This afternoon I was explaining to a few college some of the finer points of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007.  The thing that I remember most about the conversation was you only get out of it what you put into it.  This really resonated for me as I think this is true with most things in life.  With technology, friendships, personal relationships, etc.  You really can’t get more out of anything than you put into it and if you think you can you’re in for a rude awakening.

Todd Vernon has a post that I think sums this up nicely.  This actually comes from Brad and the thought is that about 1% of all users on the net actually contribute active content and that another 19% comment or otherwise do something with this content (like share with a friend, etc).  Again back to what you put in you get out.

So if you’re somewhere right now where you have the chance to put something into something please do.  You’ll get more out of it than you ever though possible…

Those of you who follow my blog know that I recently got a new MacBook Pro. This isn’t the first Mac I’ve ever had but it’s the first time I’m going to force myself to switch. I’ve made a promise that I wouldn’t touch Windows on my laptop for at least the next month and since I won’t be in the office much that means lots and lots of time on my Mac. Tonight I sat down to do a little work and finally went for a solution to one of my main complaints, the way cycling between open applications works. Let me explain.

In Windows when you press Alt-Tab you cycle through all open Windows. In OS X you cycle through all open applications. The key difference is that in Windows if you have multiple windows open for a single application (like say two Firefox windows) you can cycle to every window – in OS X you can only cycle to the main window for any given application, then to cycle between it’s open windows you use Command-~. This is REALLY really stupid and annoying. So tonight I went on my first quest to find a solution to this problem and man did I find it. Oh and if that isn’t annoying enough if you cycle to an app that is minimized you MUST go mouse over to it to maximize it – again STUPID.

Enter in Witch. Witch fixes both of these things by adding a new application for cycling your windows – I mapped mine to Alt-Tab just like in Windows. THIS ROCKS. Thank you Witch, you just fixed the single most annoying thing I’ve had to deal with during this switch over. Apple listen up, buy this guy out and get this code in your next release. I don’t care what you’re doing, whatever it is stop and add this code first!!!

Just thought I’d share a new toy that I got today, the AVTech Room Alert 7E.  This is a small device that you plug into your network and then connect various thermal and other monitors to it (like door open sensors, etc).  It was a breeze to install and configuration was very quick and simple.

The unit has a built in web server that you use to view your current conditions and setup alert thresholds.  So far it’s working great, with a little testing I’m getting the alerts just fine.  Interesting to know that it’s currently 76F in the cabinet at 72F at the door to the room.  My inner geek loves this sorta stuff…

So my shiny new MacBook Pro arrived today and I’ve been setting it up ever since.  Since this is the first real thing I’ve done in my new “IT Quest” I figured I’d start posting some questions to all my Mac readers out there.  So far here are the things that are driving me nuts.  One thing to know about me, I’m a keyboard shortcut junkie.

• How do you command-tab between Finder windows?  I’ve got 4 open right now and there’s no way to select them without using the mouse (I can tab between different apps and Finder but not different Finder windows).
• Tabbing through boxes and buttons is inconsistent.  I’ve enabled tab for all controls in System Preferences but just now I was filling out a registration form and while I could tab between all the boxes I had to use the mouse to click the “OK” button.
• Is there any way to have Leopard auto connect network shares on boot up? Driving me nuts that I have to reconnect everything each time I boot up.
• Can you place the icons for the network drives on your desktop?  Tiger worked this way, can’t find this in Leopard.
• Can you set it so Finder windows open where you closed them last? In Windows if I open an explorer window then move/resize it and close it next time I open it it’s right back where I left it.
• When an app is minimized and you tab to it is there a way to have it actually open?  It’s just not very helpful to give focus to an app that I can’t actually use.

That’s my list after about 2 hours.  Next post will be apps, I’m keeping a list of the apps that I need that I don’t have or know about yet.  I’m welcome any and all feedback and suggestions, bring them on!

Earlier this week Brad pointed me to a sight called Jumpbox.com.  Jumpbox allows you to download pre built packages for many of the popular open source applications like Alfresco, Bugzilla, and Joomla just to name a few.  Here is their one sentence description “We take popular Open Source server applications, remove all the install headaches and make them much easier to use.”

So does it?  Well I created an account so I could download one of the apps, Joomla (since I’m familiar with it and have used it before).  I got the entire 220MB package downloaded (which stunned me since Joomla is a very small under 5MB package) and was ready to see how it worked.  I assume it must have some sort of run-time engine built in.  Well it didn’t and I was sorta surprised at what it really was.

Turns out all Jumbox is are pre-built virtual machines (generally used in VMWare, Parallels, etc).  So not only is this Joomla but its an entire OS too!  While this might be an easier approach to installing specific apps if I wanted to use the three I listed above I’ve now got three more servers to manage.  Security patches, software issues, etc.  Not at all what I was looking for.  Oh and they leave it to you to get the necessary runtime software (VMWare does have a free version called VMWare Player that lets you run but not create VM’s).

So right now I’m not overly impressed.  Oh and it didn’t help that when I opened the readme file (while still being confused as to what this really is) it was Unix formatted so I couldn’t read it in Notepad (which just annoys me).  Their site is also very vague about all this and I’m guessing that’s on purpose.  So nice concept but not the greatest execution.

If you’ve been following my blog for the past few weeks (or the blogs of Seth Levine or Brad Feld) you’ll know that we’ve been struggling with many of the Microsoft technologies lately, namely Windows Vista.  Rather than go back through all my rants I’ll cut to the chase, I am now seriously exploring other solutions outside of the Microsoft dynasty.

First up is my new MacBook Pro.  It should arrive tomorrow and I’m swearing to myself that while I’ll put Vista on it I’m going to run only OS X for at least the first month.  And while I plan on putting Parallels on it too I’m not even going to use that unless I just must.  So if you are a Mac user or fan please please chime in with any pointers/software/suggestions/etc you may have for me – I’m going to need it!

But more than this I’m going to be looking into different backend technologies to see how realistic it would be to move away from the Microsoft machine.  So far I have Google Apps and Zimbra on my list to check out but I’m going to be 100% open to any suggestion or technology that I find so bring’em on.  I’m looking at this from the perspective of a startup company – a clean slate, blank piece of paper.  How would I build our IT infrastructure if they hired me right now.  Oh, and I’m going to be playing with SuSE Linux too, will be installing that for Brad soon to see what he thinks of it.

I’m going to be blogging about this experience along the way. You’ll see a link up in my header called “IT Quest” so feel free to follow along and cheer me on!