I am always amazed how sites can launch and draw traffic. Then add a feature that just takes off. The facebook chat feature that lets you have an IM / Chat session with another facebook friend has over 1 billion messages a day. 1 billion is a huge number. In recent months we all have become immune to million / billion / trillion because of our Nations spending. Don’t let the numbers mix, 1 billion is a lot (I mean a lot) of traffic.

http://mashable.com/2009/06/15/fbchat-facebook-billion/

That is just a massive amount of chat sessions. For a any site to get that amount of usage from one of it’s tools or features is a sign that you are doing something right.

So are you one of the people who want a new Iphone. I am. The main reason (SPEED) I like my phone, use it a lot. But the speed could be better. Am I willing to pay 500 bucks for speed. Well, not right now. Here is an interesting article on the price of the Iphone

http://i.gizmodo.com/5284318/whiners-of-the-world-shut-up-about-the-iphone-3gs-upgrade-price

I have been neglecting my blog for a while. I moved jobs and have been busy outside of work with the kids. To catch up I will have to figure out some type of series to blog about. For now, consider this a “I’m back” post.

From plane crashes, The “tonight show”, GM, and our Government spending money faster than we can print it. I think I should be able to come up with some posts.

I will leave you with the great digital question? 486dx or 486sx?

I have been running windows 7 for a while now. It has gone so well that I have converted all but one windows machine over. My windows media center I have kept with Vista so I did not have to change anything.

My everyday development machine is now Win7 x64. It has a pretty small footprint and runs Virtual machines perfect. I have also migrated my Netbook (MSI Wind) to windows 7. that works great. It is a great OS for a netbook.

So far M$ has impressed me with 7. Faster and simple.

I’m finally catching up the the online world after being on vacation (well I’m still on vacation) but online for a moment. What an interesting world we live in. I took myself off-line for a while and found out that I really just miss information.

Once back online I was checking email / facebook / IM / and news. Most important was the news. I really did not watch any TV while we were at the beach or read the paper. So catching up takes a while.

As for interesting things to read, I’m addicted to lifehacker.com and have bookmarked at least 5 things to try or download

It is interesting that we take internet access for granted. I’m currently on vacation in Florida and wanted some online time. To gain access in the location where we are (man made island in Stuart Florida). The cost for a day is 8.00 and the cost for the week is 14.00. Since we are here for a while I got the Week.

The cost does not bother me. I’ve already justified the price for some work I quickly did. However, I realized how much I use the internet. Checking mail, making calls (skype), doing business, getting help (the fridge here was not working).

I take it for granted I can be online whenever I want. I did have my iphone and could use that. But I have some code I needed to check into source control and could not do that via the iphone. Since I just updated I have not jailbroken my phone again, so the tether is not working.

I looked up what it costs for wi-fi at starbucks and realized it was 3.99 for 2 hours. Wow, I don’t think I have ever paid for wi-fi. Hotels, coffee shops, and even my clients offer it for free.

So, tonight when you hop online to look at the scores of the game, or check local news, remember those who have to pay hourly for their internet access.

www.hab.la and www.gazelle.com

Hab.la lets you hold a im chat from your web site. Something similar to LiveHelp or Livechat but it uses your IM client (AIM, gTalk, etc..)

Gazelle.com let’s you sell your old electronic items (or just recycle them). I was able to price out my old Samsung Blackjack.

Well I have had my MSI wind for 3 weeks now. So far it has been very useful and worth the purchase. I have already had 2 Operating systems on it. I started with XP which it came with and I’m currently running Windows 7. 7 has the advantage of being newer and works a little better with the (on / off, pause / resume) abuse I put on laptops.

So what have I been doing with the netbook? So far it has served as the living room family computer. We have used it to get a menu online for dinner, lookup phone numbers, and map directions. My kids have used it for “Playhouse disney” no more fighting over the family laptop.

On the business side, it has been worth every penny. I was out on the road and a client called with an issue, I quickly used the netbook to remote into their machine and correct the problem (worth every penny). I have also been using google doc’s as a primary tool and with google doc (offline) I have been taking notes on the netbook.

Thinks I like:
The speed
small form factor
Quick on / off
Battery life (but always want more)

Items that could be changed
Touch pad (needs to be bigger or use a track point - IBM)
Noise, the hard drive is a bit loud.

Overall, it has been a great purchase. It is loaded with every app I can need:
1. Putty (SSH)
2. Digsby (IM)
3. Google chrome (browser)
4. Evernote (notes)
5. Google offline
6. filezilla (ftp)
7. Avire - anti-virus (small footprint)

I was reading Mark Cuban’s blog post (One reporter ) and it occurred to me that we will have a major issue if local news papers and media go out of business. The majority of people who do not put effort into finding news will not get information.

Mark’s thoughts were based on the media coverage for his business (”the Mav’s”) but I’m thinking more of local business, organizations, and people. Who will report on their achievements and share success and failures. I love the paper. We did stop getting the daily paper but I get the weekend edition so I can read about all the local events. The upcoming “____ festival” or the small business man who gave half his income for the year to a local charity and asks people to come out and help do something.

If our local media goes away, who and what will fill this void. Once again if you are persistent you can find this info online, every companies website, or local gov’t site. However, people are lazy. They won’t go looking. It may turn out that some other type of media will take over this local news. Until then, I will continue to get my paper.

Mark is right, how will people keep up with his “Mav’s” if the local sports writer or paper are not their to inform the public.

I am a fan of silverlight and I’m a bit worried about how it will pan out for Microsoft. Here is an article from /. about how Major League Baseball is pulling the plug from using silverlight.

(Major League Base Ball drops Silverlight)

I did not know that MLBAM also ran the CBS sports NCAA tourney and the Masters. It looks like they ran into issues not with streaming but rather client issues with the install of the Silverlight client. From the surface it looks like permissions on machines and the limited deployment of the silverlight client was the cause. I understand that flash has a 98% install ratio on client machines, but is that because it has been around for almost 10 years? I believe that flash also had the same issues when installing the flash client earlier, and system administrators just included that in their deployment builds.

Unfortunately this may be dissapointing blow to Microsoft and Silverlight.

Just when I thought things could not get better with the Iphone after skype released the iphone app. I find out that Google Voice (Google Voice) is coming to the Iphone. I have been using Grand Central for a long time for my business number. Now that Google Voice has taken over grand central it will be great to have both my Cell phone and work number be matched up on the same device.

Check out this sneak peak from lifehacker (Google Voice on Iphone)

The one thing that can really upset me is when my internet connection goes down. It’s not that I can’t live with out it, or have to have it. It is the process of fixing, rebooting, talking family members through how to reset things, or calling my provider.

Recently our connection has been not-so good. It all started when I purchased a new wireless router (Linksys WRT-160N) after my trusty Linksys WRT54G died. I went with the 160N because it was suppose to be able to run DD-wrt (DD-WRT). The version of the 160N I was lucky to purchase was a version that did not run DDWRT. I was then stuck with the factory Linksys firmware. I’m not sure if the firmware or the router was the cause, but the poor 160N was unable to stay up or keep a consistent connection.

The network in our house is our main system and with out it we could not have Phone, TV, internet, Music, or media. So the Router / Switch / wireless AP that runs it is very important. I am happy to say that I am not back online with the Linksys WRT54G2 ( Linksys WRT54G2). I realized that I don’t do enough on my wireless network to need “N” yet. Most of the equipment that needs high speed are connected to my switch directly.

My remote connections back into my home are now working properly and my nightly backups to Mozy, My hosting site, and offsite backups are working at full speed and are taking half the time.

If you have not had the chance you should check out DD-wrt. It allows you to take a 50 dollar router and turn it into a 400 dollar network router. So I am back online with constant connectivity and reliability thanks to a $50 router. Just as an FYI even though the 160N is called ultra range, the WRT54G2 has better range.

It seems I have been busy for the last few weeks. I’ve accepted a new job and resigned from my current company (RCM)

During this time the project I have been on has kept me busy. I have also started the next phase of IISreporter which has more focus on admin and IIS7.

I have also been busy with Kentico, Subsonic, and Jquery.

I installed google sync today (Google Sync)

I had been using Exchange for all my Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. So far it is working well. I was worried that I would lose all my contacts. I only had to back them up and move them to google contacts.

Now to see if life is easier with out Outlook?