For a long time here at Imulus we had trouble keeping track of internal company information. Client datasheets, software licenses, Imulus specific programming tips, bug tracking, email setup documentation, employee calendar links, etc. This problem was not something isolated to just us, every work environment I’ve been a part of has struggled with documenting and finding information. Generally the solution ends up being a massive repository of excel documents or a shared hard drive full of text files and snippets. Neither of these solutions are practical or scalable.

Our answer to this problem was an internal company wiki. Our goal was to have a central resource that was easy to update and easy to get information out of. It needed to be searchable, easy to edit, and secure. Being a .NET shop we decided to go with ScrewTurn a free open source wiki for .NET environments. A few other alternatives are: Wordpress plugins and hosted solutions such as pbwiki.

We’ve been using this solution since last August and it has been a huge time saver. Our project manager no longer gets flooded with requests for, “that spec requirement the client sent over,” and our programmer’s no longer have to use local text files to keep track of bugs in their code.

It isn’t often that I run across a Firefox Add-on which just blows my mind and makes me want to sing the praises of the developer, but Better Gmail 2.0.5.2 is one such add-on. This week we converted the office away from Microsoft Exchange server and onto the Google Mail App instead. I won’t go into the reasons why in this post, but after I made the switch I was somewhat disappointed with the interface of Gmail and it’s inability to allow me to customize it.

Here were just a handful of my gripes.

• I can’t resize the width of the left side menu bar
• Why does Gmail feel the need to “label” my messages rather then using the conventional folder system?
• Shouldn’t I be able to modify the color scheme to my liking. There is only so much pastel I can take
• When writing messages the REPLY, FORWARD and DELETE aren’t in the most obvious or intuitive locations

I don’t want to continue on bitching about Google, because aside from the interface the Gmail App kicks ass and checks SPAM well. It is reliable and it allows me to IMAP my mail to desktop clients. In light of my situation I looked for some way to relieve my disdain for the default interface.

Better Gmail 2 makes the entire mail experience much more enjoyable and easy on the eyes.
Google Talk actually looks like an IM client

Labels are converted into operating like folders.

A handy keyboard shortcut menu

All in all, this add-on has made the jump from Exchange to Gmail VERY enjoyable! I highly suggest Better Gmail 2.

We’ve been receiving traffic here and there from Spoke.com and I’m really not sure why. The site is a piss-poor rip off of LinkedIN plus its’ loaded with inaccurate information.

For our company, Spoke is listing the names of two of our clients as Imulus employees. I see a problem here because Spoke is giving false data; and therefore misrepresenting a company profile. To me, Spoke feels like an spam outfit, setup to capture the names and emails of various corporate accounts. I’ll explain why:

1. In an effort to correct the data I created an account; now they have my contact information.
2. Upon confirming my account; I was redirected to the Spoke Web site, asked to complete a basic profile, but rather then COMPLETE / SIGN-UP or SUBMIT, my option was to “Install Windows Toolbar.” OK, now that is shady.
3. When I attempt to modify the company data, I’m greeted with a pop-up form stripped of all browser controls. The form fails to validate my completed fields, then it tells me to click “back” on my browser…. hello, you removed my browser controls!

Please tell me I’m wrong, but so far I feel like I’ve given my information to a spammer.

A few months ago we moved our website from Alentus to Sungard (formly Inflow), with what we thought was great success. The latency between our office and our dedicated server was cut in half. When we accessed the server from various connections such as Qwest and Comcast our download rates were far improved. Then one day we received a call from a client saying that since we moved them into our new facility, they’ve received increased complaints of download failures.

Our initial response was one of skepticism because we were seeing improved performance, not a decrease. Using terminal services to connect to our other dedicated servers around the country I was able to reproduce the client’s experience. Apparently, about 70% of traffic around the country was having difficulty or decreased performance while accessing our servers. I then stumbled on a tool called Website Pulse.

Website Pulse monitors your website for performance and related issues from various locations internationally. In the chart below you can see the results of downloading a 22 MB file from our servers. The numbers on the left are seconds needed to download a file from Chicago over a backbone provided by nLayer, Level3, UUNET. The drop in seconds occurred when we moved our servers out of Sungard and into ViaWest in Denver, CO. The sudden increase on the 5th of October was an issue with the switch used in our rack.

Unknown to us, when Sungard acquired Inflow they also changed their policy in regards to capping bandwidth. Rather then allowing for bandwidth overages, and then surcharging the customer; Sungard’s policy was to cap bandwidth and not tell the customer of the performance hit.

Prior to this issue we didn’t realize various locations around the country experienced our websites in such a wide variety of speeds. With Website Pulse we receive alerts when any of our sites a falling below our acceptable load times.

It’s a great tool and I highly recommend using it for website monitoring.

A while ago I posted a blog about image retargeting, a new form of image resizing that uses algorithms to determine what part of the image is most important and what can be stripped away during resizing.

And while the video helped illustrate the concept of image retargeting, it didn’t allow for first hand usage of the technique. Therefore I would like to direct your attention to riszr.com. An online flash application that allows you to upload images and resize them using retargeting (along with the normal methods). Then you can save your retargeted image out.

Rsizr.com is really well done, and greatly helps to demonstrate just how beneficial and powerful image retargeting is. It even offers advanced features such as area selection for retargeting protection. A technique that allows you to select parts of the image and protect them from being retargeted. Head on over to www.rsizr.com and give it a whirl.