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

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 some of Internet memes going around in recent months. 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 where Microsoft went wrong with Windows Vista and how they can get the OS and the next version of Windows back on track. 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 what I think will be the successor to high definition movies in the Blu-ray format. 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 how video chat has not made the inroads in society as technologists predicted years ago. 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.