CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2011-10-31 00:23:24 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

On my way to PHL then driving over to Princeton. Hope the snow has melted by now.

2011-10-29 14:51:25 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

IMPORTANT Vol.3
Contest Giveaway – Two Limited Edition Fine Art Prints
(valued at $750.00 each)
Sorry for reposting this again and again but the response was more than I anticipated :) Since I already reached the Google + Limit of 500 comments with my first 2 post, Please reshare & leave comments in this one to let me know that you have shared my post. It is really important to leave a comment here once you shared my post, this is the best way for me to know that you did.

To celebrate the arrival of 100 000 Google + users that have circled me, I have decided to create a contest and give away not one but TWO of my Limited Edition Fine Art Prints 24x36in (valued at $750.00 each) The winners will choose the print of their choice from my gallery located here http://tiny.cc/9a3v9 Prints will be supplied with a certificate of authenticity.
To Entert... more »

2011-10-31 00:23:25 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Halloween fun @ kid's kung fu class today. Kids in costume, light workout then a snack of apples & cider with Si Gung.

For the parents, free chair massages! Just what the doctor ordered after a loooooong week.

2011-10-28 19:51:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Steve Holly shared a circle with you.

2011-10-28 19:50:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Steve Holly shared a circle with you.

2011-10-28 19:50:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Steve Holly shared a circle with you.

2011-10-28 08:07:25 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I finally upgraded my main work system to Ubuntu 11.10. Was holding off because I didn't like the Unity interface that came out in 11.04. Well, I actually like Unity in 11.10, it's a lot better than 11.04 but I like Gnome 3 (gnome-shell) even more. In fact it's a real cool interface to work in, very uncluttered, responsive and nice to look at too.

2011-10-27 17:49:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Google Apps fans, Circle up! Google+ awaits you!

Welcome Arizona State, Boise State, Saint Louis Uni, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, Notre dame, University of Washington, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest who are lighting up G+ for their students today!

2011-10-23 16:23:47 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Helping my wife update her resume. After being a SAHM for the past 12 years, she is preparing to get back into teaching at the elementary level.

Anyone have advice for putting together a functional resume?

2011-10-29 14:47:33 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Awesome home made Shepard's Pie

2011-10-22 16:02:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Note to self, wear gloves when a product you're working with cautions you to wear gloves!

Anyone have suggestions for removing the sticky residue "Great Stuff" leaves when you come in contact with it?

2011-10-22 22:05:23 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Rice paddy or soccer field?

2011-10-22 13:02:04 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Beautiful morning for the boy's last soccer match of the season. A bit chilly, but I'll take the sunshine!

2011-10-21 00:48:14 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Anyone have suggestions for a good HD video camera that can be used for corporate communications?

Right along with that suggestion, how about a good video editor. Thinking of a Mac Pro w/Final Cut Pro, but would appreciate people's insight.

Thanks!

2011-10-22 12:56:26 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Best Indian food on the west side.

2011-10-15 14:04:11 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

After seeing a small flood of posts about turning on 2-step authentication for your Apps account, I finally set it up yesterday. Having been in IT for over 20 years, and being a certified RSA SecureID admin who has dealt w/2-factor auth at an enterprise level, I've known the benefits, but had been too lazy to set it up for my accounts.

Setup was pretty easy and the Google Authenticator Android App is great. Now I have 2-factor auth (something you know, your password + something you have, a one-tme token = access to the account) setup on both my gmail account and my personal Apps account and it's working great.

There a few things you need to do to ensure 2-step auth is setup for your particular use case(es), but it's a fairly painless process that works great and protects your account with an enterprise grade security service.

2011-10-15 03:49:58 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Watching "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen", Donnie Yen is bad ass. He was great in "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2" (though 2 was basically a Rocky 4 remake), this guy is amazing to watch.

2011-10-14 03:37:25 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Here is my Google earnings remarks I just gave and the quote from our press release:

"We had a great quarter,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “Revenue was up 33% year on year and our quarterly revenue was just short of $10 billion. Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark. People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!"
------------
It’s great to be here--and thanks for taking the time to be with us today.

When I look back over the last quarter, the word that springs to mind is “gangbusters”!

Revenue was up 33% year on year and our quarterly revenue was just short of $10BN--not bad for a thirteen year old!

I’m also incredibly excited about the progress we’ve made on the product side.

Ever since taking over as CEO I have focused much of myenergy on inc... more »

2011-10-12 23:51:24 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Congrats to my step mother, Lisa Holly, for being recognized as one of the top women business owners in Cleveland. She deserves the accolades for all the hard work she's put in to rescuing her family business from having to shut down after a family tragedy. Her brother Woody also deserves recognition, but he's not a woman so that kind of disqualfied him from this award.

Really wish I could have been at the awards ceremony today.

2011 Top Women Business Owner Awards
http://www.nawbocleveland.org/cms/events/womens-business-summit/summit-awards

2011-10-15 22:42:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Damn you and your delays US Airways. You owe me a dinner since I didn't get to stop and grab something to eat as I sprinted from the far end of Concorse E over to the far end of Concorse B to catch my connection when. I was supposed to have a good 90 minutes between flights originally.

2011-10-12 23:20:21 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Just passing through on my way to Greenville, SC to give some Google Apps training at a customer's facility.

2011-10-11 03:52:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Thank you Jahvid Best!

2011-10-12 13:16:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Halloween weekend @ Findley State Park with great friends on a gorgeous day. Past 2 years the kids scored almost 5 pounds of candy trick-o-treating. I probably finished 4 of those myself :)

2011-10-05 14:10:38 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I'm reluctant to post about reliability for fear of provoking Mr. Murphy, but it's great to see that the efforts of our SRE teams are being recognized (SRE = Site Reliability Engineering). Favorite quote: "you can’t argue that Google has set the pace for SLA delivery for cloud email and application suite services and that Office 365 has work to do to get close to Google’s record".

2011-10-08 17:18:17 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Outsatanding little French bistro, loved our meals, wine, the service and the atmosphere. HIGHLY recommend!

2011-10-01 22:35:19 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

So happy for my boys. They just passed their orange sash test (kung-fu). I love how proud the look when they are presented their new sashes.

2011-09-30 13:39:36 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

It's a Flogging Molly Friday!

2011-09-29 12:50:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

As I read through the news from yesterday about the U.S. government (DOI) deciding to evaluate Apps alongside Microsoft after originally excluding Apps from an RFP, this passage came to mind.

"Information technology plays a crucial role in business reengineering, but one that is easily miscast. Modern, state of the art information technology is part of any reengineering effort, an essential enabler since it permits companies to reengineer business processes. But merely throwing computers at an existing business problem does not cause it to be reengineered. In fact, the misuse of technology can block reengineering altogether by reinforcing old ways of thinking and old behavior patterns." Hammer and Champy, Reengineering the Corporation, p83.


Google Apps is so much more than Gmail. It is an enterprise services platform that is the "essential enabler".

2011-09-28 14:30:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

It's all about the infrastructure and scale. Google grew up on the internet, as an internet based service and has a massive, distributed infrastructure that can support almost 4 nines of avaiilability.

Unlike Microsoft, Google can claim 99.9 percent cloud uptime | ZDNet
http://m.zdnet.com/blog/btl/unlike-microsoft-google-can-claim-999-percent-cloud-uptime/59104

2011-09-27 12:57:47 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Happy 13th Birthday Google! In the 8+ years that I've worked with the Google Enterprise team on cool Google Enterprise services like the Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search, Google Earth Enterprise, Google Maps and now Google Apps, I've been lucky enough to witness their amazing growth first hand and see how they've grown. I can't wait to see what the next 13 years brings!

2011-09-26 17:07:28 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is more true in IT than any other area that I can think of.

Relating to cloud computing, the discussions we have with prospects and that I see in the media seemed to ring a familiar chord with me so I did some digging and found some interesting tidbits I thought I would share.

Take a look at some of these quotes and tell me, do they sound familiar?

“One measure of success is the downtime we don’t have—the fact that this system has been up 24/7 and we haven’t missed a beat” - USDA

“After a year of operation, Air Products is seeing 99.995% availability on its Microsoft and SAP solution, with the system hitting a perfect 100% availability in 10 of the past 13 months. Total average response time for the online solution is now below 600ms” - Air Products

“The software on the …mainframe was per... more »

2011-09-26 04:55:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Just checked into Crystal Mountain Resort in Michigan. Looking forward to the MI-GMIS conference and sitting in as a panelist for the Cloud Email discussion. Should be fun!

2011-10-01 15:34:04 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Zach is getting ready to play in the first round of SmashCon11, the 1st tournament he's ever played in (for video games). He's a bit nervous listening to other kids talk about how they play, their favorite moves and that type of stuff. It's all Greek to me, I just hope he does well and has fun.

2011-09-22 13:35:18 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

Looking for any interesting feedback on the unexpected benefits that Google Apps customers have experienced since "Going Google".

What has Google Apps allowed you & your organization to do/accomplish that you didn't expect?

Thanks in advance!

2011-09-10 23:42:00 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Great list of 100 ideas for great bosses.

http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/leadership-management/what-great-bosses-know/144950/100th-podcast-spurs-100-ideas-for-great-bosses/

2011-09-10 23:35:47 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Wish I had a good camera with me, great lighting and beautiful scenery during the walk. Droid camera wouldn't do the nature and landscape justice.

2011-09-10 22:37:57 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Walk thbrough the metro parks with the family and pup.

2011-09-10 22:37:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Attending the "Admiration of the Autumn Moon" concert performed by the Cleveland Chinese Music Ensemble. Black tea and mooncakes following the performance.

2011-09-07 20:45:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I am currently reading "A Thousand Pieces of Gold" by Adeline Yen Mah, learning about the history behind several Chinese proverbs. One that struck me as relevant for CIOs trying to decide whether or not to go Google Apps (or even Cloud in general) is:

"Binding your feet to prevent your own progress"

Li Si, a very important Chinese historical figure partially responsible for the Qin Dynasty unifying China over 2000 years ago is quoted as saying:

"In the long run, your ordinance will harm your own people and benefit your enemies. It is definitely not the way toward stability and safety for your state"

This quote, to Ying Zheng (The First Emperor), was regarding foreign policy (arguing against exclusionary policies) but could just as easily be applied to CIOs who feel the old way of doing business will be the safest route and have... more »