It is no secret that Windows has security problems and that Windows machines get bombarded with viruses and spyware everyday. The problem is further compounded by users that use Internet Explorer and like to click ‘Run’ on those random popup screens asking to install some software.

Forunately there is antispyware software available to help remove the junk we get on our computers. Well, depending on how you look at it, it is unfortunate that this software is necessary, but is a fact of life with a Windows PC.

I have tried a lot of anti spyware programs in the 15 years I have been using Windows and they all provide varying results. That’s why when I heard that Spyzooka promises 100% spyware removal I was a bit skeptical. After doing a bit of reading they have a pretty strong guarantee. In fact, they are the only software promising 100% removal.

Firstly, they have a 60 day money back guarantee. Pretty standard stuff. The nice thing about their promise is that if Spyzooka doesn’t remove every single piece of spyware on the first scan you can send the scan results (there’s a button on the scan results page) to the Spyzooka team and they analize the data and send you a free update to remove the additional spyware it had missed.

With a promise like that and 60 days money back to give it a try I will be testing this out. I would love to get rid of the other 3 programs I use if Spyzooka can do it all.

We all love to hate Sony. In fact, I could make a full time job out of hating Sony and still work overtime. Instead of ranting about some of the reasons I think Techcult did a fine job of it here.

One of the things that really bugs me the most is how Sony crippled the PSP so it could not output to an external screen, like say your TV. So you had these PSP movies that you had to watch on a tiny screen instead of hooking up to your 46 inch flat screen. Thanks Sony. Not a good selling point.

Well, the Zune must have realized what idiots Sony were and decided to do the opposite and include TV out capabilities. You can watch your Zune content on your TV which is nice because seriously who wants to watch movies on a tiny screen especially if you want to show someone else? This may require some extra Zune accessories like a Zune AV cable but that is pretty common.

Another nice feature of the Zune is the ability to stream video and audio to your XBox. Sony could have easily done the same with the Play Station but nope, why would anybody want to do that? It amazes me that Sony is still in business.

On top of it all the Zune has a battery life up to 30 hours. This beats my old iPod by a long shot. Another nice feature of the Zune is the Zune charger. You can plug Zune into a standard powere outlet to charge and not have to plug into your computers USB ports, although that is an option if you want. This bugs me about my iPod I have to plug it into my PC and must have iTunes installed on the computer to charge the device. Not exactly convenient on the road sinceI don’t have a laptop to bring along to charge it.

The Zune seems to take some flack as a second rate player but I like the feature I have described and it easily beats the pants off PSP for any media content. Whether you’ll like if over iPod is matter of preference.

Information Technology changes rapidly and it can be hard sometimes to keep up with the skills required to maintain your career.

Programming is no exception to the above statement. Lately I have been reading books to upgrade my development skills. Programming is not all about the language you use. It goes way beyond the basic syntax to methodologies, patterns, and best practices.

With our companies latest piece of software we truly jumped into the enterprise market. I figured I better get up to speed on enterprise programming techniques as the software is growing fast and will need to be flexible and very maintainable. Consider it a bit of IT professional development.

My first stop along the career training path was to start reading Foundations of Programming Ebook by Karl Seguin which walks you through everything you need to know about programming for the enterprise and writing maintainable code.

This approach to continuing education applies to most trades, maybe not to the extent as IT. The long and the short of it is you never stop learning and you can’t survive in a career without learning new skills as they are presented. Consider professional development like the Natural Selection of the work force. If your skills are weak or out of date you will get pushed out by younger or more educated workers. It’s survival of the smartest working.

As someone who has been on both sides of the hosting fence there are few times that I would recommend a client trying to run and manage their own server. Generally, it sounds like a good idea, especially when you look at the cost of managed hosting. It is important to remember that although it may appear cheap to host your own server, using Linux and other open source technologies, the costs can be deceptive and not always be directly tied to money. Most often if careful and honest assessment is done the managed services turn out to be the cheaper option in the end. What am I talking about? Lets see.

Let me clarify that when I talk about running your own server I am not referring to some guy running a Linux web server on an old PC in his basement. I will be comparing both options for the same level and quality of service.

Up front costs

Let’s compare the up front costs for managed hosting and running your own server.

A typical dedicated server will probably start around $175 per month and gives you a modest server with lots of bandwidth and unless you are running heavily used sites or applications then it will most likely be more than enough. So at $175 per month that will cost you $2100 for the year. That may sound like a lot but really it is not because you get a fully functionally server out of the box with operating system and software per installed based on the package you chose. You also get power redundancy because your server is part of a data center. Also the hosting company still owns the hardware and is responsible for replacement if any hardware fails.

If you were to host your own server and you had the same $2100 budget for the first year. Well it would be impossible to build your server, install power redundancy (modest UPS at a minimum), buy the operating system (if you wanted Windows), and buy any backup and protection software. Also on top of that you are going to need a static IP address (you get that as part of the managed services) which can easily run you $100 per month from your ISP which alone eats up over half your budget.

Server administration

Another important thing to consider is server administration. Who is going to run and maintain your server? Who is going to troubleshoot your server when it goes down at 2 in the morning and you start getting panicked calls from your clients.

Most hosting companies will also administer your server for you as part of your managed hosting package, well, for a bit more money of course. This means that if something goes wrong you just call up technical support and they take care of it. This also means they are on the hook for the protection of your data and making sure the backup routine is in place and functioning.

Let’s consider that compared to you having to maintain your own server. If you are a person that is knowledgeable about computers than chances are you could manage to run your server fairly smoothly. On the other hand consider that if you are busy keeping the server running optimally then who is running your business and generating revenue? You can’t do everything and out sourcing your server administration is one of those things you should let go.

Now even if you paid your hosting company double to include server administration into your package ($350 per month or $4200 per year) this is considerably less then a salary for a fulltime IT person which will run you a minimum of $40,000 per year for someone decent and if you decided to use Linux to save money on your OS costs that salary just took a big jump.

Conclusion

The long and short of this post is to say if you need dedicated hosting then go with a professional company because when you stop to consider all the costs involved whether it be money or just peace of mind running your own server will cost you way more.

I am always interested in the latest toys coming from cell phone makers. Cell phones can do so much these days besides make phone calls. You can play mp3s, take pictures, make videos, or surf the Web.

Cell phones have become such an integrated part of our lives it is impossible to imagine living without them. Just simple stuff like texting a friend, even if they are in the same house, yes I know you guys do that :D, has become just a way of life.

Apart from regular use they are critical to business and the slightest time savings when making a deal can save money or even mean the difference of getting or missing out on an opportunity. Our busy lives require cell phones.

Just like the vast array of phones and features, price varies just as much. So how do you know what cell phone is better than the other? How can you easily compare feature? Cell phones change so rapidly and there are so many different models out there it is difficult to make a decision especially if you are looking to save some money as well.

I discovered a nice site this weekend that helps me this that very question. PhoneGladiator.com lists all of the latest models with lots of details on features for each phone as well as where to buy them.

There are even consumer reviews and various photos and videos about each phone.

This site can easily save you time when trying to decide to buy a cell phone or determining if it is worth while to just hold onto your current phone.

I did a guest post today over at Reencoded. Check it out and leave some feedback.

I have been reading a lot about what makes a developer want to stay or leave their current jobs or clients on some development blogs as of late.

There are two things that stuck out to me, probably because they hit home with me, that can really frustrate and discourage a developer.

1. Poor or incomplete specifications. There is nothing worse for a developer to implement code based on wrong or poor specifications. The results are never what the manager or client wanted. This results in tention on both ends and the developer ends up recoding the task. Everyone loses in this case.

It is very important for the client or project manager to lay out very precise and detailed instructions for the developer before any coding begins. This is even more important if the developer has limited or no access to the client or manager to resolve questions. The poorer the specifications the more questions and guess work the developer must do to complete the project.

Being a the lead developer in my organization I have felt the pain of redoing work and have a strong appreciation for proper planning and documentation.

2. Unreasonable expectations. This can come in many forms, from unreasonable deadlines to being expected to overcome limitations in technology. What ever the expectation both parties end up discouraged and disappointed when things fall apart.

It is essential that the client be made aware from day one what is possible in the realm of technology and timeline. It is also crucial that the person or team that communicates with the clients and relays information to the development team be very knowledgeable in these areas as well. Sales reps love to say whatever will make the sale but this can lead to some messy situations if promises cannot be delivered as stated.

Avoiding disaster

If managers can keep these points in mind, and take them to heart, when organizing projects they will be amazed at the amount of positive outcomes that will result from just a little diligence to make sure both sides stay happy and productive.

I usually don’t participate in contests. That’s probably due to the fact that I am essentially lazy and I have the mind set that I couldn’t possibly win.

Well, I am shrugging that off after seeing Alan’s, of Affiliate Confession, sweet new MacBook Air that he won in a contest.

Alan is throwing a contest of his own with some pretty nice prizes from Market Leverage and Vat19. These prizes include a Nintendo DS iwth 2 games, a Flip Mino camera, a USB missle launcher for harassing your co-workers, and a banana bunker (a plastic shell to protect bananas).

Now it is easy to enter, which is probably why even I am doing it. You just write a blog post, kind of like this one, about the contest. Make sure you link to the contest post, Market Leverage, and Vat19 then leave a comment on the contest post with a link to your blog post about the contest. It’s that easy.

Search Engine Optimisation is well known in the development community. Developers may not be SEO experts but they have at least heard of it and understand it’s importance in relation to the success of a website. Now, with some big names offering SEO services the non-technical and managers are catching on and realizing it’s importance to their success.

As a quick overview of SEO it is making sure that you use the proper, semantic, markup for your webpages, writing keyword targetted content, and building links back to your pages. I know SEO is more complex than that but it is beyond the scope of this post.

Beyond SEO, there is another option that has presented itself. Google Adwords. Now Adwords doesn’t instill the same feelings of confidence in all people as SEO does. It is a mysterious beast that takes knowledge and experience to harness. You will find those out there that love Adwords and use it to drive a great deal of business to their websites. There are just as many, if not more, out there that will tell you that Adwords is a money pit and a waste of time.

As someone who has played the Adwords game I like to think I fall into the middle of both of those extremes. I know Adwords holds great potential for me but I still haven’t mastered the art yet. Having spent in excess of $600 experimenting with Adwords I found that it was fairly easy to drive lots of cheap traffic to my site. Getting that traffic to convert into something meaningful like a sale, lead, or even RSS subscription proved much harder.

Just like in SEO, the proper keywords are key (no pun intended). Even a slight variation in keyword selection can mean the different between rags and riches.

With SEO if you choose the wrong keywords you are out time and money in the form of work on your site and content. In Adwords the wrong keywords mean lost money for every single visitor to your site because you are paying for every single click.

So when it comes to either SEO or Adwords it pays to do your homework before you start rather than later. It could save you time and ultimately money.

It always feels nice when you see a decision pay off in a positive way. For me this is especially nice as I seem to find things out the hard way most of the time.

In this case I am referring to a hosting provider I decided NOT to choose. That host is DreamHost. I had done a lot of research on DreamHost and was sure I would go with them when the time can except for chance stumble upon a blog post describing many performance and uptime problems the blogger had experienced with DreamHost. After some debating with myself I decided to look for a different host. That’s how I found HostGator which I am very pleased with thus far.

So on to the point. DreamHost announced via their offical blog that they are encouraging their customers to use GMail instead of the email provided by DreamHost with the customer’s hosting package. Why? According to DreamHost:

Just over HALF of all the support requests we get are about email. Everything else we offer, combined, doesn’t add up to the amount of trouble, expense, use, and effort that goes into “simple” old email.

And that’s kind of funny, because as far as I can tell, almost nobody CHOOSES a web host based on their email features.

They want to offload their customer service problems to Google and apparently nobody cares about email when choosing a host. Well, perhaps, that’s because when we choose to pay you for an advertised service we except it to just work and be rock solid. I am not going to contact your sales department and ask for email stats and uptime charts. I expect that it is the best it can possible be.

On the positive side Google probably provides a much more reliable service than DreamHost and Google does it for free. You can even use you@yourdomain.com if you use Google Apps (also free).

I am just glad I stayed clear of DreamHost. What service will they try and drop next?

As a side note I was very surprised at the tone of their blog. It is incredibly unprofessional and I would expect it was written by a nerdy high school student. Here are some quotes.

Some people might say Web Hosting is for late night orgies in the data center.

Me + Web Browser = Instant Orgy (tool tip on image of woman wearing a Firefox tank)

see you emo fags later - tom

To me this is a huge warning sign as to the way the company is run. There is no way I would ever even consider using DreamHost again.