MJ's Business IT Blog

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog readers!  I'm grateful for your readership, your comments and your feedback.  To our clients, my sincerest thanks for your business and the trust you have placed in our relationship.  I hope you all enjoy a wonderful day with family, friends or whomever you spend your Thanksgiving with.

 

Computer Cleaning Tips

Does your computer seem to attract dirst, dust and who knows what else?  You're certainly not alone.  Computers seem to be dirt magnets.

It's actually pretty simple to keep your computer clean and a few inexpensive supplies is all you need.  Most office supply or Walmart-type stores will carry computer cleaning wipes.  They come in two varieties, one for the actual computer itself, along with the keyboard, mouse, your phone, etc. and a second that is specifically for LCD flat panel monitors.  Both are electrostatic, to help minimize the future dust pickup, but they are slightly different.  A can of compressed air is also great to blow the little things that get in between the keys on your keyboard and it works really well as a lazy duster for your desk and surrounding area.  For notebook PC's, I recommend carrying around a convenient cleaning kit in your bag.  Notebooks tend to get much dirtier, especially their screens.  I use a great little kit from LensPen called the Laptop-Pro.  It's available for just under $25.00 from CyberGuys, a great online site for specialized technical stuff.

The Best Power Adpater Out There

With all the various electronic gadgets that we use, in both our business and personal lives, you often wind up with a ridiculous number of chargers in your possession.  If you travel, this is a huge issue as it sometimes may seem like you need to carry an extra bag just for all your power adapters.  As someone who has been mobile for years, I've always been on the lookout for the ultimate mobile, universal power adapter.  I may have finally found it!

Check out the iGo Everywhere universal charger.  Simply put, it's a relatively slim universal charger that uses interchangable power tips to power a portable computer, cell phone, headset, PDA, iPod, etc.  Instead of carrying a charger for each one of those devices, you just need one.  What I really like about this product is that you can attach an accessory charger and a splitter, so that you can charge your notebook PC, cell phone and headset all at the same time, from one charger and one plug.  It all comes neartly packed in a small carrying case and means just one thing to remember to charge all my various electronics.  If you have a lot of electronics that you need to charge, I highly recommend this product.

Veteran's Day

When I got in the car this morning to head to the gym, Lee Greenwood's G-d Bless the USA was playing on the radio.  I have always loved that song.  It says so much by saying so little.  It made me pause and think about Veteran's Day.  My family has several veteran's.  My Dad was on Guam in World War II.  One of my Uncles came ashore during the invasion of France and his son is named in memory of his Army buddy who was killed right next to him.  The list goes on.  We should all be grateful and thankful for the service of our veteran's, regardless of the conclict, cicrumstance or politics.  I tried to enlist, shortly after graduating college, and was turned away due to a health condition at the time.  It will always be a personal regret of mine that I have not served.

While this doesn't relate to technology, and this is a technology blog, the only spin I can put on this is to hope that technology will continue to help our armed services be more effective at their jobs.  Those in military service face an ultimate quandry, to defend and protect our great nation while possibly being called on to do unthinkable things.  Let's hope, perhaps, that technology will let them do their jobs more effectively and reduce, if not eliminate, the horrors of war.  Just some thoughts on this Veteran's Day 2008.

Cabinet Level Technology Position

One of the things I have been following with interest since the election, is the buzz around whether President-Elect Obama will move to create a cabinet level technology position within the new Administration.  It's an interesting concept and one could argue, one that is overdue.

As a follow-up to this notion, I was reading today that President-Elect Obama is launching a web presence,  change.gov, designed to reach out the American people during his transition and into his Administration.  According to the article I read, he and his advisers feel it is important to leverage the web to help get people more engaged in their government.  If his campaign is an example, he has excellent strategists in this area as his on-line outreach, communication and fund-raising eclipsed all prior efforts.

As a technology professional, I think these are exciting developments.  It will be interesting to see the chief executive of our nation elevate technology to a new level.  We have all become accustomed to leveraging technology in our business and personal lives.  It will be interesting to see how successful the new Administration will be leveraging technology to help them govern better.  As an outsourced CTO to our clients, I am eager to see just what a national CTO can do for our country.  Who knows, it may even be a position to aspire to :)  (Couldn't resist that one!).  What do you think about this?  Do you think it's a good idea to elevate technology to the Cabinet level?  I'm interested in your thoughts and thanks for reading.

It's Election Day!

FINALLY, it's here, November 4, 2008.  Regardless of your political leanings, let's all hope that this election puts the negativity of the campaign trail behind us and that bright futures await us.  Personally, I can't buy in to the doom and gloom crowd.  This is a great country and while our systems may be flawed, it's still the best form of government out there.  I hope all American's have done your part and voted.  I for one, am simply looking forward to having the election behind us, knowing who our next President will be and seeing the markets calm.  I'm not one to predict the future, but I hope once tomorrow comes, things will look brighter for all of us and we will begin to see the light and the end of many tunnels.  The United States of America is a great nation among many great nations and her people are a unique landscape representative of the entire world.  We all have a bright future to grab hold of, so don't wait to get started enjoying it...