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CCIM MailBridge update

Thank you for your comments and suggestions.

We’ve made the following improvements to MailBridge during the past week:
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2008 05 08 CCIM Technology Series Comments (2) Permalink

CCIM MailBridge Update

CCIM MailBridge is a preference-matching email system for the exchange of email among CCIM Designees.

On a typical day, about 8 messages were sent through the CCIMMEMBERS mailing list. In the first hour of MailBridge, we got 45 messages. I think things will settle down a bit as the newness wears off.

We’ve made several updates to the system in response to your suggestions and complaints. First, however, some housekeeping: Continue reading ›

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2008 05 06 CCIM Technology Series Comments (2) Permalink

CCIM Technology Update for May

For the last three weeks, CCIM Designees have been setting their preferences in CCIM MailBridge and waiting patiently (or not so patiently) for the ability to send mail. We’re turning that feature on May 1, probably around 10:00 AM. Over the last 3 weeks, we’ve migrated MailBridge onto new production servers hosted at ServerCentral in Chicago and have been tuning and tweaking the virtual machine on which it runs, as well as the MySQL database that’s the core of the system. There are a few last sanity checks to be performed today, but it’s looking good!

During May, we’ll also be releasing a faster and more resource-efficient version of the member search tool, Find A CCIM Professional, and an updated member profile that lets Designees control whether or how they can be contacted from the Find A CCIM Professional results.

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2008 04 30 CCIM Technology Series Comments (0) Permalink

Powering up at John Wayne

Greetings from John Wayne airport, gate 8. The rows of seats have one power outlet, easily accessible, for each seat in the center section. This is great service. Many thanks to whoever got this done.

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2008 04 12 Technology Comments (0) Permalink

Two new member tools

The Institute is putting two new tools into members’ hands.

Last Wednesday, we turned on a preference matching system for email. It uses phpList as the backend to handle the mailing functions, with our own front-ends managing message composition, preference settings, etc. The system is available now for beta use by the Membership Services committee and the Partners Advisory Board. It should go live to all members in about 10 days.

This week, we’ll turn on the social network addon for CCIM Partners’ “Find A CCIM Professional”, pending review of documentation by the Partners Advisory Board and a heads-up email to all Designees.

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2008 03 15 CCIM Partners
CCIM Technology Series Comments (0) Permalink

Steering into Drupal

I’ve been working for the last couple of weeks with Drupal, an open source web content management system and am full of so many positive emotions it’s hard to know where to begin. The system is easy to set up, powerful, extendable through a large library of user contributed modules, well documented and easy to use by viewers and contributors alike.

We jumped in at version 6 about two days after it was released, so there are a few things not quite ready yet, like LDAP authentication, but this has not stopped us from building the new CCIM Intranet on Drupal 6 and planning on using it as the base for the next generation of www.ccim.com.

If you’re in the process of building out a website and are looking for something database driven with RSS support and almost every feature you can image, give it a close look.

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2008 03 10 CCIM Technology Series Comments (0) Permalink

Power (outlets) to the people

Technology Evangelist notes this easily acceptable power outlet in a hotel room. Yeah! I recently had to choose between a light and a dead computer in a room in Nashville.

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2008 02 13 Other Stuff Comments (0) Permalink

Do you have a backup?

At the office, your IT guys probably back up your computer for you or force you to store critical files on a file server that they back up. I’ll write later about how the Institute does backup at a corporate level. The concern of this posting is backing up personal computers.

What are you going to do if your hard disk starts making a funny clicking sound, then stops spinning? Or when your notebook drops out of your hands and tumbles down a flight of stairs? Or when a nearby lightning strike fries your 5 year old surge protector and everything attached to it? Continue reading ›

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2007 12 30 CCIM Technology Series
Linux
Tips
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Conceptual computers

The CCIM Institute is become just a little more virtual. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve started replacing aging, single-use servers. Rather than buy another small box for each purpose, we’ve purchased a couple of fast, powerful Dell boxes, installed VMWare, and turned each into a host for several virtual servers.

Currently, we’ve put two MX, two DNS servers, a batch reporting tool server, and a backup software hosting server into the virtual space, running Windows 2003, Windows XP, and Fedora Linux. These systems will continue in test mode through the New Year’s holiday and move into production in early January, allowing us to shut down or repurpose some of that old hardware.

Reducing the number of physical boxes has some real benefits. Space, heating, and cooling are the most obvious. (In the rebuild of the 8th floor, our server room lost about 36 sq ft.) Virtualization also gives us the ability to add additional single purpose servers with no marginal cost, other than the possible cost of an operating system license. We can also quickly clone an existing server to create a test environment, add or remove memory from a virtual server in a matter of minutes, and re-allocate resources dynamically.

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2007 12 29 CCIM Technology Series
Linux
Microsoft
Technology Comments (0) Permalink

Xobni: Updated

A new update to the Xobni beta appeared a couple of days ago. One of the cool things about this beta, something I’ve missed in the overly large betas now practiced by MS and other companies, is the chance to see beta feedback implemented. I’m happy to say that Xobni now supports expected right-click functions as well as copy and paste. My Number 1 unanswered wish right now is speed. There’s a noticeable lag moving from message to message while Xobni does its calculations.

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2007 12 24 Technology Comments (1) Permalink