The day before, I will be attending the Internet Summit in RTP, which is a huge event with a ton of top-tier speakers.  My plan is to work on my presentation the evening before and incorporate are much of the material from the Summit as possible.  My goal is to capture the highlights and bring them to people who could not make the event.

If you are going to the IS, please let me know, I would love to catch up there.

Visit the following link for more information about the UNCW event: http://uncwec.org/events/?event_id=15

This is the first of such meetings. It is going to be casual and you should come as you are from work or your home office.

You can get more details here: wilmiti.com where you can join the facebook group.

• Thursday, April 9, 2009
• 5:30pm – 7:30pm
• City Tavern
  890 Town Center Dr
  Wilmington, NC
  phone: 910.509.4070
• View on Google Map
• Visit the Facebook event page

Event Info

Our first meeting will be at City Tavern at Mayfaire in Wilmington. Visit City Tavern’s Website

Come out an meet other IT professionals in a casual atmosphere and talk tech topics.

We have reserved a side room for the event and City Tavern has a full bar and great food.

Come by on your way home from work, or get out of your home office and come join the event.

This is the first of our rotating monthly events.

We have a small office network with four Windows 2003 servers and two Gentoo Linux servers.   What is the best software tool for me to make complete images of the hard drives of these machines?  Everything is working great and I would like to know if we had a catastrophic hard drive failure, I would not have to recreate the machines from Backups (done daily to Tape and HD) and OS install disks.  All machine have either mirrored or Raid 5 SATA drives.  We use Symantec backup exec for the backups.  There is probably at total of 500 GB of data including all the OS install across all the machines.

Is there a cost effective way to image these drives and store the images in case of emergency?  Also, is it possible to make images that could be run virtually in case of emergency?  Do any of the tools have a way to update the images automatically in the future?

thanks in advance,

Andrew

Wed. 1/28/09, 6:00 – 8:30 pm. Will be in conjunction with the Burgaw Chamber of Commerce. We will probably hold it at the CFCC Burgaw Campus, 100 E. Industrial Dr. Burgaw, 28425.

‘New Technologies for Small Business & Personal Use’. – Learn about the latest technology, gadgets, web sites, etc. that you can use to improve your business and personal interactions. Topics will include such things as wireless internet, Blackberry technology, Iphone capability, iGoogle, twitter, web site ad placement, etc.

In contrast to a traditional website, information posted to weblogs or “blogs” is written in a  less formal tone, organized into categories and sorted by publication date.  A weblog can serve as an effective way for potential clients to learn more about a company or vendor and to become familiar with a business or services provided.  “Social media is an exciting new frontier for the marketing industry,” said Debbie Elliott, President of Talk PR, a local public relations and marketing firm.  “We are constantly exploring new ways to expand our clients’ exposure online, and what better way to sharpen our expertise than to experiment with our own brand?  Since launching the Talk blog, we have recommended the use of blogs to many of our clients as an effective way to communicate with their various audiences.”  Talk PR’s weblog was created in 2005 with Google’s Blogger platform and can be found at talkincblog.com.  In May, Talk PR transitioned the site to WordPress to add more customizable, interactive features such as polls, a roll of staff members’ favorite blogs and websites and social networking bookmarks.

Eddie Yates, a certified life coach and fitness trainer in Wilmington, said that a potential client from Rhode Island came across his weblog at usinmotion.com and informed him that she “all ready felt like she knew him” from reading the postings.  Yates reports that he  “posts to his weblog when something really strikes [him], but may go a week or so without something worth mentioning.”  Yates believes that the weblog is an important part of his site because it allows readers to understand his business and philosophy, and because it changes regularly, it keeps people coming back to his website.

In the Wilmington, weblogs written by Realtors account for a high percentage of the business weblogs.   A Google search for “Wilmington, NC Blog” returns a majority real estate-related weblogs.  Most of the topics discussed on Wilmington real estate blogs include the current market conditions, new developments and sales techniques.  “I have gotten a few leads from my blog and I am currently working with a customer that read my blog [post] about Short Sales” said  Exit Realty’s Michelle Roberts.  Roberts also can be contacted via SMS message from her website and uses the microblogging platform Twitter.   Twitter allows users to post 140-character messages, called “Tweets,” from a website, mobile device or via instant messaging to a central website.  These updates then can be then included in weblogs or subscribed to by other users called “followers.”  Twitter’s popularity is expanding rapidly and the site is currently used by a number of Wilmington graphic designers, realtors and local churches, in addition to a wide range of  personal users.  While Roberts has not seen any leads from Twitter yet, she admits that she is just starting to use it.

Talk PR also uses Twitter to put out updates on projects and connect with customers.  Twitter allows Talk PR to quickly update its “followers” on events or news happenings within the company, providing a window into a day in the life of Talk PR.  Interested visitors to Talk PR’s blog can click on the Twitter feed in the side bar to view the updates.

In addition to weblogs and other text-based social networking site like Twitter, video sharing  sites such as YouTube are becoming a popular way to connect with customers.  Wilmington, New Bern and Smithfield’s KOA  campground each have a YouTube channel with videos produced by the campground staff.  Local marketing firm Signal envisioned the YouTube project at KOA.  “We created YouTube channels for each of the three campgrounds and provided instructions on how to optimize the content and keywords to help with their search engine optimization efforts. The campground managers shoot a new video every month. We then update the web site and include the video in a monthly e-newsletter that we produce,” said Bryan Kristof, Signal’s Director of Marketing.  While these videos have a smaller reach than the majority of viral marketing sensations,  some of KOA’s videos have had over a thousand views as of the time of this article.

Publishing weblogs and other social media is not without its risks.  According to Nathan Snell, a recent UNCW graduate who blogs about social media at www.thesnell.com, authenticity is critical to the successful implementation of a business weblog.  “Inauthenticity is the probably one of the greatest things for a company to avoid when using social media properties (blogs, youtube, social networks, etc) or even when planning to engage with others on said properties. For example, a company who uses a blog strictly to promote products, events, and so forth is missing the purpose of social media,” said Snell.  Just like using “reply all” in an email, quick postings to Twitter or weblogs can lead to embarrassment if they are not thought out completely.  “On Twitter people accidentally send what was supposed to be a direct message as a tweet to everyone all the time,” said Snell.

In related news, Verizon Wireless recently completed a study comparing the monthly use of text messaging by their clients between 2006 and 2008.  The study found that this April, Wilmington-based Verizon customers sent or received  6,334,002 text messages compared to 112,405 in the same period in 2006.  Charlotte earned the number one spot across the state as the ‘textiest city’ with customers accounting for over 103 million text messages in April of 2008 compared to just fifteen million texts sent and received in April of 2006.   “The Big City Wireless Use study offers North Carolinians an interesting snapshot of how they have come to rely on their cell phones every day to do much more than make phone calls,” said Jerry Fountain, Verizon Wireless President for the Carolinas/Tennessee region.  “This study proves text messaging is a phenomenal way to communicate information quickly and efficiently to stay connected with family and friends, wherever they may be.”

North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s President and Chief Executive Officer Norris Tolson and Southeastern Office Director Randall Johnson, spoke on how biotechnology drives North Carolina’s economic development at  the Brunswick County Entrepreneurship Conference held on April 10th and 11th in Sunset Beach, N.C.  Some of the topics discussed were expanding the production of natural products, growing algae to produce biodiesel, marine fish farming and practical applications of marine biotechnology.   According to Johnson, entrepreneurship, expanding existing business and recruitment are three equally important components to economic development.

“The key is to start the business here and it will grow. The big question is how to move the ideas from the mind to the marketplace‚” said Johnson.

One of the most promising biotechnologies is using algae to produce fuel. Corn produces less than one hundred gallons of biodiesel per acre, but algae has the potential to produce between five and fifteen thousands gallons of fuel per acre, said Johnson. Currently the supply of biodiesel can not keep up with demand because of the cost of the corn-based feed stock used in its production, so alternative sources are particularly attractive.   Biodiesel can be used as a replacement for petroleum-based diesel fuel with minimal changes to a diesel engine.  In addition to trucking and residential vehicles, biodiesel can now be used in Yachts, as some marine engine manufactures have begun to approve biodiesel as a replacement to traditional diesel fuel.

Another area of interest to Johnson is dealing with the waste produced by hog production.  He listed a range of options from changing the way the waste is collected to using enzymes similar to those used in cleaners and detergents to convert the waste to ethanol. “Small bio-refineries, using enzymes to make fuel, sounds futuristic, but it is not that far fetched,” said Johnson.

Two Wilmington IT Events

The first week in April brought two Information Technology events to the Wilmington area.    The Business Technology Expo occurred on April 1st in downtown Wilmington at the Riverfront Park  and the 2008 InterACT and Wilmington Area Information Technology Professionals Mixer on April 2nd in the Computer Information Systems building on the UNCW campus.

The Business Technology Expo was co-sponsored by Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, VCi and blue dog Network and featured Information Technology vendors and displays.  One presenting company of particular interest was Rogo, a Wilmington based start-up that provides low-cost video surveillance software using common web cameras connected to a personal computer.  Rogo demonstrated their technology, showing how a person could check their home remotely from a video camera via a cell phone.  Their software is also currently in business settings such as Cape Fear Land Rover and the Wilmington Wine Shop and they just did a large installation Culligan water bottling in Goldboro, said James Trimble, company president.  “Water bottlers are actually required by Homeland Security to have security cameras. We are working with big companies to license our technology, as it is simple and bandwidth efficient, and even in larger installation is cheaper than conventional systems,” said Trimble.

The 2008 InterACT and Wilmington Area Information Technology Professionals Mixer included Information Technology vendors and graduate student projects on display. This was the fifth year that UNCW hosted this event  and over 350 people registered to attend.
For many of the student displaying projects, the event was a requirement of their grant funding. One project that attracted considerable crowd attention was research by a UNCW student, two staff and a faculty member into the effects of off-the-shelf video games on learning by developmentally challenged children.  Sheri Anderson, a graduate student in the Master’s of Instructional Design program, Beth Allred and Jeff Ertzberge, Technology Liaisons at the Watson School of Education and faculty member Monica Campbell are using Nintendo wii game consoles with commercially available software to see if there is a positive effect on the academic performance of students involved in Special Education.   The team is looking at  End-of-Course testing and Individual Education Plans and comparing the results between students who are have used video consoles in class and those who have not.  Additionally, the study is evaluating whether allowing students time to use Nintendo DS handheld video consoles as a reward for academic performance works to motivate students to improve.  The study will wrap up this May and so far the progress reports look promising. The full report will not be completed until the fall.

Hosted Solutions, a Raleigh-based provider of data center and managed hosting services, was recently acquired by Boston-based Private Equity Firm ABRY Partners for $140 million.   Hosted Solutions has data centers in Charlotte, Raleigh, Cary and Boston where customers can colocate servers to host business application or websites and provides Microsoft, Sun and Red Hat Linux dedicated servers.  The company will keep its name, the same management team and retain and add employees in its two Charlotte data centers. Hosted Solutions provides services for companies such as the Carolina Panthers, Harris Teeter, Lowe’s Motor Speedway as well as local Wilmington companies including CF Webmasters, Emerson Software, First Research, Signal Design and Sage Island.

Category Five Networks

Wilmington-based Category Five Networks, a provider of networking and IT services recently announced they have earned two additional certifications,  Microsoft Small Business Specialists and Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist.

Verizon Wireless’ Wilmington call center is expanding and will hire 150 new full-time customer service professionals as part of its plan to expand its operation and support increased demand for its wireless products and services.  The company plans to hire approximately twenty-five new employees per month through November 2008.  Verizon Wireless currently employees more than 1200 people in the Wilmington area in their customer service, information technology, training and financial services departments; it also has two full-time employees and two interns in the fitness center.

“Our customer service team helps us deliver on our commitment to provide an exceptional experience for our existing customers and the new ones we plan to add this year nationwide,” said Human Resources Manager Rob Clayton. “We have been very pleased with the talent pool in Wilmington.”

Clayton also commented that he started eleven years ago as a customer service representative and has since advanced to his current position in management.

The Wilmington call center is one of twenty-six national call centers and shares calls with its partner call center in Charleston, SC.  Verizon Wireless customer service representatives answer billing and technical questions, troubleshoot issues, conduct price plan changes and provide general customer support.  Job requirements include one year of customer service experience and strong computer, communication, and problem-solving skills.  A college degree is also highly desirable.

Verizon Wireless consistently ranks as one of the best places to work in the United States.  For seven consecutive years, the company has been named to Working Mother Magazine’s “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” list.

Flow Sciences
Flow Sciences, a Wilmington-based manufacturer and designer of safety containment solutions for research and development laboratories, pilot facilities, automation equipment, robotics, manufacturing and production plants, has released new products to protect technicians and scientists from toxic compounds.  Through a partnership of with ILC Dover and EHS Solutions, Flow Sciences has developed the HEPA-filtered Chemical Transfer Station.  The workstation features an ILC Dover gloved flexible enclosure, EHS Solutions drum lift technologies, and an FSI enclosure for improved powder containment.  The integrated workstation was verified by third party testing and found to contain compounds during handling to less than 1.0 µg/m3.  This maximized containment minimizes loss of product and ensures operator safety.

Additionally, Flow Sciences has released new information regarding the containment of potentially toxic nanomaterials.  According to Flow Science, engineered nanomaterials are diverse in their physical, chemical, and biological nature and have vastly very different toxicologies. Flow Sciences products satisfy The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommendations for containing nanomaterials.

Business Alliance for a Sound Economy
Business Alliance for a Sound Economy (BASE) recently launched its new website, ncbase.org. The new site will provide up-to-date information on proposed regulatory and public policy changes and local, state and federal legislation.  The purpose of this web site is to keep area industry members informed, allowing them to act preemptively on changes and legislation that may adversely affect the industry.  The site includes news, event calendars, and polls, and it is based on the Joomla opensource web application framework.

According to Donna Griardot, CEO of BASE, the site was designed to better communicate with both their members and the public and to help build strength through their large number of members.  Girardot also named water as the biggest issue for her organization.  “We can’t build, can’t grow and can’t develop without water.  Look at Raleigh, we are at the end of the straw here”

BASE is a coalition of associations with the mission to promote public policies encouraging regional economic growth, job creation, healthy real estate, homebuilding, land use and development.  It has been active since 2003 and currently employs three registered lobbyists.  BASE represents numerous independent commercial and residential real estate, building, development, banking, engineering, architectural and environmental businesses.  It also represents members of the Brunswick County Home Builders Association, the Brunswick County Landowners Association, the Topsail Island Association of REALTORS® and the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association.

McKim & Creed, a engineering firm, started in Wilmington, with an office in downtown Wilmington, won the 2007 Construction Writer’s Association (CWA) for best website.   CWA a non-profit organization for professional journalists, writers, editors, and publicists serving the the construction industry and presented a total of  three national awards this year for electronic communications. Web sites are judged on criteria such as quality of content, overall design and use of innovative and accessible technology.

The number one challenge for this industry is hiring and retaining good people and this site helps attract quality employees, especially recent graduates,  said Pete Kienle, Chief Marketing Officer McKim & Creed and past national president for the Society for Marketing Professional Services.  Kienle stated that the firm has put a greater emphasis on their online presence than most of their competitors and that more employees are increasingly using the web to research employment.

“Most firms in this industry would not have spent as much money and time on their website but we felt it was money well spent, the owners are thrilled to death,” said Kienle.

The firms has also hired a full time person to administer the site and create a company intranet and used video of staff throughout the site.

The website (www.mckimcreed.com), launched in July 2007 and was built by Signal, a design, marketing, and technology firm with offices in Wilmington and Raleigh. The website includes a custom-built content management system that enables McKim & Creed staff  to update key portions, add pages and content to the site, said Bryan Kristof, Director of Marketing for Signal.   “McKim & Creed was easy to work with because they already understood the design and construction process.”   Since the award, there has been “huge activity” on the site, said Kienle.

Trio Visions launch new web content platform

National country star Tim McGraw and Wilmington based AAI Pharma have something in common.  Both are using Triovisions, a  local interactive marketing firm, new web content platform. Local interactive marketing firm Triovision developed their new Trio360i internet content management platform to provide users of websites and mobile browsers with a seamless experience regardless of the device.  Their first major project based on the framework,  recording artist Tim McGraw’s mobile internet site (mcgraw2go.mobi) , launched recently and provides fans a way to  receive SMS and email alerts, view news, tour dates, download photos or videos, and purchase electronic media.

The platform is not just for  content-rich sites like McGraw’s, said Richard Trio, company president .  AII Pharma’s new web site will be based on the Trio360i platform and will launch in March.   This site will primarily use a slimmed down set off features not the mobile or ecommerce features.

The Trio360i platform automatically recognizes the type of device and its capabilities to provide content to mobile phones or web browsers in HTML or Adobe Flash format.  Additionally, the site allows authorized users to edit the sites pages and content and includes so-called “social networking” features that allow components of the site to be used on mySpace and on personal websites.

For mobile device content, the platform uses the emerging dotMobi standard where sites use a .mobi ending to denote mobile content instead of the traditional .com, .net or .org Top Level Domain. (TLD)  dotMobi sites are optimized to display consistently across a range of mobile devices, regardless of manufacture.  “We made the decision early in the game to adopt dotMobi standards because we know consumers expect to receive content that works properly on their mobile devices,” said Trio.   dotMobi is a consortium of mobile phone operators and device manufactures and includes Ericsson, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM, Visa and Vodafone.

Cyberlawyer Offers  Software for Attorneys

Wilmington attorney Stephanie Kimbro originally built a website to allow her to practice law online, in what she calls a “Virtual Law Office,” but is expanding her business to provide the software to other attorneys who would like to follow a similar model.  Kimbro’s web based product, VLOTech is offered as a hosted solution and provides tools to attorneys to deliver legal services online, in a secure environment.  According to Kimbro, many of their clients are solo and small firms who want to set up completely virtual law offices and work from home or collaborate with a colleague online who lives in different city. “Over the past couple months, we have gotten a large response nationwide to VLOTech with feedback from attorneys regarding the different ways they intend to use the product”, said Kimbro in an email to GWB. “We have even been contacted by several accountants who work with attorneys who see various applications for the technology for their own businesses and their attorney clients’ businesses.”

A 2006 ethics opinion by the North Carolina State Bar, the state agency responsible for regulating the practice of law in North Carolina,  supported the practice of providing legal services exclusively online. The opinion approved the “use of the internet as an exclusive means of promoting and delivering legal services” by attorneys but cautioned about several potential pitfalls, including unauthorized practice in other states and violations of advertising rules.

The software is currently being used as part of Kimbro’s personal virtual law firm.  (www.kimbrolaw.com) Once the software is launched to the public, it will be offered to attorneys and their staff as a monthly subscription with a per user fee which will include training and tech support.

One todo from the phone, that was set to not have a due date, was imported with a 2015 date, but that is not a real issue.

• Download the iSync plugin from Nokia.
• Install it
• Relaunch iSync

This should work with any of the phones listed on that page.   

My friend Blake Watters, knew immediately it was him. His Blackberry 8820 has a great feature, it allows your to accidentally call 911 while the phone is locked.  When in key lock mode, you get three options:

1. Unlock Phone
2. Emergency Call
3. Cancel

I guess some brain trust at RIM decided that instead of accidentally calling your brother or mother-in-law and leaving a garbled message on their voicemail, your phone should be able to accidentally call the police by sitting on your phone.

The best part is that since the 911 dispatcher has access to the triangulation information from the cell towers, they are able to find your withing a couple of hundred feet. The officers were understanding but I could imagine a time when they would not be so interested to learn about the technical reason you made a call to 911.

The crazy thing is, that if you hit a button, before moving the roller ball, it enters a traditional “unlock only” mode, but if you move the trackball first, you get the emergency call option. Basically, they have combined an inconsistent GUI with the ability to make unintentional emergency call.

Intent on to figuring out how this could be disabled, I looked through the demo 8820 AT&T sent me then I called AT&T tech support and they transfered me to Blackberry support, who pointed me to Knowledge Base Article KB12406.

The Emergency Call number is designated by law, and by design the BlackBerry device incorporates this into its functionality. This number cannot be removed or modified.

Short and sweet, no way to disable the feature. Nice job RIM, they recommend you keep it in the included holster that they provide.