August, 2007

Remember the old days of WordPerfect? I was a WP whiz when I was in school, mostly because I could remember all the key sequences that would let me use the features really efficiently. I don't even think there was a mouse with it - it was all key strokes. Oh yeah, and before that it was WordStar. On the Apple II if I'm not mistaken. Now those were user interfaces! We've come a long way since then...

One of the toughest things about being the IT manager in a small or medium sized company is that you tend to wear many hats and need to be up to speed on so many different technologies to be able to do your job effectively. This fall, myself and my colleagues , Rick and Damir , will be out on the road across Canada to see if we can't help you out with that. We'll be doing half day sessions at each...

The announcement went out today that Windows Vista SP1 beta will be released in a few weeks to a select group of beta testers and that it's expected to be released to manufacturing in the first quarter of 2008. You may be thinking, "Great, I've been waiting for SP1 before planning my Vista deployment", and there have been times in the past, I will admit, when I was a consultant or managing an IT department...

Was there anyone that enjoyed the early time change this past March from standard to daylight savings time? While some IT departments got through it unscathed, others ended up with issues especially if the proper patching wasn't applied. I don't think anyone enjoyed having to plan for it and update all their server and client machines. The Bad News...the November 4 "fall back" date is coming up soon...

This is the next podcast in the continuing series of interviews with leading professionals. In this blog, I introduce Leonard Brody, co-founder of NowPublic.com, international top-ranking thought leader, entrepreneur, speaker, business visionary, and best-selling author. I encourage you to share your thoughts here on these interviews or send me an e-mail at sibaraki@cips.ca . Enjoy! Stephen Ibaraki...

In case you're wondering if you're in the right place, you are! Overnight we updated the look and feel for the Canadian IT Managers blog along with our other blog properties, the Canadian Developers blog , the Canadian User Experience blog and the Canadian IT Professionals blog . Among the changes are a wider page width, a cleaner design and links to our other blogs along the right column. Thanks...

Don Spencer (Waterloo, ON, IT Manager of Pano Cap Canada) Cross-post from Bringing Closure . So, I have a bit of a reputation as a geek at work. That's not entirely a bad thing, I guess, for an IT Manager. Some of my colleagues poke good-natured fun at me (for the most part) wondering whether there is any more room on my belt for the next gadget to occupy. How will I ever get the flat screen monitor...

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with leading professionals. Here I have an exclusive interview with Fiorenza Albert-Howard , a top international computing and engineering pioneer, author, and business IT executive. I encourage you to share your thoughts here on these interviews or send me an e-mail at sibaraki@cips.ca . Enjoy! Stephen Ibaraki, FCIPS , I.S.P. , MVP ...

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with leading professionals. In this blog, I interview Pravir Vohra , Group CTO, ICICI Bank; international senior technology visionary, executive and innovator. I encourage you to share your thoughts here on these interviews or send me an e-mail at sibaraki@cips.ca . Enjoy! Stephen Ibaraki, FCIPS , I.S.P. , MVP Interview IT Strategy, Enterprise...

Thinking about virtualizing some of your servers but confused about licensing? You're not alone. My colleague, Rodney, has put up an excellent post with links to a video from the Microsoft Licensing team explaining licensing on the Windows virtualization platform as well as to calculators to help you figure out what licenses you will need based on what you want to run.

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with leading professionals. Here I have an exclusive interview with Paul Crookall , an award-winning and internationally recognized leading government and executive thought leader who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Government Executive Magazine (CGE). I encourage you to share your thoughts here on these interviews or send me...

I've recently started joining some of the online communities I've been hearing so much about like Facebook , SecondLife , Twitter and Flickr and I have a confession to make - I'm quite addicted to them. Especially Facebook. In fact, I'm thinking of starting a 12 step program, as I know I'm not the only one. Within a few days of creating my account, I was re-establishing relationships with people I...

A while ago I had an opportunity to talk to Bruce Cowper , one of the organizers of an upcoming security conference happening in Toronto, called SecTor . If you're at all concerned or interested in security you should consider going, especially if you couldn't make it to this year's Black Hat or DEFCON events. SecTor is a community led event, focused on deep technical security content. They've just...