http://brian.blog.mytru.ca you heard it here second Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:04:22 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I was keen on using the Ghost service, a "cloud-based" virtual desktop environment I planned to use for my daughter's school science project. That was until I got this message in my in-box recently - Dear Ghost User, We hope you have been enjoying our free Ghost service. Regrettably changes in ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2010/03/05/whether-clouds-or/ A piece on Finance 2.0 in Tech Crunch talks about new methods and technologies that will have a positive impact for the consumer and the merchant over the next few years. I say bring them on... I've got my fingers crossed for the success of a new mobile payment application from ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2010/02/04/mobile-money/ Been playing with Google's wonder wheel feature today. (In google searches, select Show Options, Wonder wheel) to get a wheel view of your search results. The visual view of search results is very handy, and often illuminating. http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/11/14/wonder-wheel/ Nerds the world over rejoice, wearable gestural interfaces are enroute :) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfV4R4x2SK0[/youtube] http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/11/10/the-sixth-sense-wearable-augmented-reality-technology/ Excellent piece from Andrew Keen on profiting from social media like twitter and facebook. Keen talks about the John Wiley's formula for online success: Influence + Reputation = Trust We'd do well to understand this simple equation because trust equals dollars... It would seem, whether we know it or not, all of us ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/10/11/profiting-from-trust/ Okay this is cool: Have you got your Reprap yet? Reprap stands for Replicating Rapid-prototyper and is a University of Bath project that builds 3D Printers that can self-replicate. This means it can make another one of itself. Yeah it took me a while to get my head around that ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/09/11/open-source-hardware/ Most laptop computer users will notice their lap getting very warm while they use their machine. Very recently there have been incidents in Vancouver and Kamloops where laptop computers have shorted out or overheated causing burns and even a fatality. From the CBC article -  a list of laptop safety precautions: Always ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/27/burning-latops/ [caption id="attachment_808" align="alignnone" width="360" caption="Blue Skying Again"][/caption] Everyone in IT Services at TRU is working hard to see Project SAGE a success. This project (the biggest IT project in TRU's history) involves the standardization of TRU's Student, Finance, Advancement and HR systems on Banner Version 8 as well as many ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/26/it-planning-beyond-2010/ Our Technology Services team at TRU has worked really hard to virtualize our data centre and our Client Services group has been planning virtual desktop environments for some time now. The business benefits of virtualization include reduced energy consumption, lowered costs, increased reliability and a reduction in the complexity of ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/23/begin-the-beguine/ And another excellent presentation from Simon Wardley on the topic. Cloud Computing is a generic term used to describe the disruptive transformation in IT towards a service-based economy driven by a set of economic, cultural, and technological  conditions. His definition moves our thinking away from the narrow, vendor-driven definition of cloud computing ... http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/16/another-definition-of-cloud-computing/