It appears that Microsoft is a little upset that they were left out of the creation of a collaborative document called The Cloud Manifesto.  The Senior Director of Platform management from Microsoft went so far as calling the document biased to benefit the authors and unfair to competitors, like Microsoft. 

What I think is interesting is that Microsoft is very eager to be the leader in cloud computing.  But I don’t think Microsoft understands that with cloud computing the end user doesn’t care what operating system their online application is running on.  Many people don’t realize that most websites are running on open source platforms, they just care that the website works.  But from the system administrators’ standpoint, if he can save thousands of dollars running open source software, and the end user doesn’t know the difference why would he choose something else? 

Read the whole article from IT World here.

In an effort to connect consumers with farmers the maker of Stone-Buhr flower has added codes to flour packages that allow consumers to discover where the wheat for their flour was grown.  The website http://www.findthefarmer.com/ even provides consumers the ability to contact the farm that grew their wheat.  This is just another example of the power of the Internet to connect people.  The cost to setup a system like this is negligible and yet the payoff could be great.  The Internet really provides small businesses with thousands of ways to connect with their customers.  Read the whole article here.

Many techies often told people keeping their computer running used less power than booting it up every morning.  It turns out most of us were wrong.  A new study shows that US businesses spend $2.8 billion in keeping unused PCs running.  While in the past there were some risks associated with continually turning on and off your PC, modern computer hardware is much better at handling this stress.  Read the whole article from InfoWorld here.
Interested in learning more about PC power myths?  Read an summary of a Forrester report titled "Five PC power myths debunked."

Google recently announced a new feature for gmail users that gives you five precious seconds to undo that email you just sent.  Often I will find a typo or realize I forgot to add an attachment moments after I click send, now instead panicking I can simply click the undo link that shows up near the top of the browser.  Amazing!  Learn more here.

The recently appointed federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, says that he wants to use technology to make the government more transparent.  He also wants to use more cloud computing (aka software as a service) instead of  costly proprietary software.  Kundra has experience of implementing software as a service when he spearheaded an initiative in his old job as the CIO of the District of Columbia to move the city government from Microsoft Exchange to Google Applications.  Read the entire article here.

I attended the Denver Chamber of Commerce's "State of Small Business" breakfast yesterday morning.  The panel was interesting and certainly many of the economic numbers showed that Colorado was in a better economic condition than the nation as a whole.  One number that stuck with me was that from 2007 to 2008 the national bank lending rate to businesses was about flat, while that same lending rate for Colorado was 11%.  After the event I started talking to a lady who happened to be from the Denver Post.  She asked me a few questions, and I was excited to see my name pop up in an article this morning.  Read the story here.

What do the following websites all have in common:  www.theonion.com, http://news.van.fedex.com/ and www.beyonceonline.com? If you said they all use the open source Drupal website engine you would be correct.  One of the great things about open source software is that it makes great software freely available to anyone with a computer and internet connection.  Drupal is a excellent example of the power and versatility of open source software.  Technically Drupal is a content management system, which is a term used to describe website software that allows users to easily create, manage and upload content onto the website.  Drupal is a very powerful open source content management package used for many sites, including ktgdenver.com.  Drupal is so powerful because it is customizable and you can install add-ons from allowing you to create an e-commerce site, or an online discussion room.  At the core of the Drupal software package is a website engine that is very stable and secure.  Recently Drupal received extra media attention because is was used for the US Government’s new site www.recovery.gov.  So before you shell out several thousand for a custom website you may find a great open source alternative for free.

A common misconception is that when you empty deleted files from you recycle bin they are gone forever, but don't think someone with the right software couldn't recover many of the deleted files.  When you delete a file from you computer what really happens is that you are deleting the computer's knowledge that the files exists.  Think of it as if you were to remove you name from the city phonebook.  If someone were to look for you in the phone book they wouldn't find you.  But you still live in the city, you've just been removed from a directory listing.  Now if the person was really persistent they could drive around every city street knocking on doors looking for you.  Given enough time, they would eventually find you and they would likely keep your address so they could find you in the future.  Software to recover deleted files works much in the same way.  The recovery software searches you entire hard drive for files that aren't listed in the "phonebook" of the hard drive and lists all the "unlisted" files it found for the user to recover.  One problem with this software has been that files are rarely stored in one spot on the hard drive.  For instance one half of a picture might be stored at one address on the drive and the remaining part of the picture is stored at another address.  Some new software has recently been created to help with this problem.  It goes one step beyond traditional recovery software and tries to patch together these broken files giving the user the original pictures.  Confused yet?  Try reading the original article here for more information.

The bottom line is that if you've accidentally deleted important files there is a chance you can get them back, google "file recovery software for more help."  But the flip side is that if you want to removed files never to be accessed again, you are dong to need to do more than just empty them from your recycle bin.

If you are an avid user of gmail you might have noticed an extended outage the morning of 24 Feb.  In response to the outage Google created an apps status board that shows you information on current and past issues with any of the Google applications.  You can view the status board here.

One great tool I recommend if you do use Gmail is the offline application.  This allows you to view and create emails even when you aren't connected to the internet.  Then when you do connect Gmail automatically downloads any new messages and sends any messages sitting in your outbox.  Learn more about this feature here.

It always amazes me how simple, low tech solutions can fix our modern problems.  The New York Times has a very interesting article with a few home remedies that may fix some of our most common gadget headaches.  Two of my favorites are:

1. To extend the range of your remote car door fob, place the metal part of your key fob against your chin.  This allows your head to act as an antenna for the signal thus allowing you to lock/unlock your car from a great distance.  (Don't ask me about the medical effects of using your head as an antenna, but I can't imagine it is any worst than holding a cell phone up to your ear.)

2. I always hate when I try to print something from my inkjet printer and the printout has white streaks running across it.  This is often because the ink isn't getting through all the print nozzles.  In addition to using the printer’s nuzzle clean function, try pulling the ink cartridge out running and a hair dryer on it for two or three minutes the heat softens the ink giving it a better chance of getting through the print nozzles.

Make sure you read the rest of the home remedies here.