Matt Schmandt

It has been some time since I last blogged.  I have been very busy with my full time IT job.  We were in the process of moving our corporate office which was quite a large task.  I am glad to say that it was a success and is now behind me.  After attending and helping at Podcamp Ohio, I have got some new inspiration to get back to blogging.

I was very impressed with Podcamp Ohio.  It was well organized and provided a lot of good content.  I heard they had 132 attendees at the beginning of the day but never heard an updated number.  I would guess they at least broke 150 which seems pretty good for a new conference.  I don’t think it’s been decided but if they do it again, I will definitely attend next year.

I recently needed to find where all the disk space had gone on a Windows server.  I remembered Steve Gibson mentioning some products on Security Now.  He recommended using Space Monger.  This software scans a drive and gives you a visual representation of where your disk space is.  It allows you to zoom into any folder for more information.

Version 2.x is now a premium product but version 1.4 is still free.  The 1.4 UI looks old but it still does a great job.  The download is small and the exe doesn’t require installation.  I highly recommend using this tool if anyone needs to find where all your disk space went on a Windows machine.

On the Linux side there are 2 tools that do similar things.  Gnome has included a tool called Disk Usage Analyzer and KDE has the tool built into Konqueror.

I am sure all Mythtv users know that at the end of the month they will no longer be able to receive channel data from Zap2It.  Schedules Direct looks like it will be the replacement for at least all US users.  They just announced earlier today that they are ready for people to sign up.

I have read about two ways to switch over your data.  Mythtv released version .20.2 yesterday that has native support for Schedules Direct or you can tweak the XMLTV grabber with a new url.  I would normally recommend waiting for the distributions to include packages of the new Mythtv version but we are under a tight schedule and I don’t know how fast they will have updated packages.  I will probably go with the second option for now.

Recently, I started hearing many people talk about Google Apps for your domain . I even heard about a 200 employee company consider switching to it. Well, I decided to try it out and found it’s really amazing. I am surprised that Google is able to offer all the included services for free. Google Apps includes 6 main things at this point: mail, calendar, chat, docs and spreadsheets, launch page and site builder. I set it up for a domain last week to try it out.

The mail is basically a full Gmail account just with your own domain on it. You still get the 2 gigs of storage per mailbox and a great spam filter. (Did I mention they bought Postini.) You also get the ability to link up each mailbox with other email addresses from other domains. Plus, you can configure it to pull in mail from up to 5 other accounts via POP. All of these features are standard for a gmail account, it is just nice to setup your own domain with all those features but without the headaches of management. The only thing I noticed different from a standard Gmail account is that it automatically adds all users on that domain into your contacts.

I really had not spent any time with Docs and Spreadsheets until I played with Google Apps. It is really pretty nice for standard word processing and small basic spreadsheets. Both apps seems a little slow compared to a it’s desktop application equivalent but still very usable. They built many ways to import your docs into the system and many export options. I noticed in the Docs and Spreadsheets section there are different access level settings for people inside your domain and outside your domain. I believe all the rest of the main sections are the same as with normal Google accounts just with some extra integration added in for your domain.

I have not spent any considerable amount on time with the calendar, chat, launch page or site builder. The only thing that I really feel is missing is a spot for some non-public content. I would call it something like an Intranet. A place for all employees to post information about their business without making it public to the world. It is possible that Google already provides this service but I couldn’t find it.

Now all these features do come at a price. The price is ads and your privacy. Google has a stated policy that they keep all pieces of information about you so they can improve their services. I know they stated they run all search data through an anonymizer after 18 months to 2 years. So they are collecting lots of information about you, especially as you use them for more and more services. It really comes down to the fact that the more they know about you, the better ads they can serve.

They also have an enterprise version which gives you some extra features. You get 10 gigs of storage and resources reservation for calendaring. It costs $50 per user per year. I believe if small businesses are looking for an easy solution, this should really consider one of the Google Apps offerings as an option.