Geek Speak

As many of you know, I attended the Continuum Navigate conference in Las Vegas the week of the shooting tragedy. Compliments to Michael George, Continuum CEO, for delivering a successful conference in the midst of madness. In fact he shared heartfelt words with the audience to acknowledge the tragedy.

On the backside of the gathering

Enioy this update from Ken "The Virus Doctor" Dwight who is working with fellow SMB Naiton member Tim Loney to do good - Editor

In response to Hurricane Harvey and the flooding it caused in the Houston area, many Houstonians wanted to do anything they could to help those individuals and businesses whose homes and/or offices were damaged or destroyed by the flood waters. One of those concerned citizens was Tim Loney, CEO of Solutions IS, and a Managed Service Provider with headquarters in Houston, Texas. Loney

by Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa)

The big Twitter news currently may be the expansion of tweets to support 280 characters instead of just 140, but a number of Twitter users recently spotted another notable change, as well: the Twitter Apple Watch app has disappeared. The app’s iTunes App Store page no longer notes compatibility with the Apple Watch, and users who have updated to the latest versions of iOS and watchOS note the Twitter Watch app is no longer available on their smartwatch.

As I write this, Air Force One has landed nearby at the McCarran Airport and the President is enroute to UMC hospital. But I’m here to provide an update that captures the spirit of Las Vegas nearly three days after the shooting tragedy. 

If I had to offer an update for today,

GoDaddy published the results of a study looking at page load speeds across four website builders: GoDaddy’s GoCentral, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace.

(C) Copyright SMB Nation

I’m reporting from the surreal scene this Monday morning called the Las Vegas Strip where I’m here at The Cosmopolitan for the first day of the annual Continuum Navigate conference. Continuum is a major remote management and monitoring (RMM) vendor in the SMB Managed Services Provider (MSP) segment.
It feels a lot like the sunny fall day long ago called 9/11 where people

Siri screenshot. (Apple Image)

Apple is ditching Bing and will now use Google to power the default search engine for Siri, Search within iOS (iOS search bar), and Spotlight on Mac.

TechCrunch reported Monday that Apple users will now see search results powered by Google, instead of Bing, when using those tools.

For example, when an iPhone user asks Siri a question that needs a search engine result, the voice assistant will now pull from Google, not Bing.

BY NAT LEVY on September 25, 2017 at 6:00 am

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. (Microsoft Photo)

More than a year after Microsoft announced its plans to purchase LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, the technology giant is rolling out some of the first integrations with the business social network.

At its Ignite conference in Orlando this morning, Microsoft plans to announce that Office 365 will include a new “profile card” that can display LinkedIn information.

I have a dog in this fight. In graduate school my MBA concentration was in project management from a construction industry vantage point (fortunately my skills easily transferred to IT and the rest is history). So when Smartsheet announced its first ever user conference, I marked it as a must do. It was time well spent and, yes, I’ll yelp that I will repeat. Heck 1,000 attendees can’t be wrong (note this was an IT Pro audience with 55% self-selecting as super users).

(By Karl Palachuk)

Way back in 1993 I found myself in charge of a program to take an entire service business built on Cobol, EBCDIC, and HP-3000 mini computers and create a new system based on Windows Server and SQL. In addition to managing an entire staff of people who ran the entire operation, I managed two COBOL programmers, on SQL programmer, and an outsourced development company that built the new systems based on a 300 page design document I put together.

As promised, my intentions are to keep the MSP Navy in the news cycle concerning the recent hurricanes (Harvey, Irma). Houston MSP Tim Looney started it here and has been joined by fellow MSP Ken Dwight to do good post-Harvey.  Closely-related was the relief coordination via the IAMCP here. 

This update concerns Irma that hit Florida recently.

People take a great deal of pride in their work, and they want their efforts to be as meaningful to employers and society at large as they are to them, on a personal level. But having more authority, more responsibilities, and a friendlier boss doesn't cut it these days. You'll find out soon enough that there's only so much you can do, as an executive, to keep employees running on all cylinders and happy on the job, before you turn to office interior design.