David Strom

I gave a speech last week at a class at the business school at Washington University here in St. Louis. Before the class I ate lunch with a few of the students, who were interns in various start-ups around town. It was a very enlightening afternoon for me (and I assume for them as well). One of the things that I realized was how our generations have split on using collaboration tools such as Google Docs. Yes, you probably already know that GenY (20-somethings) are big on texting and not voice calls, and are all over Facebook. But the same is true with Google Docs. They understand how to use it, and they use it by default to create new content that they are going to being sharing with colleagues. Most of us old farts are still emailing our Word docs around the countryside. It isn’t because we don’t know how to use Google Docs – we do. But we just are native PC users... (more)

The Tug Between Browsers and Apps for Your Clickstream

When you need something online, is your first impulse to bring up your Web browser or go to your smartphone and run an app? The Web/app balance has shifted perhaps permanently in the app’s favor, meaning that more and more we go to an app when we need something online, and streaming video is accelerating this shift. For those of us that were old enough to remember when Netscape and AOL were different companies, I think this is a sad development. Certainly, it depends on how often you access a particular site: for daily habits, having an app makes sense, if the app encapsulates t... (more)

Cure for wet cell phones

Most of us know of someone who has dropped their cell phone into water and suffered the consequences. I am hear to tell you that there is an inexpensive solution, called a Bheestie Bag. It costs $20 (plus shipping). It is a bag that contains some desiccant to dry out the phone. You put the wet phone into the bag for a day or so and the moisture is absorbed from the phone. I tried it on a neighbor’s phone over the weekend and they got their phone back into working condition within about 40 hours inside the bag. ... (more)

Mediablather podcast: Doug Kaye

Doug Kaye is a podcasting pioneer. A successful software entrepreneur whose love of audio engineering dates back to his teen years, Doug launched IT Conversations in 2003, when the word “podcasting” didn’t even exist. He caught a break when his early recordings of O’Reilly Media conferences actually helped boost registrations for that company’s events. Since then, the Conversations Network has grown to encompass recordings of thousands of speeches and interviews about topics ranging from artificial intelligence to smart cities to brain surgery. You can listen to his conversation... (more)

Techtarget: Selecting the right conversion tool for your P2V migration

After you decide that you want to virtualize your environment and you select the products to use, the next step usually involves some sort of conversion process — taking a running physical desktop or server and moving it to a virtual machine. Although you can set up a new VM from scratch, it’s easier — and faster — to begin with a physical machine that is set up with all the applications you want in your virtual world. In my latest article for SearchVirtualDesktop, I take a look at the tools that can help in this physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration. ... (more)