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    Google’s new Chrome Browser Released!

    September 2nd, 2008

    Google released their new Chrome web browser shortly before the end of a video announcement about it at 11am PST.  I had the download page ready at the beginning of the video (http://www.google.com/chrome) and was only getting a “404 - not found” error.  At around 11:45a I hit refresh on it and there it was.  

    The install was amazingly fast and simple.  Didn’t even require a file that needed downloaded to my HDD and run from there.  The install launched directly out of my Firefox and was done in less than 1 minute. 

    It is very heavily based on Apple’s Safari Webkit engine.  Here is the HTTP_USER_AGENT from a test PHP page I made:

    “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13″

    Overall, I’ve always sort of liked Safari, but always had issues with minor glitches and random lagginess.  I’ve not encountered any issues at all with Chrome so far.  Google has probably done massive internal testing to insure that there are no obvious glitches and/or bugs.  The GUI is very simple and seems fully functional and the memory usage is EXCELLENT compared to Firefox.  

    I’ve had Firefox take up to 400-500mb RAM without much even going on.  Even just after starting Firefox is the Google homepage, it takes up 62mb RAM.  On my system, Chrome only consumed around 25mb.  

    The only thing I’ve run into when it comes to rendering is my company’s Intranet.  It is only optimized for IE and Firefox and looks pretty bad with Chrome/Safari but is still usable.

    All other sites I frequent are just fine, loading faster than ever.

    UPDATE 5pm EST:

    After running some memory tests, I opened up 4 tabs in Firefox, IE8, Chrome, Safari and Opera, which included logging into 2 of the sites and just displaying two others.

    Tab 1: My company’s ticketing system
    Tab 2: My personal GMail (Google Apps for Domains)
    Tab 3: This blog’s admin section login page only
    Tab 4: MSN Money Stock quotes with 6 stocks on it

    Firefox 3.0.1: 124.5mb RAM (1 thread)
    Firefox loaded everything pretty well, was a bit sluggish on GMail tab.

    IE8 (version 8.0.6001.17184): 95.5mb RAM (2 threads)
    IE8 loaded everything that it loaded pretty quick too, but completely failed to load GMail, getting stuck on the loading <Email adress> progress meter…  Rendering on the front page of my company’s site was screwed up, but was fine in all other browsers tested.

    Chrome: 112.5mb RAM (6 threads)
    Perfect loading of all tabs, very fast, no issues.

    Safari 3.1.2 (Windows): 98mb RAM (1 thread)
    Loaded all sites, a bit sluggish, but not as bad as Firefox. 

    Opera 9.52: 75.5mb RAM (1 thread)
    Loaded all sites, little slow on GMail, but it came up. All other sites where just as fast as Chrome.

    In conclusion, I like the feel of Chrome the best.  Very simple and easy to use, I really like the multiple thread/tab paradigm.  Safari has that nice “Appley” interface I like.  Opera is Ok, but does have more rendering problems, on sites not tested above, than the others.  IE8… Bleh… no comment…  

    And as for Firefox, and I thought I’d never say it, it falling behind on both memory usage and speed.  I’ve also encountered quite a few Firefox crashes when shutting down the browser.  This is happening occasionally on all my machines on all operating systems I use, Mac, Linux and Windows.


    New Google Chrome Browser

    September 2nd, 2008
    Google Chrome Browser
    Google Chrome Browser

    Later today Google is expected to release a new web browser based on Webkit (what Safari uses) and Firefox.   I feel that it will be a welcome addition to the browser wars.

    I used Firefox, but have notice a lot more browser crashes with 3.x than previous versions and it feels quite laggy sometimes even on a Quad processor machine with 3gb RAM.  It gets to the point sometimes where I just load up Safari or Opera to surf sometimes.

    IE just sucks.  I ONLY use IE for site testing during web development and for the “best” experience accessing my day job’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) for email.  Other than that, IE is not a part of my day to day browser use.

    If this Google takes the best of Webkit and Firefox and makes it “better, faster, stronger”, then I will use it.  Of course I will be frank on my review of it and will do my best not to be biased since I use Google almost exclusive for my search needs, Email (Google Apps for Domains), Analytics for stats, etc.

    I will post up a review once I get my hands on it and can put it through it’s paces.

    I think Google will have more downloads of this browser in the first 24 hours than Firefox did on it’s 3.0 launch day if it posts up something on the front page of Google.  This could be huge.


    iPhone Class Action Suit?

    August 21st, 2008

    What a complainer… Sure, there are going to be bugs, lots of them sometimes in the case of a new product of this type… People should almost expect them.

    We all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time. A lawsuit has been filed against Apple over what the plaintiff is referring to as the “Defective iPhone 3G,” which she hopes will become a class-action complaint. Alabama resident Jessica Alena Smith filed the complaint yesterday against the iPhone maker, alleging that the new iPhone’s 3G performance and reliability has been subpar, despite the claims made by Apple’s aggressive marketing campaign. Considering that a true fix has yet to be issued for users’ 3G problems, this could just be the tip of the iPhone lawsuit iceberg. More >>

    But now, this woman wants to file a class action lawsuit against Apple due to 3G not living up to her expectations.  Even though the Infineon 3G chipset may be a bit flawed, it’s still not completely Apple’s fault.  AT&T is the provider and that can cause the dropcalls, coverage (or lack of) issues and so on.

    I live in Kentucky and don’t even have 3G where I live, so I cannot really vouche for the quality, but I did get a chance to travel to Lexington KY this past week and had NO problems whatsoever… Actually my 3G was much faster on my phone that one of my friend’s tethered BlackBerry.  I brought up pages much faster on my phone than he did on his laptop.

    Some people just don’t have anything better to do… Just ask for a refund and get a different phone… geesh.


    Multi-Domain Linux Mail Server

    August 4th, 2008

    Over the last few weeks, I’ve done a lot of blogging on my new provider, Slicehost, and the steps I’m taking to move away from Windows Server hosting to the Linux platform, at least for my personal sites and client development.  I still have to use some Microsoft technologies at my day job, but I am even in the queue to switch to Linux on my workstation at work too as new machines get ordered.  I plan on running XP in a VM for necessary things on the new workstation.

    Well, so far with Slicehost, I’m now up to 3 Slices.  The 512mb one for the websites, a 256mb for development which will turn into another webserver once the 512 is “full”, and now a new 256mb one as a mail server.  I found a good tutorial on how to setup Postfix, Courier, MySQL & Squirrelmail with Spam Assassin and ClamAV in a multi-domain virtualized setup. (LINK)

    This took a few hours to get working as intended, there were a few minor details missing, but I was able to track them down and get it working.  Most of it was just copying and pasting commands and changing a few details to my configuration.

    The only part I really changed during this installation is NOT to use Spam Assassin and ClamAV, at least for the near term.  Both of these programs take up large amounts of RAM even with the base setup.  With the 256mb Slice, it was going into the swap memory as soon as I booted up and accessed anything.  Without these programs and with a bit of Apache tweaking, I got the memory down to around 116mb while idle.

    Also, instead of SquirrelMail, which is “ugly” compared to modern web interfaces, I chose Roundcube, which has really gotten better over the last year.  It is still simplistic, but is very nice and functional.  With my setup, any email user just logs into the Roundcube interface with their email address and password.

    Since all the usernames/passwords for this mail server are stored in the database, I was able to quickly write up a little PHP web interface to add/remove/modify email accounts and domains.  Once it is more stable to functional, I will release it here on this blog for others who have a similar setup.

    As a test, I’ve been forwarding all my email on my primary account to a test account on this new server and every email has been received properly.  No problems whatsoever.

    I plan on moving a few of my friends and family onto this to see how it works for them, if good, then all my customers will be migrated.


    Moving away from Windows & IIS (ASP) to Linux @ SliceHost

    July 24th, 2008

    I have, for years, been developing web apps and so on using ASP (Classic) on IIS.  It’s a “fine” platform, but I have, over time, become weary of the Microsoft bloat that accompanies running a Windows Server… Especially in a colo/dedicated/VPS environment.

    Over the last few months, since my major GoDaddy Windows Dedicated servers got hit by a worm or something, I’ve seriously started learning PHP with MySQL.  I used MySQL quite a bit with ASP and am quite familiar with it, but PHP experience was rather limited.  In the last few weeks, I’ve written a few things and ported a customer’s website over from an ASP CMS I wrote to PHP (still need to finish the CMS in PHP).  The site runs so much faster and I am now able to host it on my new Slice VPS that I setup earlier this month.  In 15 minutes or so, I can have an entire new Slice setup with Apache or Lighttpd and PHP/MySQL and, with a little tweaking and securing, have a server up and serving sites.   Can’t do that with Windows that quickly.

    Slice is still running strong and I’m going to do my best to get ALL my ASP sites “ported” over to PHP over the next few months.  I’ve been using ASP/PHP cross reference sites like Design 215 and a few others and have been able to do things very quickly.  The database part was the only part I really needed to find good samples  for, but they aren’t even too hard once you use them a few times.

    SliceHost has inspired me to really learn Linux and abandon the Microsoft OS, but there is still one caveat to Linux that I am very disappointed with.  There is not a single (that I’ve found), reasonably priced, multi-domain, domain level administratable email server with a nice webmail interface for users and administrative functions.

    I know there are a ton of “pieces” that I can put together to get something like that, like Postfix, EXIM4, Dovecat, etc., but I just simply don’t have the time to wade through the massive pile of config files to get all those pieces working together in a nice secure and highly reliable fashion.

    So, I am going to continue moving all my websites over to Linux/Apache/Lighttpd/PHP/MySQL and keep a small (30gb, 768mb RAM) Windows Virtual Dedicated server running with SmarterMail 5.x mail server on it. SmarterMail is probably one of the BEST email servers for a web hosting environment.  It is a snap to setup, backup and move to a new server if needed (Trust me, I know!). I already own an Enterprise license and am just waiting for one last very important domain to move off a temporary dedicated server before I move it to a new Windows VPS to serve the remainder of my customer’s email needs.  SliceHost isn’t a fully “managed” solution, but with the Slice Backup capability, you can have daily and weekly images made and restore to them quickly at anytime in case anything happens…

    Mosso is good and is finally rectifying the Compute Cycle issue I mentioned previously,  I may keep them if I can break even with the few sites I still host on there, but their servers aren’t nearly as responsive as a VPS or Dedicated server probably due to the massively clustered setup they run.  I don’t really need individual site scalability… If a site has high requirements, I’ll just stick them on a new slice and charge the customer accordingly.  Most of my sites that would need to scale are Wordpress Blogs and could easily handle being Digg’ed etc, by installing WP-Supercache.

    Ultimately I plan on hosting all websites and blogs on Ubuntu 8.04 @ SliceHost and email on a Windows VPS @ GoDaddy (for now) until I find a Windows VPS provider as excellent as SliceHost is (hint hint to SliceHost)…

    That’s all for now…

    If anyone knows of any turn-key type mail servers that are free/inexpensive (< $500) for Linux please leave a comment.


    My Western Digital MyBook died… or did it?

    July 21st, 2008

    I had a HDD crash back in 2005 and was fortunate enough to run across QueTek File Scavenger and was able to recover most everything.

    Well, last night, my Western Digital MyBook 500gb drive went kablooey right in the middle of watching a movie off of it.  This drive was hooked to my Mac file storage machine and was idle most of the time, so I was curious as to why it would die all of a sudden.  I felt the drive and it was quite warm to the touch, and my office is quite warm to boot, so I am going to attribute this problem to heat. It was also on the bottom of the stack of 2 other WD MyBook 500gb drives.

    Everytime I tried restarting the bad drive, it reported itself as a 1.6TB partition and was not able to be read.  I tried a few misc utilities on it, but none could read or recover anything.  This drive ONCE was a part of a three drive RAID-0 (stripped) and I think somehow it went back to thinking it was since the partition name was “disk3″. Weird…

    I ran across one called Nucleus Kernel Macintosh for HFS & HFS+ (Mac) formats, and thought I’d give it a try.  It was able to immediately and quickly scan the drive and I could see all the files that were “lost”… I called up a buddy of mine who is a BIG mac guru and he happened to have a full copy of it, so he brought it over and it is recovering now.  (The demo version cannot recover much)

    It should be finished sometime tomorrow and I’ll be sure to make duplicates in the future.  I should have learned my lesson by now.

    I may end up getting a true RAID SAN/NAS device that has total failover in case of single drive failure.  There’s no feeling worse than thinking you lost years of work due to a stupid hard drive crapping out on you.


    An Excellent, Simple (and Free) Amazon S3 GUI - S3Fox

    July 7th, 2008

    Want an simple and easy way to access your Amazon S3 account?

    I’ve tried JungleDisk.  It’s good and provides lots of features to those who need them.  I’ve also use Bucket Explorer, but it seems very slow on loading the file list on large folders.

    How about for the rest of us that just need to be able to upload/download and set permissions?

    I googled around today and ran across S3Fox.  It is a Firefox plugin that runs within the browser and was amazing quick and easy to configure and access S3.

    Once installed and configured, you can easily access files under “Tools”, “S3 Organizer” where it loads up a nice FTP looking interface.

    Once a file is uploaded, you can right click on it and change permissions (in case you need to use the files on a public website).

    I use Amazon S3 for a client site that has a page with LOTS of images.  With the Mosso Compute Cycle issue I mentioned in the last post, this offloads 400+ small 10-15k images off that server and onto Mosso.  I also use it for miscellaneous personal file storage and it seems to be working out great!


    My New Provider… SliceHost.com!

    July 1st, 2008

    I’ve been moving my blogs and the other’s I host through a lot of transitions lately after having a HORRIBLE experience with GoDaddy and then Compute Cycle concerns with Mosso.com.

    Mosso’s new compute cycles are heavily counting Wordpress and other DB driven site hits.  5 relatively low hit blogs, ~150,000 TOTAL hits, were taking up as many Compute Cycles as one of my non-DB driven sites getting > 2,500,000 hits with lots of graphics.

    I still like Mosso and most of my sites are still using email on them, but a bit more predictable monthly bill is nice.

    So I happened to run across SliceHost.com yesterday… The site is simple and clean and I was impressed at the speed of their own website. Some of the hosting providers I find while searching around have sluggish sites, which really makes me question their server/network capacity and so on.

    Here is their basic blurbage from the front page of their site.

    BUILT FOR DEVELOPERS

    We’re just like you. Sick of oversold, underperforming, ancient hosting companies. We took matters into our own hands. We built a hosting company for people who know their stuff. Give us a box, give us bandwidth, give us performance and we get to work. Fast machines, RAID-10 drives, Tier-1 bandwidth and root access. Managed with a customized Xen VPS backend to ensure that your resources are protected and guaranteed.

    • No contracts, no setup fees.
    • Upgrade, downgrade, add a slice or remove a slice anytime.
    • Billing is monthly, cancel at anytime.
    • Payments of $240 or more receive a 10% credit.
    • Full root access and rebooting
    • Choice of Linux distro
    • Dedicated IP address and Tier-1 redundant bandwidth
    • RAID-10 disk storage
    • Reserved RAM
    • Guaranteed CPU share and more when available
    • 4-core servers running Xen virtualization instances
    • Slicehost management portal for reboots and software installs
    • Mobile management portal for smartphones
    • Ajax console access
    • Bootable rescue mode
    • Machines running with fixed usage limits, below full capacity

    So I decided to go ahead and give them a try and signed up for a 256mb Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy “Slice”.  That slice is a virtual machine running on a nice large powerful server.  For $20/mo I get a VM with 256 RAM, 10GB space, 100GB bandwidth.

    Some may think that’s so little, but it’s plenty to run a quite a large handful of decent sized Wordpress blogs or other similiar CMS systems.  10gb is plenty for people who aren’t uploading massive uncompressed images, videos and other media.  100gb is also good especially if your web server is using mod_deflate to compress output.

    Provisioning only took like 5 minutes, it was assigned a static IP and a default (hard) random root password that I went in and changed to my harder password.

    I ran the apt-get install commands I used to get the lighttpd setup running on it like in my post back in April.

    Basically in about 30 mins I was setup, I went ahead and moved over idude.org here and then 5 of my other friend’s blogs and am in a “testing phase” now.

    Back to SliceHost…

    I really like their control panel, it is very simple and sweet and has pretty much everything you need to manage your VMs.  The backup is very simple and can be automated to daily as well as a weekly. These backups are FULL VM snapshots to take your entire machine back to a previous state.

    A Unique feature is an AJAX powered console to your server.  I don’t think it really full supports CTRL functions and stuff, but it’s enough to change some permissions, delete some stuff, create new folders, etc.

    If you outgrow the 256mb/10gb/100gb Slice, you can scale it up, without losing data and minimal downtime, up to a 4096mb/160gb/1600gb Slice, which is 16x the power/space at only 14x the cost.  ($280)

    There are also nice stats to show CPU use, CPU time, disk I/O, and network I/O.    You can do soft/hard reboots as well plus much more.

    A few months ago, I had a VM of about the same size at GoDaddy running CENTOS 4 (only Linux option at the time) and it was horribly sluggish and had all kinds of “default” crap on it.  This Ubuntu install on SliceHost is virtually a base install allowing me much more flexibility over what goes on it.

    The performance of it was also generally lightning fast.  I’ve used Ubuntu directly on a powerful server and it appeared just as responsive both in the console running commands and hitting the sites remotely.

    Network speed was excellent as well… Got 16mbps uploading some files to it, which again, isn’t bad for a VM.

    One last thing.  SliceHost is running out of St. Louis.  After pinging it from a web-based “multiping” site, it got excellent low latency from all parts of the country, as compared to hosts I’ve used on either the left or east coast, due to it’s central location.

    More updates will follow as more is experienced.  I think I’ve finally found a long term home for my Linux sites.

    If you are interested in signing up, click here!


    Clark Connect Community Edition as a Gateway

    June 16th, 2008

    I’ve always have used simple WiFi routers to be the “first device” connected to my network here at home.  Over the last year or two, I have been experimenting with SveaSoft Talisman Opensource Router Firmware, on my Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, as well as DD-WRT.  DD-WRT has been my favorite and seems the easiest to use firmware with the slickest interface.

    But it just didn’t feel like “enough” protection.

    Enter Clark Connect Community Edition 4.2

    Clark Connect Community Edition, CCCE for simplification, is the free edition of this OS.  It is a Linux firewall based on Red Hat Linux and contains many excellent features to protect your network and give you services that only much more expensive solutions offer.

    I grabbed one of my “old” Dell servers, an SC430 Dual Core machine that I’ve used for reviews here in the past and started install of the ISO I burned (~487mb).  To utilize the firewall “gateway” mode of the OS, I installed a second old 100mb NIC card to be the external WAN side and kept the faster GB NIC for “internal” use.

    Installation was a breeze, as most are these days, and within 20-25 minutes, I had the core system up and running.  It took a little bit of configuration to get both cards recognized and to get my cable modem provider to reset the ARP table (by rebooting the cable modem) for the external WAN side to kick in.  I just put a ping from a commandline on the gateway and watched it.

    Pings were replied to…

    The console interface is limited and mostly allows you to do simple things like configure NICS, view a traffic monitor (IPTraf) and other minor things.  There is a relatively new “graphical” GUI that lets you see some more, but it is still mostly limited.

    The best way to configure the gateway is by logging into the web interface.  The web interface can be accessed by the URL https://yourgwIP:81 and entering the root password you chose during installation.  Once in, virtually every feature can be configured, services started/stopped and a full statistical interface can be seen.  More stuff can be installed/configured from the commandline via SSH or direct console access.

    As stated above, in my network, this CCCE gateway replaced my DD-WRT WiFi router as the “first device” connected to the internet.  I then plugged the internal LAN NIC into a 24 port gigabit switch and connected my nearby workstations to it.  For my “remote” WiFi devices like my Laptops and iDudette’s Mac Mini, I reconfigured the DD-WRT router to be an internal device on the network.

    The CCCE machine become the primary DHCP server on the network and the DD-WRT provides a seperate subnet that is not routable directly to the CCCE. I may change this in the future to make sharing a bit easier between the two networks.

    I also run a 4 node Meraki network directly off the CCCE gateway and now I can better control the bandwidth and service usage of possibly “unknown” people to limit torrenting and other “illegal” activities.

    There is so much more I can say, but you gotta see it for yourself.  This is the simplest of all the linux firewalls I’ve tinkered around with, even those who aren’t familiar with all these things should be able to figure it out.

    Clark Connect also has a subscription level which will give you more features within the gateway, like Exchange Connectors and so on, and online DNS and other services.  See their website for more.

    Here is the feature list from the site.

    ClarkConnect provides all the necessary software and tools required for an organization’s server needs.  The details of the following features are described below:

    Gateway and DNS Services
    To complement the ClarkConnect feature set, we offer a suite of services to help deploy, manage and maintain a ClarkConnect system:

    * Gateway Services
    * DNS Services

    Firewall, Networking and Security
    ClarkConnect provides several levels of security.  At the network level, the firewall restricts access to your systems and provides advanced features, including DMZ, 1-to-1 NAT and Port Forwarding.  At the protocol level, the Peer-to-Peer detection system lets you manage peer-to-peer file sharing usage.  At the application level, the Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Prevention systems provide another layer of defense against threats to your network.

    Multi-WAN
    With the Multi-WAN solution, you can connect two or more Internet connections to your ClarkConnect system.  The solution not only increases your available bandwidth, but also provides automatic network failover.

    Bandwidth Management
    Some applications are more important than others.  The Bandwidth Manager lets you prioritize network traffic — downloading the latest Windows updates will no longer interfere with your Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls.

    1-to-1 NAT - DMZ - Peer-to-Peer Management - Intrusion Detection - Intrusion Prevention - Multi-WAN / Dual WAN  - Bandwidth Management - DHCP Server - Caching DNS Server

    VPN / Virtual Private Networks
    With the PPTP VPN solution, you can use the built-in VPN client that comes with Microsoft Windows to connect remote desktops and laptops to your network.  There’s no need to purchase and install expensive third party software — the PPTP VPN solution works right out of the box.

    VPN - Connecting Local Area Networks
    If you need to securely connect two or more networks via the Internet, using our unique Managed/Dynamic VPN fits the bill.  The VPN solution not only makes connecting remote networks easy, but also more reliable.  This solution is based on the standard IPsec VPN protocol, so you can count on industry standard encryption and authentication technologies.

    Web Proxy and Filtering
    The Web Proxy server reduces bandwidth usage and speeds up web browsing.  In addition, the proxy can be configured with user authentication.  With authentication enabled, you can control and monitor access to the web.

    Content Filter
    Whether you are concerned about students accessing pornography or employees checking their personal webmail during office hours, the Content Filter provides a flexible way to enforce web usage policies for your network.

    Banner Ad and Pop-up Blocker
    If you find that banner ads and pop-ups are slowing down your network, you can enable the Banner Ad and Pop-Up Blocker to speed up web page loading times.

    E-mail
    ClarkConnect has integrated the same scalable and reliable POP/IMAP and SMTP servers used by large organizations.  Thanks to the open-source revolution, it is possible for a small business to enjoy an enterprise class e-mail system.

    Webmail, Outlook and More
    End users can access their e-mail using any number of standard e-mail clients.  Though Microsoft Outlook is the most popular way to access mail on a ClarkConnect server, you can also use the built-in Webmail module and other popular e-mail software packages.

    Multiple Antispam Engines
    Our server solution provides several different antispam techniques to maximize the spam detection effectiveness.  The antispam engines include the SpamAssassin, Dspam and Greylisting.

    Affordable Antivirus Protection
    Expensive antivirus solutions are a thing of the past.  The Antivirus solution not only detects viruses, but also phishing attempts.  In addition, both antispam and antivirus scanning can be configured in Mail Gateway Mode so you can protect existing mail servers (including Microsoft Exchange) on your network.

    Groupware
    The suite of groupware features allows your organization to share and manage information.  With the Microsoft Outlook connector, you can share Calendars, Contacts, Tasks Lists and Notes.  Whether you need a company calendar or a sales contact list for a few members of your staff, sharing information is simple and affordable.

    Flexshare
    The powerful Flexshare feature allows people in your organization to share files and helps bring out the value of of all the information in your organization.

    Database and Web Server
    Do you need to install a web-based application on your network?  ClarkConnect provides the LAMP application engine with easy-to-use web-based administration tools:

    * Linux
    * Apache Web Server
    * MySQL Database
    * PHP

    File and Print Services
    The ClarkConnect solution provides both an FTP and Windows/Samba file server solution.  These two file server modules coupled with Flexshare Groupware gives you a powerful tool for sharing files in your organization.

    Backup, Backup, Backup
    There are two kinds of people — those who have lost important data, and those who will lose important data.  Backup is often overlooked, but it is one of the most important tasks for any organization.  The comprehensive LAN Backup and Recovery solution provides all the necessary tools to protect against disasters.


    New Apple 3G iPhone Announced @ WWDC 2008!

    June 9th, 2008
    New Apple iPhone 3G
    New Apple iPhone 3G

    The new Apple iPhone 3G was announced today (6/9/2009) at WWDC 2008 in San Francisco. The new price is only $199 (8gb) and $299 (16gb) due to carrier subsidies. It has tons of new features built into it, notably GPS and 3G (of course) and will definitely make inroads not only into the corporate market with the new MS Exchange functionality, but also into the more frugal consumer market. $199 makes this phone very competitive with the higher end blackberries and cheaper than most of the Microsoft Smartphones.

    Most of the base features are the same, like the flash storage capacity, but Apple did take suggestions from the community and improve the design, such as making the headphone jack flush as to not require a special adaptor to use non-Apple headphones.

    The 16GB model also has a white backed version as well as the new Black backed and the front of the phone is wholly unchanged…

    Included accessories, everything is pretty much the same:

    • iPhone 3G
    • Stereo Headset with mic
    • Dock Connector to USB Cable
    • SB Power Adapter (A bit smaller now)
    • Documentation
    • Cleaning/polishing cloth
    • SIM ejector tool (a paperclip!)

    Look for the new iPhone to reach stores around July 11th. Hopefully supply will be able to hit the demand that I anticipate. I plan on getting ahold of one for myself.