Randall Cole Technology Blog

Learn to Program for Free

Well as most of you know I like things that are free and have value.  Nothing has more value than knowledge.  Microsoft offers free tools for anyone to learn to program.  At www.microsoft.com/express you can find all the tools you need to learn to program.  Microsoft has released free tools for writing webpages, Windows applications, phone  apps, and even databases.    In addition this site provides detailed training all at the low low cost of nothing.   Without minions Microsoft can’t remain the largest platform in the world (good or bad, I am indifferent).  

However if you are a student there is the Microsoft Dream Spark page.  This page is pure gold for any technology enthusiast.  Once a student’s .edu account is verified, students can download full versions of the Microsoft development tools and servers.  This includes free downloads for the full professional versions of tools like Visual Studio 2010 Professional, SQL Server and Windows Server 2008.  This site includes excellent training and guides to get any beginner started or hone the skills of a master programmer.  Go look at dream www.dreamspark.com!  I am amazed. 

I was working on a solution to reduce the traffic cause by the printing from thin clients in remote offices. The RDP desktops are actually in the central hosting center but the printers are at the remote site. This means that when a thin client prints, the traffic crosses the WAN to get to the printer.  Printer traffic is large raw and not compressed.  Having a limited budget, I thought if I can send the print job back to the site as an email, I would eliminate the heavy raw print traffic back to the printer.  I found printers by HP that have a feature called ePrint. They have an email client built into the printer, anything sent to the email address of the printer is printed. HP created this feature to support iPhone, iPads… my awesome Droid 2... etc. After talking to my boss, it is clear I am not allowed to replace all the new printers across Europe (this year).

Email to Printer setup:

I created a POC that proved a dedicated workstation with Outlook could act as a printer server for mobile devices.  By adding creating Outlook rules and a little work I was able to get a workstation to auto-print, send a confirmation and delete any email I sent to it. So I can be on the iPad, looking at a PDF, attach the PDF to an email, send it to my printer and a few minutes later pick up my hard copy. If you want to see how to do it here it is …. How to make a Print Server for your mobile devices.

-RC

The Future of the Enterprise IT is Near

Currently we live in a world with routers, switches, LANs and WANS, servers, racks, uninterruptable power supplies, cooling systems, KVMs, workstations and wires.   Think about the benefits to a company if you could eliminate all of these systems without losing any services.  This week it has become very obvious, even for the most doubtful, that this reality is in our near future.  Motorola has released the ATRIX android phone/laptop.  The ATRIX phone powers a laptop.  This simple merger enables a very powerful business tool for the near future of IT. 

Most companies now understand and use virtualization, so it is now just a small leap to move the VMs out of the organization and into a cloud based hosting service like Rackspace.com.   This would eliminate the need for server rooms, routers, switches, cooling systems, power system and everything else that comes with a server room. 

When you pair this with the power of new mobile devices you can eliminate phone systems, LANs at offices, local routers, the WAN that connects to the server room and everything related to networking a small office.  

The best part is that all this can be done without decreasing services for the end user.  In fact services will increase.  Users will be completely mobile, even in an office.   If an employee "has to" come to work in the morning, they can sit anywhere; all the end users will need to do is log in and attach to the closest Blue tooth printer.  A Windows Desktop from a terminal server in the hosting center would provide the desktop.  This means there is a very small learning curve, users are still using all the industry standard Microsoft tools and everyone has LAN speed access to their files.  With a "mobile phone based" network everyone can work from anywhere.  Business continuity would be unaffected by a site closure, weather or power outage.  

Because the laptop is also the phone, LAN lines and phone lines will no longer be needed.   One mobile phone and one mobile service will be all a user needs, eliminating the need for a expensive workstation.  Most employees already have mobile phones anyway.

The reduction in costs is hard to image, the new benefits of mobility is difficult to believe.  We will not need to wait long as I think I could make this possible today.    

Note: I am not sponsored by or endorsing any of the devices or companies listed above.  

-RC

UPDATE: check this out.....