Wow! New Version of TweetDeck! Lots of new Features! Lots to get used to, and some things to get annoyed by!
Firstly.. there is a new Icon! And to tell you the truth, I keep losing it in my application list! doh! But once I get past that (Yes I keep trying to get past it) I am fine!
Many people are really intrigued by the “Facebook” integration, though that has been there since v0.22b, so I’m not really going to talk about it too much here! – Just to say you’ll end up seeing this: which will show your friends status on Facebook below it! – You are limited to a single Facebook account (FYI :)) Oh, and part of that is the functionality to post to Twitter, Facebook or both! Again, not a big deal to me – especially as I use the Facebook plugin app to auto-pull my tweets and update my status (To the semi-annoyance of my Facebook friends, but I use Twitter more formally anyway, so people need to get over that :))
On to Options! (re: Settings)
Look at some of these new settings!.. The big ones is really.. “Show preview information for short URLs” which looks something like this:
So, that is pretty cool, and yes I have that enabled so I can see what kind of content it will be! When you do click on the URL it will still launch via the ‘short’ URL meaning if it’s an Adjix, Bit.ly or other type of ‘tracking’ link, it’ll still get the tracking on it
Oh, and last but not least.. If you’ve ever heard me complain about the Resource Usage of TweetDeck, and how it will tend to eat up >1gb of ram on my system. Well, it seems the memory leak is fixed (for the moment.. I’ll leave it on over night and see how much I rack up) but it’s been going pretty good to stay in the ~200mb range!
So, good luck out there on your upgrades – Upgrade now! I’ll continue to monitor my resources and more, and if I find out anything new that I’d really like to complain about.. I will :)
These exams (as far as I can tell) are Free so long as you pass it the first time! If you fail, it sits at $50.00 for the retake, so I suggest not failing :)
Don’t miss the bus!You have to enter by 9:00 am Pacific time on April 6th!
Get on the Bus is an 11-day learning odyssey across the United States aboard the Career Express bus. The Career Express will travel from Tampa to Los Angeles, ending at Tech·Ed 2009!
What exactly is this Bus? It’s a contest of sorts, and yet it’s also an adventure all rolled up into one! The Bus will be taking a tour of various locations, stopping to meet with individuals, organizations, user groups, authors and various meet-ups along the way before ending at TechEd 2009 (North America)
Get on the Bus winners join the Career Express in their city and accompany the Microsoft Learning crew as we stop to visit with the Microsoft Learning community along the way. We will blog, Twitter, video blog, and have a great time!
How to enter the contest
Step 1: Play the “Are You Certifiable?” online game and get a screen name. You’ll include this screen name in your entry. After you submit your entry, you can keep playing to try to get the highest score possible. You can play as many times as you’d like before 9 a.m. Pacific Time on April 6.
Step 2: Get creative and write an essay that strongly justifies why you should be selected to compete in Get on the Bus. Have a camera? In addition to your essay, you can submit a video to tell your story.
Be sure to include your “Are You Certifiable?” screen name and the URL where we can review your essay (and video, if you have one). Remember, creativity counts! The deadline for entering is 9 a.m. Pacific Time, April 6, 2009.
Step 4: Get ready to pack your bags because you might Get On The Bus!
Here are the links you need to know in order to get everything you need from this!
In each Challenge, a panel of judges will review all eligible entries received and select up to five (5) finalists—based upon the following criteria:
35% Technical and certification knowledge as attested to by your “Are You Certifiable?” high score;
65% Passion and creativity as demonstrated in your essay
The judges, in their sole discretion, may award each entrant who submits an optional video up to ten (10) additional bonus points toward his or her overall score.
The decisions of these judges are final and binding. If we do not receive a sufficient number of entries meeting the entry requirements, we may, at our discretion, select fewer than five (5) finalists in each Challenge. In the event of a tie between any eligible entries, we will have an additional judge review each entrant’s Round 1 video, and break the tie based on the judging criteria set forth above.
Now that the formalities are out of the way… time to be not so nice ;)
I like the idea of the Fusion-io devices, I even mentioned them last June, so I’ll call it like it is!
What Fusion-io brings to the table is indeed a nice comprehensive solution to provide high-speed data access in a very small foot-print. This is indeed a fact, I’m sure none of us will argue that they are indeed providing you to have very FAST storage operating in a distributed model, which works out perfectly in a one-off scenario in ways hard to even address!
The business challenges which Fusion-io solves is the difficulty of getting high-speed disk closer to very specific applications (such as grid-computing in ‘x’ number of boxes or OLTP) and it does a pretty good job of that, allowing me to insert their solution into my existing commodity servers!
However, for the one challenge this solution solves it still leaves all of the other pressing issues as this forces us into a distributed fashion, almost contradicting the consolidation efforts which Virtualization, FCoE and and Virtualized storage bring into the Datacenter.
So, I commend the effort, however the implementation of distribution not only increases my risk but it raises question of my scalability of this as a long-term viable implementation. Here’s a top down list of challenges addressed and non-addressed with this implementation.
Infact, when you think about it, the Fusion-io introduction is a clear replacement for DAS in the current datacenter, but it lags so behind conventional (and even archaic) models of SAN implementations that it’d be hard-pressed for any Data Center or Enterprise Architect to use this in any extensive deployment with the lack of scalability, DR/BC sensitivity, HA application and short and long-term backup and archival.
On it’s own, it’s a challenge to see it last and take a significant portion of the Enterprise Storage market as a whole but as a niche player it is king. With offerings like TMS – RAMSAN, the NetApp V-Series RAMSAN Bundle, and other SSD/EFD solutions premiered by the larger storage vendors this will not only continue to be an aggressive play in the future but will set a precedent of things to come.
It just goes to show, storage is dumb – It is how you use it and the intelligence into managing it which is the clear differentiator, and these differentiators will set the dogs apart from the wolves. (or lolcats if preferred)
Every now and then the discussion comes up “Where do I find ‘x’ people on twitter?” I usually resort to random google searches, sometimes finding what I’m looking for, sometimes not quite so much! So here is my repository for you, me and my cat to find people easier.
And that’s all I have for a repository right now – if you have a list which should be added here, or you think I should include some specific grouping, make it known :)
And to tell you the truth, I keep losing it in my application list! doh! But once I get past that (Yes I keep trying to get past it) I am fine!
which will show your friends status on Facebook below it! – You are limited to a single Facebook account (FYI :)) Oh, and part of that is the functionality to post to Twitter, Facebook or both! 
Again, not a big deal to me – especially as I use the Facebook plugin app to auto-pull my tweets and update my status (To the semi-annoyance of my Facebook friends, but I use Twitter more formally anyway, so people need to get over that :))
