drive.  Anyway, I had been backing up my computer files with Cobian backup 8 which is a free open source product that is easy to use to schedule backup jobs.  For example I had it set to back up the contents of my one external hard drive to to the other external hard drive weekly.  I then used the external to save all my data files such as the family pictures.

Well... I finally got around to extracting the zip files from my backup and restoring all the data that had been wiped out in the disaster.  I spend the afternoon restoring 14 4 GB chunks of data.  (I had broken it up that way to be able to fit on DVDs, although it was on one external hard drive.  It worked like a charm and was very easy to do, if a bit repetitive on my part.

Now I am going to re-organize and set up a new backup job so that the next time something like this should happen (knock on wood it doesn't) I will sure to have good fresh backups.

Now I've Seen Everything Edition

What do you do if you are horse mad, and looking for that special man or woman to share your equestrian hobby?  How about equestrian cupid the singles web site for horse lovers.  I personally have known quite a few people who really love horses and riding, and taking care of their animals and equipment takes up so much of their time and interest there might not be a lot of time left over for relationships.  This site might be perfect for someone like that as they could do the things they love together with their date and see how it goes.

The site features forums, web blogs, personal profiles, and even equestrian electronic greeting cards.  Run by Successfulmatch this site is one of a number of niche dating sites they operate. At this time they are offering a FREE sign-up to try the service.   If you sign up and provide credit card or paypal information be aware to read the fine print regarding any auto-renewals. 

Sharing a hobby is a great way to have togetherness with your significant other.  What a clever idea to have a dating site that already guarantees that all the participants share their hobby from the get go.

Click free Web Searching with LeapFish

As a person with carpal tunnel syndrome, I more than a lot of people try to avoid extraneous clicking of the mouse.  My motto is: if your hands are on the keyboard, keep them on the keyboard, if your hands are on the mouse, keep them on the mouse."  Yes, I love keyboard shortcuts, and I typically hit the enter key instead of clicking a button with the mouse. 

However, sometimes the focus isn't in the right place, and the hand has to move over to the mouse. 

A new search engine, called LeapFish, takes the search button out of the picture.  It starts giving you results as you type.  For the texting generation, used to predictive text, this makes a lot of sense. 

There is also a LeapFish Blog which has some very interesting insights from Behnam Behrouzi, president and CEO of LeapFish.  I think their advertising model is interesting - they are actually selling ownership of keywords for a one time price.  Conceivably the value can then go up and it could be considered an investment.  Nice way for them to get seed money in the critical early stage of the site as well.

Acobay - Social Networking for your Stuff

Today I checked out a new social networking site called Acobay.  Why in the world would anyone need another networking site, you may ask?  Well, what makes Acobay different is that it is a social network for your STUFF.  Acobay bills itself as a  consumer network.  It helps you keep track of things you own, things you wish you own, places you have been, restaurants, and more.  You then can use the networking part of the equation to chat and discuss with people who have the same things as you do!

Its a sister site to Acobox, which is a really wonderful database of free images based on Drupal.  I reviewed Acobox previously and I find that use it all the time to put great looking public domain images on my blogs with about three mouse clicks.

Acobay has a similar clean look and feel to it - very refreshing.  I did wish for more pop-up help though as I was testing it out.  I set up a profile, and added my Sony DSC-T9, Wii Fit, and a few other items.  I added Rayman Raving Rabbids to my wish list.  I could see other people who had these items, and their comments, which adds a nice networking element to the application.  The also have a Stuff Map feature that serves as the main categorization for the site.

Here is a link to My Stuff on Acobay.

I used some of my famous Google-Fu and discovered that the brains behind Acobay are at a company called Acosys.  The have offices in Honk Kong  and Beijing.  They are a self-funded startup with arious projects in the works.  From the wording of their website I can tell that these guys are involved in some real cutting edge Web 2.0 projects.  I think the way they want bloggers to review their sites is also really great because they have you use the site and see what it is like so you can give a real review.

Website Security - Detect and Block Anonymous Proxy Users

Did you know that people who hit business sites using an anonymous proxy service are more likely to be attempting fraud?

An anonymous proxy service is a web site that allows users to go through their network to browse the internet so that their actual IP address is hidden.   Why would someone use an anonymous proxy service?  There are a few reasons.  Perhaps they are on a system that tracks their web usage and they want to avoid this tracking.  Or perhaps they are on a network that blocks certain sites and they want to get around that security.  I know that people in China can use proxy services to try to reach sites that are blocked by the government.  And yes, they can get in trouble for doing that if they care caught.  However, another not so innocent sounding use for an anonymous proxy service is committing fraud.

From the perspective of a company doing business on the net, it may be beneficial to block users who come to your site using an anonymous proxy service.   The quote below is from the ip2location.com web site.  Ip2location sells a product that detects and allows you to any IP address coming through to your site in this manner. 

Studies found that a large number of anonymous proxy users are generally responsible for online credit card fraud, forums and blogs spamming or defacing any visitor editable Web sites. More often than not they can be scammers, hackers or content thieves seeking only to prey on you and your legitimate Web site visitors.

They keep a proxy list of all these anonymous browsing services so that a site owner can block anonymous browsers.

FREE DEMO of Open Proxy Detection - look for the green check in the box below, it means that you are not using an anonymous proxy to read this blog.

 

Hosting Options for cheesyromance.com

I bought a new domain from GoDaddy with the intention of setting up a web community for Romance readers.  I call it cheesyromance.com and it will be based around me writing reviews of  the romance novels I read.  The name is a tongue in cheeck reference to the sort of brain candy reputation the genre has in intellectual circles.

I want the site to have a phpbb forum as well as a wordpress blog.  I am envisioning a place where people can chit chat about their favorite authors and books and even a place for budding romance authors to share tips on the business. 

My other blogs are set up with Typepad, which is so easy to use.  I love that ease of use.  However they just do blogs and only blogs and I need something more for the other features I need.

I signed up with nearlyfreespeech.net for the new domain but to tell you the truth, its nearly free for a reason - it's a bit hard to use!   If you like doing everything yourself its great.  But if you were looking for any shortcuts, forget it.  I installed

So I am shopping for a more full service hosting company, but one that won't cost me an arm and a leg.  My brother recommended DreamHost. Looking over the web hosting reviews on WebHostingGeeks.com I see that BlueHost looks like it might be a good fit for me as well. The Blue Host reviews were pretty good.