Protecting your Laptop, or better finding the thief!

The article “Protect And Track Your Laptop In Case Of Theft” has a good breakdown of the service of The Laptop Lock. It kind of reminds me of iAlertU on Mac… 😉

Business patterns

The latest post from personal mba features called “Patterns That Work” has some nice insights…

In many areas of life – including business – you’ll find a few underlying patterns that appear over and over again when you take a moment to look beneath the surface of what you’re doing. For example, here are few sentences that, combined, describe how the vast majority of businesses make money

• Make a physical product, then sell and deliver it for more than it cost.
• Provide a service, then charge a fee.
• Create a shared resource that can be used by many people (like a gym), then charge for access.
• Offer an ongoing subscription, then charge a recurring fee.
• Offer insurance against something bad happening, collect premium payments, then pay out only when the bad thing happens.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you do something new – choose a core pattern that works, then focus your time and energy on making something people find remarkably useful.

How come the “iPhone” wasn’t released X years earlier?

In this engaging talk from the EG’08 conference, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue rounds up some handy cell phone tools and services that can boost your productivity and lower your bills (and your blood pressure).

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Avoiding project estimating mistakes

Simply put; you can avoid common costing mistakes by being well prepared up-front. Yet here are three tips for sidestepping project estimating mistakes.

• Never assume anyting, get confirmation! : Often people assume that things get done, but in reality things have a different outcome. Realise that you don’t have a view on people’s mind and full agenda.
• Expect the unkown, prepare for it! : Each project will uncover unkown things. Being utterly prepared narrows down that risk, yet it doesn’t remove it…
• Write a clear scope! : Miscommunication is easy. Specify exactly what you will and won’t do.

Source : Three tips for avoiding project estimating mistakes

You think your business has it rough?

Macworld features an article called “Ten business lessons from ‘Battlestar Galactica'”

A summary

• 1. Tech isn’t always the answer. : Totally agree… IT-ers tend to always go for a tech solution where a human solution might suffice!
• 2. Don’t neglect training. : I guess nobody will disagree here, but companies often don’t see the hidden cost of neglecting to do so.
• 3. Some things can’t be outsourced. : I’ll repeat it again; Outsourcing is good, but don’t do it on stategical areas!
• 4. Update your antivirus. : Personally I’d like to see this one renamed to “keep your organization up-to-date”
• 5. Democracy doesn’t always work. : A simple Project Management lesson; It’s a democracy until the scope is set, then it’s dictatorship!
• 6. Some problems can’t be killed. : Indeed, not all problems can be killed, just learn to cope with them.
• 7. Seek strategic alliances with competitors. : So true! Being a stategic game fan, I found that alliances either make or break any outcome of a game. The numerous time I’ve “won”, is always due to making (and breaking!) stategic alliances.
• 8. Don’t store all your backups in one place. : Better renamed to “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
• 9. The mission can change at any time. : A bit like 4., the world keeps evolving, incorporate that in your strategy.
• 10. Beware of visionaries. Zealots make bad leaders. – Awh, crap, that’d be against me… 😉

Are you a leader or manager?

Check out the TechRepublic article “Nine ways leaders and managers work together“!

Although it’s not apparent in the structure of some organizations, leaders and managers have highly distinct roles, and both are essential to the success of the business. See if the traits described here fit your IT leaders and managers–or help clarify your own role. Leadership and management may sometimes seem to be at crosspurposes, with vision and inspiration on one side and measurement and control on the other. But as IT pro Shannon Kalvar observes, the roles are both essential and complementary.

Key Points

• Leaders inspire; managers measure
• Leaders guide, managers navigate
• Leaders envision, managers maintain
• Leaders talk, managers listen
• Leaders support, managers teach
• Leaders hope, managers analyze
• Leaders authorize, managers direct
• Leaders rally, managers retrench
• Leaders expect, managers demand

Yet success requires both!

Using ssh keys with ESXi

• First “unlock” your ESXi
• Create your sshkey (puttykeygen or ssh-keygen) on the client machine
• Place the keyfile (for example : id_rsa.pub) from the client on the host
• Create “.ssh” directory on the root of ESXi device
• cat id_rsa.pub >> /.ssh/authorized_keys
• chmod 0600 -R /.ssh on the ESXi

How to properly erase your hard disk?

A whopping 40% of the used hard drives on eBay contain easily recoverable personal data. Use the following guide to ensure your personal data never makes it out into the wild.

Pretty scary words ain’t it… but it’s not far from the truth! Read the article to tutor yourself about the matter as you probably don’t want anyone to invade your privacy.

The first step in securing your data is bolstering your understanding of how data is stored and what happens when you delete it. Many people operate under the impression that when they delete a file it’s gone, as though they had torn a page from a book. But the way most operating systems handle such events is by simply removing the little marker that points to the file. That’s more like having information written on a chalk board in columns, each column labeled with a header, and then simply erasing that header to signify that column is “deleted” and available for future writing over. Anyone who looks at the board can read everything written in the column, until someone starts writing over it.