milos topic » Services

Know what your project needs

Milos Topic — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:53:22 +0000

Recently I came across several project proposals where I was asked to evaluate technical components (hardware, software and staffing needs) and found a few items worth sharing. Several items in these proposals weren’t adequately priced (difference from list and actual price on select items was as high as 60%). Furthermore, some hardware models have been discontinued years ago.

While certain people are not technical by trade it is still very important to make sure those components are accurately priced and still available. If you are specifically requesting a particular computer, printer, server model please make sure that we can still purchase it at the time of your submission. While this might add a bit more work, done mainly by “Googling” or “Binging” (?) these models, it will go a long way in supporting your need and presenting you as someone who does their research and is well prepared.

The success of most today’s projects depends on the right blend of people, processes and technology, but it all starts with a clear definition of needs and goals, including all technology components.

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Know what your project needs

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Facebook’s new privacy settings

Milos Topic — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:56:25 +0000

Facebook is finally catching up to some of their perpetual security concerns and is strengthening their privacy policy and therefor the settings as well. It took a while but as of this morning (when I noticed the change) privacy settings have been tightened a bit and are finally working as expected. It will take some time for majority of folks to review their current settings and tweak their profiles as desired, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Considering the size of their social network (350 million) and ever growing popularity worldwide it is important to seriously evaluate all aspects of security from profiles to servers, routers, including physical access at their company.
In today’s world you can never spend too much attention on security.

Post from: Milos Topic

Facebook’s new privacy settings

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Designing a client friendly website

Milos Topic — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:30:17 +0000

We have all came across websites with a mass of links and never ending scroll bars of text which have frequently left us frustrated and annoyed. Being able to quickly find what you are looking for is important and websites with a clear structure who have also been properly indexed (site specific search) are a joy to visit. Unorganized sites with hidden information often cause us to give up and move on to another site, often that of a competitor.

While it is important to provide relevant and valuable information it is important not to overdo it and overwhelm your potential clients. Besides pages explaining your business and your competencies, product or service you provide you obviously need a contact page, a pricing model; maybe an option for customers to purchase your product directly on your site and that should be all for most businesses. Others could benefit from a blog or links to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Generally that should suffice for an overwhelming majority of business. There is no need to overload your site with pages about things your bill paying customers won’t care about. Remember, time is money and both your and your clients’ time is very valuable.

Items of importance:

get to the point
- limit scrolling
- curb your link count
explain
- who you are
- what you do
provide
- contact info
- pricing and order info
expand
- blog
- social networking sites
design, easy on the eyes
Post from: Milos Topic

Designing a client friendly website
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Is Blackboard the best CMS out there?

Milos Topic — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:11:08 +0000

Our institution has been using Blackboard (Bb) for a while now as their Course Management System (CMS) of choice with mixed results. Depending who you ask, based on their technical knowledge and their experience using Blackboard (and other CMS solutions) you will get different responses. They range from it is good, does what I need it to do to can we please use anything but Blackboard. Both performance and availability have been known to be a bit spotty and we all know that those two parameters are very important to students and faculty.

My usage has been fairly limited since I don’t teach any courses and my needs are different from those of a faculty (or even some other staff members). This is why I’m probably not the best person to provide an in-depth assessment of Bb v.7.3 (currently in production) and why I turn to those who have more exposure to Blackboard and other CMS tools such as Moodle, Sakai and the likes to hear what your thoughts are.

Is Bb the best or simply the largest solution out there? What are you running/using at your school/work and how satisfied are you with that product?

Post from: Milos Topic

Is Blackboard the best CMS out there?

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How well will “Droid Does” do?

Milos Topic — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:47:38 +0000

Attacking the market leader

There’s a new cell phone TV ad where Apple iPhone’s disadvantages are clearly outlined by a new, soon to be released device powered by Android. At the end of the ad they flash a URL, droiddoes.com which redirects to this page and makes it clear that it will be a Motorola phone, running Google’s Android on Verizon’s network. You can also see its features and benefits over iPhone and other popular smartphones.

This better be good, very good

Will this device be able to weaken the iPhone following and take away some of Apple’s/AT&T’s market share? Can Google, Motorola and Verizon produce a device which will outshine all others and become the most sought after phone? The number of questions is endless and answers to them will soon be available once the phone hits the market in November.

I personally hope that we will see the best smartphone ever! Better than iPhone, or Palm Pre or any of the Blackberries, I hope to see a phone I would really want to have. I currently use an iPhone 3G and while there are features I wish it had and things I wish it did better, overall I’m satisfied with it. Other phones are out there now, from 3GS to MyTouch to Palm Pre, but none of them appear to be much better from my current phone to actually make the switch.

Will it deliver?

Looking at features alone it seems like a promising device with a lot of great technologies all combined into one device. If implemented properly, there is no doubt that it will become another good smartphone and will attract tons of new customers or those who have waited for something new to come out (those who have refused to purchase an iPhone so far), but will current iPhone users make the change? What will this device need to do in order to get hardcore mac-heads away from their beloved iPhone? Then, there are people who might switch at the next contract renewal cycle (like me) if they find anything better. I’m not attached to any particular device and will use whatever addresses my needs best, but it has to be better (much better) then what I already have. Considering the number of recently over-hyped devices which looked great on paper, but failed to deliver I’m a bit skeptical in its success. I honestly hope they prove me wrong and produce an amazing device as with great competition we all win.

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How well will “Droid Does” do?

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Verizon FiOS diagnostics you can do yourself

Milos Topic — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:49:18 +0000

I have recently experienced pixelation, temporary loss of audio and/or picture with Verizon FiOS which all pointed to signal strength issues.
I called Verizon and here’s the first thing they had me do in order to confirm (or deny) poor signal strength:

1. On your FiOS remote click on Menu
2. Then select Help
3. Go to Self Diagnostics and click start.

This should take less than a minute and if everything is ok all tests should clearly pass and results should be written in green text. If any of them fail then you need to call Verizon for further assistance. Also, note that according to Verizon’s support your signal strength should be 25 db or higher (even though lower db’s might work fine as well).

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Verizon FiOS diagnostics you can do yourself

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Selecting the most valuable conference to attend

Milos Topic — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:54:29 +0000

It’s been a while since I went to a real professional conference (been to a number of one day seminars, presentations and demos), but not a real targeted conference. I think it’s time to change this and become more involved in the technology world outside my immediate area.
Also, considering that I’m planning to introduce additional improvements within our team getting involved in industry specific conferences in order to educated myself further and see what’s out there could prove beneficial to us.

I’ve looked into several conferences ranging from information technology in higher education to the technology industry in general. Some focus on applications, others on servers, some on web content while a few are technology support (help desk) driven. While they are all interesting to me I would like to narrow it down to a conference or two that I should try to attend next year. Here’s where I need your suggestions. Please share your experiences and knowledge when it comes to conferences that someone with the following focus can benefit from:

- Information technology in higher education
- Management of people, processes and technology
- Focus on technology support and process improvements
- Introducing new technologies and tools to improve user experience and internal operational environment

Even if you have only heard from your colleagues of a particular conference, but haven’t attended it yourself mention it here so that I could keep it as an option. Since in higher ed (and most other industries today) there is no money to waste and I would like to provide a tangible ROI to our college and as such this conference needs to be valuable.

As you can see, I haven’t listed any conferences I’m currently considering as I didn’t want to influence your opinions and suggestions.

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Friends don’t let friends go phishing

Milos Topic — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:54:45 +0000

Recent phishing schemes targeting Microsoft’s Hotmail, Google’s Gmail, Yahoo and other e-mail providers represent a new larger wave of an ever-present problem and it once again emphasizes the importance of educating your users, clients and staff how to recognize threats and stay away from them.

Basic things to remember:

- Your bank, IT staff, utility company or any other service provider will NEVER ask for your login credentials of any kind (password, PIN, social security number…). They simply don’t need to do that as other means of accessing your account (should there be a need for it) are already in place.

- Don’t open attachments you don’t expect/need or know where they came from. Same goes for links, don’t get click happy by clicking on every link you see. Also, when placing your cursor over a link you should look at the status bar (lower left hand corner to see if the two match).

- Don’t use public computers to access your financial (or other important) data. Why? Well, you simply don’t know who maintains those machines and how frequently; you don’t know what’s installed on them and if someone is capturing your keystrokes for later use.

- Change your passwords and change them often. Also, maintain multiple passwords for different account groups. You shouldn’t be using the same password for your banking that you use to access a simple news site. Furthermore, try not to keep your passwords simple and guessable. “welcome” ” password” “12345″ and other similar choices are examples of poor selection. I know what you must think, secure passwords are complicated and difficut to remember. Not true. All you need to do is try sentences.

Ex. “I was born on a Thursday” and then group them together “iwasbornonathursday” and if you really want to get fancy (read: SECURE) change some letters for numbers and you come up with “1wa5b0rn0nathur5day”. Simple enough and a lot more secure than “welcome”, isn’t it?

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Vendors beware

Milos Topic — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:40:34 +0000

A fine line separates good, valuable sales contacts from those removed from reality who end up causing more problems then they bring value for you and their own respective companies. It is important to stay in touch with your clients, but please no “stalking” as they does no good to anyone.

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Vendors beware

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Advise your students wisely

Milos Topic — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:40:24 +0000

When you are advising students on what courses/professors to take, you are directly having an impact on their future careers so please take your job seriously and advise these young individuals as if they were your own kids, brothers, sisters,… Put your heart and soul into it and don’t do it simply for the paycheck.

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Advise your students wisely

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