Five reasons Android (CTRL+H Android --> Blackberry) is superior to the iPhone

I subscribe to many of the newletters that the TechRepublic puts out.  Often they are more fluff than anything, but occasionally there's a very interesting article and makes the endless e-mails worthwhile.  I received one today with an article titled "Five reasons Android is superior to the iPhone".  Jack Wallen lays out 5 reasons reasonably well, but I couldn't help think that you could say the exact same for Blackberry devices....

NIC Teaming with Microsoft's Hyper-V

I've long been a user of VMware's products.  I had my first experiences with VMware ESX way back in 2004, when I took the VCP course and received my first certification.  At the time, ESX was the gold standard in virtualization and over the years it has constantly evolved.  Microsoft had its own Virtualization product which has now evolved into what we now call Hyper-V.  I've never used Hyper-V until recently.  One of my first challenges when installing Hyper-V was getting NIC teaming to work.  Read on for more!

PuTTY v0.61 Released

After 4 years of development, Simon Tatham has announced that PuTTY v0.61 has been released.  If you haven't used PuTTY before, you've probably never done any kind of tech support and you're probably not reading my blog either.

Obviously there are many new features and bug fixes, but one of the nicer additions is support for Windows 7 Jump lists.

Windows 7 Jump Lists

So what are you waiting for?  Download it!

What would you like in a Video Game Conference?

You know what we're missing in Toronto?  A good Video Game Convention/Conference/Expo.  Toronto could easily host an E3, Game Developer Conference, PAX type event.  We have many great video game developers right here in Toronto, and many more in Canada.

An associate of mine would like to start one, a good one, right here in Toronto, and he has the experience and expertise to make it happen.  But, what we would like to do is solicit feedback about what makes a good conference and what doesn't.  So, be you a developer, gamer, or distributor, drop me a line and we'll chat!

Greenshot

A while back, I wrote about Shutter: Linux's answer to SnagIt.  Well, I didn't want to leave out our Windows friends.  If you're looking for a quality screenshot tool for Windows, look no further than Greenshot.

Firefox 4 on Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10

As you may know, Mozilla recently released Firefox 4 a week or so ago.  Upgrading on my Windows computer was fairly straight forward, you click "Check for Updates" and voila 3 minutes later you were enjoying all the new goodies Firefox 4 had to offer.

Upgrading my Ubuntu desktops wasn't quite as simple.  The packages aren't in the main Ubuntu repositories for Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 10.10.  However, this wasn't a difficult task as the Mozilla team has a PPA for just this task.  If you're not familiar with PPA, you can check out this link for more information.  You simply add the PPA and perform your typical upgrade and you're done. So if you're anxious to upgrade try this from your favorite command-prompt:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Enjoy!

Rove Mobile SSH

I know it has been a while since my last post, but this Blog really isn't meant to be a regular thing.  I plan on updating it when I've got some spare time and something really cool to share that a quick tweet won't do.  Today, let me tell you about Rove Mobile SSH.  We recently upgraded our mobile devices at work to new Blackberry Torch 9800s.  With the increased screen real estate I was looking for increased capabilities to remotely manage our devices without my laptop.  First things first, I thought a telnet/ssh client would be perfect for my network devices (and Linux servers).

Review: Shutter - Screenshot tool and Linux's answer to Snagit

It can be a daunting task if you are a Windows user looking to make the big switch to Linux.  Often, you'll have a favorite tool or utility that you're comfortable with, it "fits you like a glove" so to speak.  Linux has all the major applications covered, Evolution for Outlook, Pidgin for Instant Messaging Clients, OpenOffice for Microsoft Office and etc.  Often I find where Linux apps are missing is those more fringe applications, the "one-offs".  One of my co-workers uses a program called Snagit, its an advanced Screenshot program which gives you more features than the standard "Print Screen" type capture.  He couldn't believe that there was a comparable Linux program.  Introducing, Shutter.

Magic SysRq Key

I'll be honest, I've been a Linux user for almost 10 years now and when someone asked me about the "Magic SysRq Key" (ALT+SYSRQ+<another key>) I was stumped.  In all my years as an Enterprise Linux Support, I'd never come across it before.