The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.

This week I write about some of my favorite Mac software that is being built by guys working out of their house or a coffee shop: the indie developer. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.

If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.

The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.

This week I follow up on what I was thinking about earlier in the week with Twitter and highlight some of the neat uses of the service. It’s amazing that it took me almost a year to write about my favorite service. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.

If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.

For almost two years I have had this endless addiction to a Web service called Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging application that essentially wants you to answer the question What are you doing? It usually expands beyond that question however into becoming a soapbox and backchannel discussion forum. You can use Twitter either via your mobile phone, their Web site or desktop applications like Twitterrific and Thwirl

I received a press release yesterday that Holiday World is now on Twitter (http://twitter.com/HolidayWorld) and they have been doing live updates of the happenings leading up to today’s park opening.

It got me thinking about who else in town is using Twitter. Consider this the Evansville Twitter census. If you’re tweeting around town, share your username in the comments.

I’m http://twitter.com/justin if you’re interested in following my day-to-day activities.

I’ve been playing with a new location-based social network called Brightkite. It’s a really great service that ultimately will allow you to find friends and like-minded people around you at restaurants, bars or even your neighborhood. When you check-in at a location, you can then leave a note or post a photo either via the Web or your mobile phone. It’s somewhat like a location-aware Twitter.

The problem with Brightkite is that there are 3 people in Evansville using the service including myself. I’d love to expand it because I think could be a really great extension to the site and I think most of my readers are new media savvy. You are reading a blog after all.

I’ve got 5 invites and I’m offering them only to people in the Evansville area (if can watch Evansville news stations, you’re in). Just leave a comment on this post and make sure you put your email address in the proper field.

Update: I’m out of invites presently. I’ll post again when I have more!

The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.

This week I pretty much write about the Flip video camcorder. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.

If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.

As some of you know, when I’m not posting on It’s Evansville I spend my days as a freelance software developer. Usually this entails working for clients building Web applications, but I’m happy to announce that I just released my second Mac OS X application called Today.

Today is a Mac OS X application to keep track of your daily appointments and tasks stored in both iCal and Apple Mail. Today resides in your Dock or menu bar and shows you what’s on today’s agenda quickly. You can even create new events or tasks with Today: no iCal required!

Today costs $15 a license and comes with a 7-day full featured trial. If you, or someone you know, is a Mac user who might enjoy the app, please do consider buying a license. It’s a great way to support It’s Evansville and ensure that I can pay my bills each month!

Today: iCal’s best friend!

The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.

This week I pretty much write a eulogy for XP. It’s time to embrace Vista, people. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.

If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.

The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.

This week I discuss a new Web service called FamSpam. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.

If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.

I really wanted to hit on this last week when I first read it, but held off because of the hiatus. The summary is that the EVSC lost a month’s worth of grades due to a computer malfunction. Students will now just have an 8 week grading period.

According to EVSC’s release, IBM engineers determined the loss of data was caused by “an unfortunate and very rare combination of hardware problems and backup configuration settings.”

Translation: “We fucked up really really bad.”

Apparently IBM and the EVSC have not learned the value of concurrent backup solutions. When you’re dealing with personal data, it’s good to have at least a single backup source. When you’re dealing with enterprise data (read: academic grades), there’s no excuse for not having data backed up in multiple locations and via multiple methods: RAID5, rsync or even basic database dumps. Take your pick.

It’s shocking that a school corporation the size of EVSC doesn’t seem to have an offsite backup plan of any sort. With the cost of bandwidth and storage dropping so drastically in the past five years this is both shocking and frightening at the same time.

I run a small business with a few gigabytes of mission critical data and store it on Amazon’s S3 service for under $10 a month. Every hard drive in my office could fail, and I’d still have my client data because its backed up to the cloud.

“We had multiple hard drive failures in the system,” Michael Russ, Director of Technology for the EVSC said. Since the system crash, Russ said the school has installed a separate back up system for assignments and grades in a new location.

The fact that Michael Russ is still employed amazes me. When you are the IT director for a school corporation and lose student grades, you’re not just fired. You are SO FIRED. Someone in power has to go down for such a catastrophic failure and I doubt it will be the new Superintendent.

Perhaps this debacle will force the EVSC to reevaluate their IT infrastructure and backup regimen. To start, maybe they should read my backup column from a few weeks ago?

In the words of Bugs Bunny, “What a bunch of maroons.”

Thanks to WFIE for some of the quotes.

photo courtesy of anonfx

The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.

This week I discuss the Department of Justice approving the merger between Sirius and XM Satellite Radio. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.

If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.

photo courtesy of Orbitcast