Tips & Tricks — GigaOM

Tips & Tricks

Despite lack of official support, you can use Blu-ray on the Mac. It just takes a few more steps than on a Windows machine, and only comes with a lot of help from third-party software. But it can be done. Here’s how. Read More »

Most email providers have filtering systems that do a pretty good job of catching spam messages. But every so often, there will be a surge of spam messages that get past the filters to pollute our inboxes. Here’s a tip that may help reduce future messages. Read More »

 
 

The update to iOS 4.2 that rolled out last Monday went pretty smoothly, but there were many cases of people who updated to 4.2, then seemingly lost all their music. My own iPod touch was affected, but luckily there’s a quick fix available. Read More »

Math and science folks rejoice: Equation editing finally makes its appearance in Office for Mac’s Word 2011. If you’re a student or work in an academic setting, putting equations into your papers can be a pain, but now it’s a little easier. Read More »

One of the advantages Word 2011 has over Pages ’09 is its stellar built-in citation management; Pages’ integration is reliant on third party tools. Word 2011 has its bibliographic tools baked right in. Here’s a step-by-step guide to using them. Read More »

Intel’s patriotic investment in American manufacturing news blast worked so well last year when it made a fairly big to-do over its planned capital expenditures that it’s taken a similar tactic this year, showcasing its $6 billion to $8 billion in planned manufacturing investments. Read More »

Apple didn’t announce the number of Apple TVs sold as part of its earnings release, but Steve Jobs reported on the company’s investor call that it’s sold more than 250,000 Apple TVs since the company first made the product available in early September. Read More »

Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect with Microsoft is leaving the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Ozzie, is widely viewed as someone who tried to change Microsoft’s internal attitudes towards cloud computing. He is credited for Microsoft’s move into the cloud with its Azure efforts. Read More »

Hey Shareholders, Capex Means Cash in the Cloud!

Om’s post about Google’s spending got me thinking about the hypocrisy in the way we assess web companies’ decisions to splurge on infrastructure. Startups are praised for spending on more infrastructure, while public companies feel the wrath of financial analysts when they do the same. Read More »

Oct. 15: What We’re Reading About Infrastructure

Bolstering the argument that money makes the world go ’round, Google’s earnings, and spending, were big news today, as is the third-quarter decrease in VC funding. AMD’s “better than expected” net loss and the prospect of cloud-caused job losses also garnered attention. Read More »

Lately, I’ve been taking a look at many of the tasks that I do on a regular basis and thinking about ways that I can automate them. There are many things that you can do to eliminate routine tasks that don’t require specialist knowledge. Read More »

SaaS startup New Relic has received an additional $10 million in funding for its application performance management offering that targets both data centers and the cloud. That brings its total to $20 million, which the company says is far more than it needs to be profitable. Read More »

More Must Reads

The cloud-management space got a little more crowded with the release of DynamicOps’ Cloud Automation Center. That market is full of startup vendors, but DynamicOps has a couple of aces in the hole that might make it particularly appealing to enterprise customers. Read More »

Clustrix, a San Francisco-based startup that is making a clustered database system (CDS) for large Internet-scale applications, says former Cisco Systems executive VP Don Listwin and Jonathan Heiliger, VP of technical operations at Facebook, have joined its advisory board. Read More »

In-flight Wi-Fi is becoming more common but it’s unfortunately not ubiquitous just yet; it can be difficult to tell which flights have it available. Enter your flight details into HasWifi and it’ll let you know whether you’ll be able to stay connected during your journey. Read More »

Today’s cloud computing platforms give rise to a new class of web-accessible application support functions, or infrastructure apps, that replace costly integrated hardware and software. Here are five apps that can help with transactional email, compute-intensive cycles, network services, database as a service, and indexing and … Read More »

Commercial Hadoop startup Karmasphere today released the results of a survey of 102 Hadoop developers regarding adoption, use and future plans. The results provide some interesting insights into how Hadoop grows within organizations and underscore its status as an extremely valuable, but none-too-simple analytics tool. Read More »

The State of Minnesota’s Office of Enterprise Technology today said it will work with Microsoft and use its Business Productivity Online Suite. Minnesota is the first U.S. state to move to a large collaboration and communication suite in a private cloud environment. Read More »

Oracle today announced a slew of new products that, at least on paper, deliver one of the most comprehensive enterprise computing solutions around. The company has extended the concept of “stack” further than any other technology player, by covering the hardware from compute to storage. Read More »

Design inspiration can come from unusual places — for Yahoo it was chicken coops, which utilize outside air and can reduce cooling power and costs. On Monday Yahoo announced that the first data center to mimic this fine-feathered design is up and running. Read More »

Google, owners of the biggest web infrastructure projects, is building a massive data center in Hamina, Finland. The mega datacenter is going to cost $260 million and will go live in spring 2011. It is housed in a paper mill, and will cost over $260 million. Read More »

Intel has taken up a patriotic cause, paying special attention to U.S.-based companies and especially those in the cloud. The chipmaker announced today four investments which have collectively received over $30 million from its Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund including Joyent and Adaptive Computing. Read More »

More efficient use of our RSS readers can have a big impact on our overall productivity. As Google Reader is one of the more widely-used RSS readers, I thought it would be a good idea to share some tips for getting the most out of it. Read More »

The rise of smartphones is having an impact across the entire technology food chain from chip makers to handset manufacturers. San Francisco-based Heroku, which has been focused on being a Ruby-on-Rails cloud platform, has seen a sudden demand for its service from mobile app developers Read More »

Dunking servers in a bath of oil sounds like the fastest way to break some very expensive hardware. But not for startup Green Revolution Cooling, which builds energy efficient liquid-cooled servers and its first customer collocation firm Midas Networks will implement the technology later this year. Read More »

Eyestrain and ocular fatigue used to be associated with the computer screens themselves, but the root of the problem is actually incorrect screen settings and poor reading habits. To improve our online reading experience, we only need to have the proper screen settings, tools and habits. Read More »

While everyone experiences job-related stress at one time or another, those of us who work online have a different type of stress. We trade stressful office environments for the stress that results from spending too many hours in front of the computer with little human interaction. Read More »

Shaun Gallagher of the Pressbin Coding Blog got in touch to let us know about a couple of useful Gmail hacks he’s created: A “Mark All As Read” button and a hack that removes the new Mail/Contacts/Tasks menu from the upper-left menu. Read More »

One way to create strong passwords is to use randomly-generated phrases and store them in a password manager. Alternatively, you could use a password hashing tool to create passwords for each of the sites you use from a master password in conjunction with a parameter. Read More »

The biggest problem with information overload for most people is that it is cumulative and it comes in from a variety of sources. The source that people think about when you mention information overload is the huge amount of content that we consume online. Read More »

Last week, I gave some tips for managing information overload, primarily with a focus on dealing with email overload. I wanted to follow up this week with a few more suggestions for dealing with the information overload that results from participation in social media. Read More »

The reality for anyone who does most of their work online is that information is endless, and keeping up with the most important information without becoming overwhelmed can be quite a challenge. Read More »

It is fascinating to watch how people behave during conferences in ways that either help or hinder their productivity. It is important to find ways to make the most out of our time at the event, while still getting other work done and remaining productive. Read More »

It’s typhoon season again in the Philippines, and just this week I was left with no electricity and no running water for a little over 24 hours. But the ordeal isn’t over. I will be experiencing several power outages within the … Read More »

The way people talk, we’d be forgiven for thinking that social networking is one big popularity contest. Get as many contacts as possible, regardless of whether we’ve ever met, or heard of them before. Is that really the point of social networking? Read More »

Working from home has many advantages. I have an office with a door and a window, a fully stocked kitchen with all of my favorite foods and a much shorter commute involving a few stairs and no traffic. However, I don’t have co-workers hanging around where … Read More »

The weather here in Portland is just starting to turn from cloudy and chilly springtime into our beautiful, warm summer days. I plan to take full advantage of it while still kicking butt at work. There are plenty of ways that we can enjoy the summer: Read More »

Presentations are all so samey — a few slides, four or five bullets per slide, some stock imagery, maybe some effects if you’re feeling fancy. How about trying something different? Marketing guru Seth Godin proposes shaking up the status quo with the “200 slide solution.” Read More »

Last week, Twitter went down. Again. And yet we all gnash our teeth, wring our hands, cry foul, shake our fists at the sky, then breathe a quick sigh of relief once the Fail Whale is gone and our Twitterstream flows again. Read More »

I really enjoy working at my local library, it gets me out of my home office and provides a more studious environment than a coffee shop. However, one thing I don’t like about it is its overzealous website filtering. Read More »

While there are plenty of tools available for securely wiping a disk, overwriting the data with a stream of random bits and obliterating it completely, for Windows users, there is another option: a built-in Windows command line utility: cipher.exe. Read More »

QuicklyCode is a large collection of free cheat sheets from various sources. Although the focus is primarily on programing, it also has useful cheat sheets for a number of non-programming topics, too, like color theory, Photoshop and typography. Read More »

Having meetings over the phone is something that remote workers do all of the time. However, despite the frequency of these meetings, I see a lot of people who don’t follow basic phone meeting etiquette. Here are a few tips: Read More »

I only wrote about Adobe Ideas last week, and I’ve already come across another great app that does exactly what the “Colors” part of Ideas does, only it does it much better. And for free, or for cheap, depending on what features you’re looking for. Read More »

I spent last week at a conference in San Francisco with many of my colleagues and community members from around the world, but the giant volcanic ash cloud over Europe put a damper on the final day of the conference. Read More »

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