Square Defangs Difficult Decisions with this System — Here’s How | First Round Review. A decade ago, Gokul Rajaram fundamentally changed the way he makes decisions. Then a product management director for Google AdSense, he was presenting to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. A gnarly challenge related to Google’s display ads business surfaced, and the discussion got heated. Schmidt’s voice boomed, “Stop. Who’s responsible for this decision?” Ten years and three companies later, Rajaram still recalls and references that moment. Throughout his career, Rajaram has noticed how a lot of forward-thinking companies still gravitate to consensus as the way to make decisions. Consensus means no ownership. Why Difficult Decisions Deserve A Framework The decision-making framework that Rajaram uses assumes a tough choice must be made. This basic chart can help establish shared definitions of priority and ideally relegate scenarios to ballpark categories that’ll help determine how you’ll invest resources to make the decision.
Setting Precisely define the decision to capture the “what.” People.
Debate. Communication. Meetings. Management. Development. Collaboration. DIY: Deploy the Zimbra Desktop Client for a solid groupware experience. The open source Zimbra Desktop Client offers all of the email/calendaring/task/social networking functionalities that small businesses need to make a groupware solution useful. Most small businesses don't have the budget for a tool like Exchange, and the tools within their budget don't usually offer the necessary features.
One exception is the open source VMware Zimbra Desktop Client, which has many of the features that are available in the standard groupware clients and a little more. The tool can do Email, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Briefcase, and Social networking. The feature list includes: General: Cross platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), no email storage limit, tagging system for all features, powerful filtering system.Email: Connect to most POP/IMAP accounts (including Exchange IMAP), supports plain text and HTML, on-line and off-line composition.Calendar: Syncs Zimbra, Yahoo! You can also upload files, check in files, tag files, include social network accounts, and more. Requirements.
Which is less expensive: Amazon or self-hosted? Updated. Amazon Web Services (AWS), as the trailblazing provider of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), has changed the dialog about computing infrastructure. Today, instead of simply assuming that you’ll be buying and operating your own servers, storage and networking, AWS is always an option to consider, and for many new businesses, it’s simply the default choice.
I’m a huge fan of cloud computing in general and AWS in particular. But I’ve long had an instinct that the economics of the choice between self-hosted and cloud provider had more texture to it than the patently attractive sounding “10 cents an hour,” particularly as a function of demand distribution. To tease out a more nuanced view of the economics, I’ve built a detailed Excel model that analyzes the relative costs and sensitivities of AWS versus self-hosted in the context of different load profiles.
In a subsequent post, I will share the model and describe how you can use it for scenarios of interest to you. Review: Wiebetech Drive eRazer Ultra (Verdict: sweet!) Are you the "tech guy" in your family? If so, a lot of responsibility come with the title. I don't know about you, but I get requests to fix everything from my family and friend's computers, printers, even televisions! Plenty of times the result of the "fix the computer" call is me taking away a sad old PC to be recycled. When this happens I usually take the retired PC to Goodwill (who recycles PCs for free) but I always remove the hard drive first.
Regardless of the state of the PC or the hard drive, I always wipe the hard drive before recycling it. It's obvious, but the hard drive usually contains all kids of sensitive data, from financial data (like credit card numbers), to passwords and logins, to seemingly mundane things like email -- which are pirate booty to a hacker.
ZDNET's Robin Harris noted that there are legal implications to being promiscuous with used hard drives: Enter the Drive eRazer Ultra ($249) from Wiebetech. What do you use to wipe drives before you dispose of them?
Virtual, Visual, Vital Online Communications: Sococo. 10 Google search secrets. Visualization. Air Display for iPad and Android: Great cheap 2nd monitor (review) Air Display Android setup Having enough screen real estate while working on laptops can be challenging, especially for those used to multiple monitor setups back in the office. Having a second monitor can be especially beneficial when working on laptops on the go. Owners of iPads and Android tablets have a cheap method at hand to turn those slates into wireless monitors for both Mac and Windows laptops. The Air Display app is available for the iPad for $9.99, and the Android version costs the same. Both apps turn the appropriate tablet into a second monitor for Mac and Windows that connects to the laptop via Wi-Fi. After only a couple of minutes, the Air Display local service can be toggled on which initiates a search on the local Wi-Fi network for tablets running Air Display.
The iPad or Android tablet is treated by either OS X or Windows 7 as an external monitor, with full OS control over the display. Displaying Sparrow (Mac) on the iPad TweetDeck Mac (Transformer Prime) and MacBook.
ALM. OS X Tips: Useful Mac utilities | Page 7.