REST vs SOAP, the difference between soap and rest
15 Jan 2010
Someone asked me a question today “Why would anyone choose SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP)) instead of REST (Representational State Transfer
My Online Business Card (Vcard)
12 Jan 2010
I wanted to polish up my javascript coding so I decided that the best way to do that was with a project that I’ve been wanted to do for a while anyway, my own identity site, or my online business
7 security practices you need to follow
22 Dec 2009
Some of this may seem like a broken record, yet every single time you hear about a bank losing millions of customer data, or a company having a security breach
Secure Automated, Key Based SSH
19 Dec 2009
SSH is great and secure… Unless you need to automate it. Then it sucks because your only options are to create a passwordless key, or login add your key to ssh-agent
Fascinating interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
16 Dec 2009
In 2007, All Things Digital (http://allthingsd.com/) held a fascinating interview with both Bill Gates (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/default.mspx) and Steve Jobs
The Importance of Focus
16 Dec 2009
Imagine if Apple (http://www.apple.com), Disney (http://disney.go.com), Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com), etc had chased every oppotunity that they came across. One thing is certain, you
Getting Started With Drupal
14 Dec 2009
Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) is a very powerful content management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management) solution. It powered an earlier version of this website as well as
Vim Plugins: snipMate
12 Dec 2009
Why use it • It’s super easy to use • It has tons of snippets • It’s pretty well compatible with TextMate snippets for easy portability • Dynamic variables, for all the times you use
Checking Vendor References
11 Dec 2009
One task that should be part of every IT managers is performing reference checks on potential vendors. A vendor reference check goes beyond the sales pitch to reveal the true nature of a product or
A Better Follow Friday
7 Dec 2009
Follow Friday is a common practice on Twitter (http://twitter.com/) where many people spend friday posting things like #FF @aplusk (http://twitter.com/aplusk) @guykawasaki
Engaging Employees
2 Dec 2009
There is one trait that if possessed can virtually ensure success, the ability to nurture a culture of engaged workers. Engaged workers do work harder or longer, but that’s not the core benefit,
Installing Git on a Shared Host
24 Nov 2009
Git (http://git-scm.com/) is a fantastic tool and is very useful for deployment. If you can’t install git system wide or don’t want to mess with installing it on the entire system here is an easy
Apple's iconic presentations
12 Nov 2009
Recently a book came out The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (http://carminegallo.com/stevejobsbook/). Jobs has mastered the art of presenting.
Vim Plugins: NERD Commenter
9 Nov 2009
The NERD Commenter is an indispensable tool when programming in VIM (http://www.vim.org/). It understands like a zillion different file types and properly comments each. It can handle single line,
Mastering the Command Line
5 Nov 2009
If you use *nix, no doubt you’ve spent some time on the command line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface). Here are a few of the most helpful tricks you can use in the bash shell
Conclusion of the Blog-a-thon
23 Oct 2009
Today marks the last post of my blog-a-thon. It has been a learning and growing experience. I have blogged more time in the past 4 weeks as I did the prior 52. It was challenging and rewarding. I
Take Time to Help Others
22 Oct 2009
While it may not seem intuitive taking time out to selflessly help others will help you more than them. This week I haven’t had much time to blog largely because this week many opportunities arose
Windows 7 launch notes
20 Oct 2009
I was fortunate to be able to attend the Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) Launch Developer Preview meeting in NYC. Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) is holding these all over the country to
54% US Companies Ban Social Media... and That's Fine
16 Oct 2009
According to a study commissioned by Robert Half Technology (http://www.roberthalftechnology.com), an IT staffing company, 54 percent of U.S. companies say they’ve banned workers from using social
Managing Your Social Media Presence
14 Oct 2009
As social media continues to emerge, many professionals are curious on what is the best way to manage these various networks. For posting updates I have found ping.fm (http://ping.fm) an invaluable
The Death of Search
9 Oct 2009
Social media will be the next innovation in the most unlikely of places, search ( leveraging the community to scale infinitely ). It’s not that people will all together stop searching, but the
How I Blog
7 Oct 2009
Not surprisingly, given my semi random content, I arrive at my posts a few different ways. 1. I better write this down or I’ll never remember it These posts are the result of a rather frustrating
Analyzing and Improving Conversion
2 Oct 2009
Conversion is one of those core metrics that every business depends on and strives to improve. Improving your conversion rate (while maintaining a consistent traffic level) is the single most
Ranking Social Media
30 Sep 2009
In business it’s common to use sales as a metric to determine success. Songs, albums, books and movies are all ranked on “best seller” charts. While this isn’t a perfect metric, it is largely
My Own Private Blogathon
28 Sep 2009
Someone once said a goal is a dream until you write it down … in your blog and tell the world about it. In an effort to focus on blogging a bit more frequently I have decided to start a blogathon
Using Nginx as a Load Balancer
24 Sep 2009
Nginx is a relatively new web server that has a light footprint and relatively easy configuration. The following configuration demonstrates how to properly use nginx as a load balancer in front of
Featured in CIO Magazine!
10 Sep 2009
I don’t know what could be more shocking that opening this month’s edition of CIO magazine and discovering that my blog, this very blog that you are currently reading is one of two blogs featured
Choosing a Hosting Partner
25 Aug 2009
No question about it, choosing a good hosting partner is one of the most important decisions a CTO / CIO can make, especially in a .com company. I recently had to choose a hosting partner for the
Social Media Recognition
17 Jul 2009
Recently I’ve been fortunate to be recognized in a few publications. I extend a warm welcome to all my new friends and followers. I look forward to engaging with you. • 12 CIOs Who Love Social
New Facebook in Depth Review
15 Jul 2009
Facebook just unveiled their biggest change yet. The http://www.new.facebook.com (http://www.new.facebook.com) website is a preview of the next design of Facebook. The new design places more emphasis
Setting up Subversion with multiple access methods
5 May 2009
One thing that makes subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/) such a powerful revision system is it’s ability to permit multiple methods of access. Https, WebDAV, SSH and svnserve. In spite of
Scaling Web Sites (LAMP) : Top Resources
15 Apr 2009
Luckily it’s 2009 and there have been a bunch of successful websites that have had to deal with large scalability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability) challenges. Many have been kind enough
How to Fix a Broken Marketplace (eBay)
14 Apr 2009
Do you still remember when eBay (http://ebay.com) was a great place to buy and sell things? Today most auctions close without a single bid and very few are purchased at all. Most items are sold by
Stop Twitter from Becoming the next MySpace
3 Apr 2009
6 months ago Twitter (http://twitter.com) was the best place in existence to use and develop great relations with key players in industry, brilliant thinkers and friends. It has since become popular,
Facebook Meets Twitter & FriendFeed
27 Mar 2009
For the past few months Facebook (http://facebook.com) has been obsessed with Twitter (http://twitter.com/blog). It’s easy to see why. Twitter is addicitve. Many twitter users are constantly on
Growing in a Down Economy
29 Jan 2009
Trimming the Fat I am all in favor of trimming the fat. Every company has inefficiencies and employees that aren’t adding value to the company. This exercise of fat trimming should be an ongoing
Backup Your Files
29 Dec 2008
One of the worst experiences you can have as a computer operator is to realize you (or something else) just did something and wiped out your files. The purpose of this article is to show you how to
Portero Raises 6.6 Million
19 Dec 2008
I am happy to announce that Portero (http://www.portero.com/) has raised $6.6 million in funding. The round was led by LFE Capital (http://www.lfecapital.com/) joined by returning backers including
Backing up MySQL
12 Dec 2008
I don’t know very many people that haven’t been devastated by the loss of data… Yet I am baffled that millions of professional IT workers still ignore backing up their data. Since computers
One Hundred Pushups
11 Dec 2008
A while back a bunch of people were twittering about the 100 pushup challenge. Thanksgiving was the catalyst for me. I began my quest for better health about a week ago. The premise of the
How RIM handed the mobile market over to Apple
14 Nov 2008
Hint: It has nothing to do with touch screens. While RIM (http://rim.com) scrambles to create the next greatest device, or their “iPhone (http://www.apple.com/iphone) killer” it needs to
Hire Your Next Consultant Using Twitter
21 Oct 2008
At Portero we had an issue with our network. I know enough about networking to understand the basics. I actually used to work on the IOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS) back during the
Promotion
23 Sep 2008
Permit me to shamelesly announce my promotion to Chief Information Officer (http://www2.portero.com/our-team) at Portero Inc (http://portero.com). Here is the Press Release on the wire this week.
Why are you still shopping offline?
8 Sep 2008
Today I visited one of the largest national office supply outlets. I had a specific purpose in mind. I needed to pickup 2 wireless routers and 1 audio cable. What transpired caused me to wonder why
Managing Multiple Firefox Profiles in OS X
27 Aug 2008
One of the great features of Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) is the ability to manage multiple profiles. This is a very handy feature with many different uses. Unfortunately, it
Using SVK to Increase Productivity
23 Aug 2008
SVK is a client for SVN built using perl. It makes a number of improvements over the standard svn client, while retaining much of the same feel. It works with the standard Subversion server and works
The 15 Best Vim Plugins
30 Jul 2008
One of the things that makes vim great is that it can be extended through plugins. There are plugins for more than you would expect. I have gathered together the 15 best plugins. I’ve included
Implementing a Corporate Wiki
25 Jul 2008
It seems all of a sudden, the two buzz words in the corporate IT world are wiki and blog. Corporate wikis are emerging as cheap, intelligent, flexible systems for shared-document collaboration and
Why are you not on Twitter
11 Jul 2008
Over the last 2 weeks I have found myself asking that question more times than I can remember. When I first heard about microblogging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging)—or Twitter, the
Be more productive using GNU Screen
3 Jul 2008
Despite living in the age of multicore processors, GUI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface) everything and mountains of ram, I continually find myself more productive with a