02Sep Google Chrome - wickedly fast.
If you haven’t started trying Google Chrome, do it now.
In less than 30 minutes of experimenting, I have already replaced my beloved FireFox with this. It’s just stunning. Wickedly fast. Perfect aesthetics. While it’s beta and I have managed to crash it with some odd treatment, it’s nothing unexpected and nothing that will affect me in day to day web browsing.
It may seem like IE or FireFox are “fast enough” but you won’t really get it until you try it. As a web application developer, the additional built-in tools that aid development are downright amazing. There’s a lot of hype in the blogosphere about this, and for good reason. Trust me when I say this browser is simply amazing and a reinvention of fast.
09Aug How is it possible that something as simple as email can still be such a nightmare?
We have been developing and hosting web sites and applications, as well as email, for over 11 years at HaveAByte.com, and email has always gone hand in hand with that. For years, this has been fine and didn’t require much effort.
I recently read an article about how DreamHost, a major web host, had started recommending their customers go to Gmail. Their reason was that half of their support requests were related to it. This used to be a “set it and forget it” service. Now we have major ISPs throwing up the white flag and sending customers elsewhere.
Additionally, email, despite having been around for 43 years, seems to be getting more difficult to manage technically. This used to be something that was hard to screw up - almost anyone could set up an email server and provide the service. Now, it takes serious effort to provide solid email services on an ongoing basis.
The support and complexity issues are due in part to two things: Spam, and the increase in average users accessing their email from multiple PCs and mobile devices.
Spam has always been an nearly infinite arms race between the spammers and the anti-spam software developers. It’s a difficult problem and spammers only get smarter, while the technical solutions sometimes hit certain walls that are difficult to overcome. Even HaveAByte’s mail services are not immune to this, some creativity is required to overcome it.
I’ve always had multiple PCs, and with the addition of a Blackberry to my family, combined with many addresses and account-specific behavior I want for the various devices has created a tricky problem of synchronization and duplication avoidance. Many people try to solve this problem by simply ticking the box that says “leave email messages on the server” on all their devices, only to see their server account fill up and their email become slow or fail.
I recently asked someone, “do anyone live with you in your home?” in the process of helping to improve their email architecture. Why? In their case, they wanted to retrieve email during frequent business trips but also sync it to Outlook at home. At the same time, they did not want to read messages more than once regardless of the device, so we configured Outlook and the mobile device to delete messages from the server once they are retrieved by each devices. However, I foresaw that if she left her Outlook running and hopped on a plane, it would pull messages and delete them from the server, preventing her from being able to get her email on the road. If she lived with someone, she could simply phone them up and have them shut down Outlook. A remote access solution to her home PC was out of the question due to the rush of the situation and the fact that almost nobody knows the password to their router to set up the necessary port forwarding to make that happen.
We realize that a well designed email solution even for a single individual is just that - something that must be well designed by someone in the know. There’s a lot to consider when you are setting up a proper email solution that covers every aspect of your personal and business life and multiple devices, and you definitely need someone who is going to sort it out right. Choose carefully.
If you’re a subscriber of my Technology Coaching Service, you will able to access a password-protected upcoming post about how to solve many of the common pitfalls associated with these problems.
08Aug Welcome to Knepfler.com
Hello. It’s 4 AM and I’m up setting up this blog. Why? Partially because after my jiu-jitsu class, I was exhausted slept through most of the evening, so I woke up at midnight and have been up all night. Seems like as good a time as any! The main reason, however, is that I’ve been meaning to create this site for a while, as the new home of my blog and Technology Coaching Services, intended for business owners and executives.
For years I have helped people make the most of technology in their business and personal lives. I’m passionate about it, I love to help and teach, and I loathe technology inefficiency. In order to help people better, I am offering it as a service that will ensure that you get a share of my time, rather than my help always taking a back seat to my business ventures.
I am also the owner of HaveAByte.com, a web-based business solution provider. HaveAByte is also the only hosted solution provider for AyaNova, a service management, dispatch scheduling and work order software.
If you’re reading this site, you probably know me. That’s good enough for now. Please read about my Technology Coaching Service, and beyond that this is just my blog, so keep reading this space if you want to get to know me better.