"...the anti-virus companies are out hyping up yet another non-event or many people are just clueless. It's possible (and, perhaps, likely) that both may be true."
Well I'm sure they are hyping it, because they do that. But I'm also sure, based on the fact that I've seen 3 times as much viral activity on our Postini filters today than I normally see in a whole day, (At only 2:15PM, and almost all copies of this) that someone out there is definitely getting infected!
My thoughts? It's an obvious case. There are simply too many different technologies at play to have an expert on staff for each of them. For example, where I work, I consider myself an "expert" when it comes to desktops, our memberships database, Access, end-user support and training, SOHO networking, etc. I'm not an expert when it comes to running a web server or an email server. (Although I do know something about it.). So we have our ISP run the email server, and a hosting company host our website. Those are outsourced technologies, we don't have another full time IT person on staff to handle them because it wouldn't make for a full time job. My personal opinions on our ability to absorb some of that internally notwithstanding, that has been commonplace all over the small business world. I think large corporations are catching up too.
One of the unique things about being sick, is how quickly your energy and stamina are just gone. I spent just about all of the last three days in bed. Last night, I got winded carrying a bag of trash down one flight of stairs in our house. Every time I spent 30 minutes actually doing something, like showering, getting dressed, etc. I needed a nap.
Today, feeling somewhat better, but not great, I managed to get myself to work. I've even managed to get some things accomplished, despite the fact that just walking down the hall to get some coffee made me feel quite tired. I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least there wasn't any physical labor included as a normal part of my day, and that I'd be feeling better in no time.
Then, at 4:20, just a scant 40 minutes from getting through the day without any major physical activity, someone's monitor shorted and needed replaced. Not a big job, but a good 15 minutes of crawling under a desk, removing cables, carrying off the old monitor, unpacking and carrying in the new monitor, connecting cables, etc.
It seems that now that John Dvorak has written, negatively as always, about podcasting, everyone has had this or that to say about the "fad". (No I'm not even going to bother linking, you know where it is, you've probably read it by now!)
Let me just start out my particular screed with this caveat. All of you who have complained about how podcasts suck and aren't interesting, you're right. I haven't heard one podcast yet that I think would stand a chance of getting any sort of market share worthy of being aired on a radio station. Most of them cover niche subjects, have crappy recording quality and only interest a handful of people in the world.
And that's exactly why it's exciting to me. Recently, here in Columbus, a talk radio show that took calls and helped people with their PC problems got canceled. Not because the show didn't have some really good information, but because not enough people cared enough to tune in at 6PM every Weds to hear about using PC's to make it worthwhile for the station to keep airing it. Imagine if you could do a show, answer questions, and your audience didn't need to tune it at 6PM on Weds, and you didn't need to provide big "numbers" to keep yourself going? You could just do the program, share the information, and your listeners could automatically download the MP3 and listen at their leisure.
Compare that experience with say, Kevin's In The Trenches podcast. From a major media point of view, his show sucks. I'm not picking on Kevin, the interview he did with me sucks too. The sound quality isn't very professional, the subject isn't all that interesting to non-techies, there's no way it would ever generate the sort of mass market interest that would attract a bevy of advertisers, etc. Comparing it to radio, it sucks, plain and simple. But, through the magic of MP3 and RSS, he's able to do a show that does appeal to a certain segment of the population, notably Sys-Admin, tech support type people, he's able to share good information. He's able to use technology he already has at his disposal to bring in contributions from outside sources (in my case, all I needed to do the interview was Skype and my laptop's built-in microphone, it doesn't sound very professional, but it's good enough, and it's the only way we could have done it, and shared that information with people. There are no big money backers throwing him the money to get a mixing board.), and if the information is interesting to you, you subscribe to the feed with RSS enclosures and have the MP3 available to listen to whenever you want.
The excitement comes from the opportunity to do niche shows, with good information, but limited appeal, using easily available technology. It's not radio, and never will be, and that's maybe the most exciting part of it. Radio is a slave to mass market appeal. Podcasting doesn't have to be. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark|
1:05 PM |
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Monday, October 25, 2004
Some good advice
Quoted from a post at the Office Weblog concerning that study about home users and the lack of internet security tools in use.
[quote]Do a friend or family member a favor and help them secure their PC with the free tools available to prevent virus and spyware attacks.[/quote]
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