any tech

Google recently reported in their Webmaster Central Blog that in August 2010, they have adjusted their search algorithm “will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site.” Basically this means that keywords entered into the search engine that are very domain specific will list more results from the domain Google feels the searcher is looking for. This change will clearly benefit larger websites with a high PageRank and domain-specific names. More links to this site will show up on the first … Continue Reading

I admit, I do play FarmVille from time to time. Interestingly, the more I play the farm management game, the more I see resemblance to my real-life career as a network administrator. The joy of starting a small network often times into a nightmare and headache if you do not manage your infrastructure for growth.  To give you an idea of what I mean, read the following FarmVille story and interchange the farming words with networking terms:

farm = network
crops = end users
cow = router… Continue Reading

The single most important part of a businesses data infrastructure is the network. Stability in a network significantly increases with the introduction of adding telephony functions over an IP network. A network infrastructure includes physical medium in the form of copper wiring, fiber optics and wireless signals. The infrastructure also includes the equipment used to transport frames and packets from source to destination. This equipment includes routers, switches, wireless access points and server/site load balancing equipment. In addition, most businesses require security devices positioned within the network to help … Continue Reading

Millions of visitors come to Thailand every year on vacation to enjoy the beautiful Thai beaches in the South, the exciting and exotic cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, or the gorgeous and unspoiled mountain villages to the North and East of the country. Many of these same visitors hove smart phones that they would like to have data services with. Thailand’s largest cellular carrier, AIS has a prepaid plan called 12Call. 12Call SIM cards are found in every convenience store including 7-11. A SIM card with 10 minutes free costs 99 baht. … Continue Reading

Google Trends made a big splash back in early 2009 when the H1N1 “Swine Flu” virus began. The tool was used as a barometer to watch for people searching for symptoms of the illness.

Recently, there has been an increase in the amount of homes, hotels and businesses in the United States that have detected pest infestation. A poll was conducted by the New York Daily News that suggested that 1 in 10 New Yorkers has bed bugs.

I wanted to know what other States had a bed bug infestation problem, so I … Continue Reading

It seems like just about everyone I know writes a blog these days. As most of us know, some blogs are better than others and various methods are used by search engines to differentiate between mediocre and quality content about a particular subject.

At this point, humans are winning the battle simply because it is very difficult for artificial intelligence to properly understand the difference in quality between multiple articles that cover the same topic. The engineers at Yahoo! Labs are attempting to change this with their Content Optimization project.

One dilemma that search … Continue Reading

The older I get, the more I observe that our lives are based on a series of never-ending cycles. The moon orbits the Earth, which orbits the sun, which orbits the galaxy.

On Monday, the work week begins, and on Friday, it ends. But a few days later the week begins yet again. I keep running into people on the street wearing retro 80′s style skinny jeans, shirts and sunglasses (thank God no biking shorts yet). Everything from philosophy to politics to fashion tend to circle back in one way or another. So that got … Continue Reading

When I think of the word “wave” it congers up images of white sand and clear, turquoise waters of beaches in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Thailand. Google decided to use the word as the name of their newly-failed application suite. Recent news from Google Inc. stated that they will pull the plug on their Wave application. Wave, an online application suite was a collection of tools used for “online collaboration”. It was supposed to solve various problems when multiple people were working on a project and … Continue Reading

The debate over 4G technologies has been going on for years. In the USA and Much of Europe, it would seem that Long Term Evolution (LTE) has the upper hand and will likely be more popular in that part of the world. In the United States, Clearwire has a large WiMAX network covering 69 markets. However, just this week, the company began testing LTE signals. The company will likely make a shift in the next few years from WiMAX to LTE because this is the technology that the other … Continue Reading

Did you have any Network Hardware Failures on the night of August 3 2010? If so, the root cause may possibly have been due to a solar storm that directly hit Earth.

NASA astronomers reported that on August 1, there was a sizable eruption on the sun that ejected positively charged plasma from it’s surface headed directly towards Earth. These charged particles entered the Earth’s atmosphere a few days later and collided with oxygen and nitrogen molecules creating what is known as cosmic radiation.

Typically, the atmosphere of the Earth does … Continue Reading

I’m currently living in Asia but do business with people in the Untied States. I often find myself needing a way to quickly and easily send/receive files to and from my clients — many of whom are not technically savvy. I used to use FTP for this purpose but sometimes this method is clunky and confusing to the recipient. I recently found a tool called iSendr that allows me to quickly setup a peer-to-peer file transfer over the Internet. That’s right, it’s P2P so you don’t upload files to … Continue Reading

Network World recently posted an article stating that a researcher at Air Tight Security found a vulnerability in WPA2 Enterprise encryption. They are referring to the vulnerability as hole 196 because the vulnerability was discovered on page 196 of the 802.11 IEEE standard. Keep in mind that WPA2 is regarded as the most secure Wireless encryption method available today. So this is big, big news. Right? Well, maybe not.

If you read the details of the exploit, you find out that in order for the it to work, the bad guy … Continue Reading

In this post, I will compare Internet speed tests for three different Internet broadband connections I’ve had the opportunity to use in Thailand. If you are going to be in Thailand, hopefully this comparison will help you to make a decision on which Internet broadband provider to choose. Of the three services tested, one utilizes a mobile wireless system that uses GSM Edge to connect to the Internet. The other two are standard ADSL services from competing companies in Thailand. All of the tests were performed using … Continue Reading

As a writer, it pains me to say this, but written language is one of the worst forms of communication available. It’s so difficult to write something that is supposed to convey a message to many people. The reason for this difficulty, is simply that we all think differently. The same words can mean completely different things to people. And since written languages are (mostly) static in nature, if a reader doesn’t understand something, they are quite simply SOL.
The same holds true for the web. Searching for … Continue Reading

A few hours ago news sources reported that Apple Inc. released a statement saying they will have a news conference on Friday to discuss the reported iPhone 4 problems that seem to be affecting a small percentage of users in the form of poor antenna reception. There are many people guessing as to what Apple might do to rectify the problem. My guess is that they’ll bend over backwards to show that they stand behind their customers. Even if it costs them a fortune, a show of goodwill at this critical point can result in … Continue Reading