jumpSLIDE blog

Good Resource for Electronic Recycling

2008-08-28T15:39:00.001-07:00

Here's a new site I just heard about which has some very helpful resources to help you recycle your old electronic equipment. http://earth911.org/electronics/

PC Magazine Rates Green Computers

2008-03-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

PC Magazine just introduced a "Green Approved Seal" for computers. While the major power saving for computers is going to be in data centers and server closets (the so-called Green Grid), there are things you should consider when purchasing your laptops and desktops, and PC Mag has done a good job putting together a lot of consumer info around this. Most of their articles are focused on the home user and small/medium business space. Certainly worth perusing.

Their special coverage is here, or skip directly to the machines they give their "Green Approved Seal" to.

jumpSLIDE's 2007 Roundup

2007-12-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

We've had a great year at jumpSLIDE, thanks to our clients and partners. So THANKS! It's been a busy year for sure, with plenty of desktop support, office relocations and buildouts, phone system installations, and more. It's been exciting to help so many companies and non-profits in the Bay Area grow.

Early in the year we complimented our online ticketing system with remote desktop support software, which many of you have benefited from--now I can help you with your computer issues from wherever I may be: Tahoe, Calcutta, Bangkok, or Tuscany (though it's most likely from right here in the sunny Mission district). I've also added a blog to the site, as you can see, where I try to post helpful, interesting, or just flat out nerdy posts about various things, somewhat technological.

Sort of on the scary side, I've had to recover data and rebuild from several server crashes this year--typical for an average year I would say. But couple that with my training for SF's Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) program, and you can understand why I've been pretty focused on disaster recovery. We've recently partnered with eVault to offer an auto backup solution for critical data, and I'll be in touch with those of you for which this solution is feasible about it soon (you need to be using a Windows Server for this service).

Finally, while I don't have much to give (pa-rump-a-pum-pum), I can pass on this 15% off flyer for the be+cause studio store, where you may notice the jumpSLIDE signatures of technology you all know and love: discreet wiring, a VoIP phone system, a remote business network linking several offices, and redundant fileservers. Not to mention beautiful women (my wife of course) and cool clothes and accessories. Just print out this flyer for your discount, and don't miss the holiday open house tomorrow.

Wishing you all the best this holiday season,
Jon Voss
jumpSLIDE networks

Save time when scheduling big meetings

2007-11-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

This might be a helpful tool when trying to coordinate several people from different organizations for a meeting:

http://www.chaos365.com/2006/10/19/time-saving-meeting-scheduler/

upgrade to Leopard

2007-11-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

I use a MacBook when traveling or at clients, not 9-5, so it was a good machine to test the Leopard upgrade on. I was also really looking forward to "having more fun and being more productive," as they said would happen in their video guide to Leopard.

But just from a nuts and bolts perspective, I wanted to post to report on what issues I've had since the upgrade. There haven't been many, which is good. Just to be sure though, I used SuperDuper! to make an image of my MacBook if I needed to go back for any reason.

One of my main concerns was Parallels, but that came through the upgrade fine. The only issues I've discovered so far are:
1. I lost my Brother tools for printing and scanning to my Brother 8860DN. I'll let you know if that comes back up on reinstall.
2. The parental controls have changed significantly, and I have yet to figure out how to get those working again. I discovered this one when my 7 year old logged into his account and was surfing the net free and clear, which he was excited about of course.

I'll add comments once I get these things resolved, and let you know what else I discover.

Jon

My kind of technology

2007-08-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

The Globe and Mail covers some of the technology in use by Students for a Free Tibet during their Olympic campaign. Go Lhadon!

an excerpt from the article:

By using the internet to circumvent Chinese censors, the Students for a Free Tibet -- including three Canadians -- sent live cellphone videos of them rappelling down the Great Wall of China and unfurling a banner that read “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” back to New York using the internet software Skype.

The video was almost instantly posted onto YouTube, and just like that, they had an immediate and global audience for their cause.

“This type of activism -- allowing people to witness something spectacular, make them take notice and ask further questions -- it's an age-old tactic that activists use, but what's different now is that these tools allow groups like Students for a Free Tibet to get their message out rapidly and not through filters of mainstream media or government censors,” said Ron Deibert, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

Workstation Ergonomics

2007-07-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

Since I work with a lot of people that are at their desk all day, and I've spent a lot of years of my life at a desk already, I have lots of opinions on things like office Feng Shui, ergonomics, inter-office politics, the spirituality of crisis, etc. But to keep it short, here’s my .02 on workstation ergonomics.

First, are you sure you want to use computers and work at a desk all day?

But if you must work at a computer, this is what I recommend:

You basically want to be in the praying mantis position from tai chi: back straight, shoulders dropped and loose, wrists slightly higher than elbows, and hands dropped. To that end, this is what I use:

1. Use stands or mounts to get the top of your monitor(s) at eye level, which eliminates neck strain, which often goes down into your back and shoulders.

2. Use an Aeron or similar chair and adjust it so that you comfortably sit up straight, and the arm rests can support your elbows in a natural position.

3. Use the Design Within Reach Soho Keyboard System, and set it up so that your mouse is within natural radius of your arm (and use a padded mini wrist rest there), and the keyboard itself should be tilted downward toward your monitor. This is what makes this keyboard tray one of the best—you can adjust the keyboard not only where you want it horizontally and left and right, but also at the tilt that is the most comfortable.

4. Use an ergonomic split-key keyboard, though I find that a regular keyboard feels fine on the Soho Keyboard System above.

5. Always use a headset if you use the phone much at all.

6. If you are at your desk most of the day, schedule short stretching exercises on your Outlook, Blackberry, iCal or whatever to remind you to move around every hour.

Some of these adjustments may seem a bit pricey, but I started using this combo in 2000 when I started getting back pains and it has been an investment that has really paid off for me.

Additionally, here's a great resource from Boston University's Office of Environmental Health and Safety.
http://www.bu.edu/ehs/ergonomics/selfhelpguide/helpguideindex.html

How jumpSLIDE is Greening the Grid

2007-04-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of talk in the IT world recently about "greening the grid," and exciting new collaborative efforts to look at reducing power consumption from the desktop to the data center.

We're doing our part at jumpSLIDE networks where we think that SMB technology consultants can play a major role in reducing energy consumption. About 3 years ago, we added a 2.5kw solar array to our home/office in the sunny San Francisco Mission district. At the time, we were putting a new roof on our house when we chose to not only go solar but also reinforce and insulate our roof for better energy efficiency. The solar system, which uses cogeneration and time of use metering to sell power back to PG&E brought our then $120/mo electric bill down to $0.

After the first year, we learned that if you produce more energy than you consume, PG&E takes the difference, rather than giving you a credit you can use on your natural gas, or giving transferrable credits you can donate to a non-profit or use at another business location. To me, that's criminal. So instead of giving away our power to PG&E, I have brought a lot of our development machines inhouse.

While we continue to maintain servers at a colocation facility with failover power, etc. and do our hosting externally through Bluehost, we run about 4 development servers on a rack here, where we can utilize our surplus solar power.

It's our hope that soon battery optimization of hybrid vehicles will become more affordable and accessible so that our Toyota Highlander Hybrid (seen in Geek My Ride) can plug in at night to use some of that power as well.

Until then, we're enjoying life in the sun. And on the test bench for later in 2007 is a quiet and energy-efficient desktop system that's Vista-ready.

Project: Go Solar

2007-04-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

How we did it:

1. Get inspired. Check out Dwell Magazine and see some of the cool applications of energy efficient appliances in your home/office.
2. Do your research on what kind of state/federal/local incentives are out there to make your project more affordable. Usually your prospective vendors will help you here.
3. Talk to multiple vendors and negotiate. We're lucky to be in the Bay Area, where it was easy for me to get quotes on our project from 3 different vendors, which allowed me to get the best price from the vendor I liked the most. The bidding process is also your best chance to get lots of information for free. Potential vendors will help you size your array and find the best location (you've got to have southern exposure!). We used: Occidental Power and were really happy with their work.
4. Include solar or other energy efficient measures in other improvement jobs to save costs. We put in solar and insulated our roof when we needed to replace the roof. Doing so probably saved us thousands of dollars.

How To: Go Solar (From Wired Magazine January 2007)

You may not be the first on your block to install photovoltaics, but you can be extra-smart about your D.I.Y. project.

* Evaluate your access to the sun. If a few of the cells on a panel end up in the shade, power generation can drop by 85 to 90 percent.
* Choose the right system. Want a house that produces all of its own electricity? Opt for monocrystalline or polycrystalline panels. They're the most efficient – and the most expensive. Amorphous photovoltaics are roughly half the price but only about half as efficient. If you can't bear the appearance of those big black roof slabs, go with building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). Your normal-looking roof and windows become solar catchers.
* Optimize your positioning. One rule of thumb: Subtract 20 degrees from your latitude to find the best angle for mounting. In Seattle, latitude 47 degrees north, you'd want to install your panels at a 27-degree angle facing due south.
* Pump it up a notch and install a solar collector, a kind of water heater that sits on your roof. An antifreeze-like liquid runs through the collector and then through pipes down to your storage tank, translating warmth from the sun into steam in the shower.

ctrl+alt+del on Parallels

2007-04-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

another Parallels tip:

Use Ctrl-Alt-Fn-Backspace.

Note, that it's necessary to press keys exactly in that sequence. E.g. Fn-Ctrl-Alt-Backspace won't work.

Right click on Parallels

2007-04-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Something I kept meaning to look up and finally did, how to right click when using Windows on a Mac via Parallels (as of at least build 3188): shift+ctrl and click.

Project: Geek my Ride

2007-03-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

How to use my Sprint PPC 6700 to stream live audio to car stereo

I realized the other day when I had to drive from San Francisco to Fremont, about an hour's drive, that I could actually stream live audio from my Pocket PC the whole way as that entire trip is within Sprint's EVDO network. At the time, I was just using KCRW's Window's Media stream, which I found via an advanced search through one of my favorite sites, Public Radio Fan (on the advanced tab you can select what's on now in a particular format, and you can also search by station).

Of course to do any of this, you need to be plugged in to something because the battery on the Pocket PC sucks. I use the iGo power system I picked up at RadioShack, since you can buy different extensions for different devices.

On this trip I was listening through my headset, which gets uncomfortable after awhile. So the next step was to hook up to the car stereo. This only took two things:
1. a 2.5mm male adaptor to 3.5mm female adaptor. I picked one up on eBay that specifically named compatability with the PPC6700.
2. a Monster 3.5 - audio cassette, which I picked up online for about $14 with shipping, you can get them for $20 on RadioShack.

So now I can stream audio on the road from any number of sites, but then I got to thinking, maybe it's time I set this up to get podcasts. There are ways to do straight from the PPC 6700 (See this MS Article), but I didn't really want to do it that way, seems like it would take too long. I'd rather have an app get the downloads and sync with my device when I'm plugged in. So this article helped show me how to do that.

Pimped my ride, geekstyle.