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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
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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
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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

Xobni: Manage your mail

I’m testing Xobni, a tool that analyzes your mail to figure out your own personal network. It also profiles your email activity and those of your contacts. Really cool! The product is currently in beta release. Click on the logo for an invitation to the beta.
Xobni outlook add-in for your inbox

>> Updated

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2007 12 14 Technology Comments (0) Permalink

Desktop Search Revisited

It’s been a while since I wrote about desktop search programs.

I had been using Copernic, but stopped using it when the free version no longer applied to non-home users. (We’re a non-profit, but we are a commercial user.)

I then switched to Google desktop search (GDS), which worked very well, with one exception to be noted later, on both Windows and Linux. I’m now using Windows Desktop Search on the Windows machine. Because it’s fully integrated with Outlook 2007, it serves most of my needs.

My preference, however, is the Google search simply because I’m used to the Google syntax and logic.

GDS problems:

  • (Windows) The problem is that the current version breaks the ability to open .msg attachments within Outlook. That is, if a message is forwarded to me as an attachment, Google Desktop Search makes it unreadable. After removing GDS, a message attachment behaves normally.
  • (Linux) Google provides a plugin for Thunderbird mail to allow it to index messages. The plugin causes Thunderbird to use 100% of the processor and, eventually, crash. The plugin has not been updated for quite a while.
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    2007 12 04 Other Stuff
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    Upgrade weekend

    It’s been a fun weekend.

    I upgraded my Sony Vaio laptop to Windows Vista and my Dell home desktop to Fedora 8. Both upgrades were actually clean installs. Surprisingly (to me, at least), both went smoothly.

    The key to the Vaio upgrade was reading the documentation Sony provided. They strongly recommend the “install as a new copy of Windows” option. To get all the Sony specific stuff back on the machine, I used a copy of the Sony Vista Upgrade Companion DVD. Even the internal Cingular/ATT modem is working!

    Moving my Dell from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 was also fairly smooth. The install from DVD took about 45 minutes. By far the longest part was restoring 35GB of music files from the backup server. There are still a few issues. The library that reads the tags on MP3 files barfs when Amaork tries to rebuild its collection. Fortunately, a fix for this is already in the testing repository. Also, the built-in Atheros drivers (ath5k) are still beta quality. I’ve fallen back to MadWifi to get the wireless working.

    Finally, on a separate 6GB partition on the Sony, I installed Fedora 8. I haven’t yet figured out the Cingular stuff, but normal computer functions work reasonably well.

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    2007 11 12 CCIM Technology Series
    Linux
    Microsoft
    Notebook Computers
    Technology
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    gMail, Google Apps, and Exchange

    The Technology Evangelist asks “Will Google replace Microsoft Exchange?“.

    He makes a good case that the newly announced IMAP support is about the 10th shoe to drop on Google’s steady march on Microsoft Office and, now, Exchange.

    CCIM.NET users: Instructions are at http://www.ccim.net/outlook-imap.pdf

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    2007 10 27 CCIM Technology Series
    Google
    Microsoft
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