Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud Now Has Windows

Amazon Web Services has a new product in their Elastic Compute Cloud, they now offer Microsoft Windows virtual servers. Until now, the only virtual machines you could use from EC2 were Linux/Unix based virtual machines. These virtual machines provide quick and “easy” scalability for web applications. Virtual machines have also gained popularity in the IT industry as organizations learn about the cost savings possible from running multiple servers on one machine.

Having Windows virtual machines is a great addition to the EC2 line because it opens up possibilities for creating test environments prior to rolling out a network. Even better, they are a great learning tool for those of us who learn through hands-on experience. While studying for your Microsoft certification, you can deploy virtual Windows Server instances to help you practice what is in the books. This opens up learning to anybody rather than only those who have access to servers at work, or the money to purchase a test server. Starting at 12.5 cents per hour, you can easily afford to put in some hours of practice.

Virtual Windows machines are good for more than just practice environments. You can consider them production machines. You can run them, reboot them, update them, upgrade them, and do almost everything you do with a physical server machine. This includes putting them to work serving up websites, handling your email, or running applications for your company.

Tonight I have been experimenting with Microsoft speech recognition. The experiment has been a pretty bad failure. The technology is still not as good as it should be. It is very aggravating to try to write a sentence. I think part of my problem is that if your microphone is not very good then the speech recognition has trouble figuring out what you said.
Seriously, I could type much faster than this machine can understand me. This isn’t working for me. Perhaps I am holding the microphone too close. Or perhaps I do not enunciate well enough for the computer. I really should try a better microphone. Supposedly, the speech recognition software should recognize and learn the more I use it. Some of it is also becoming familiar with the commands available.
I must admit, as I learn how to use it, it is getting much easier. And maybe it is learning. But only time will tell.

How to be successfully homeless

If you are a single person, you can successfully live without a home and still live a complete life. Many of the benefits of having a place to stay are available to a well-thought homeless situation. Let me point out that homeless does not mean jobless. To successfully pull this off, you will need a source of income.

The first thing you need to worry about is shelter. A home’s primary function is shelter, right? Well, you’ll need a van or minivan. Most full-size vans have enough room for a person to find a spot to sleep. In the case of a minivan, you’ll need one without rear seats or one with stow-away seating, like the Town & Country. Your van can also serve as your closet to hold your next change of clothes.

I know that you are thinking, “clothes? How will I deal with laundry?” There are a couple of solutions for this. One solution is dry cleaning. Take your time picking up your clothes from the dry cleaners. Rotate your way through your clothes. Socks and underwear are cheap enough you can make them disposable.

Option two for laundry is a uniform. There are companies out there that will rent you uniforms. Just like the dry cleaners, they will wash and press your uniform. The downside is that you’ll have to pick up a week’s worth of uniforms at once. You can buy a clothes bar to go across the back of the van to hold your uniforms.

I have not addressed where to park your van. Well, Wal-Mart has a friendly policy of allowing people to camp in their parking lot overnight. You’ll typically see semis and RVs parked at Wal-Marts overnight. Park next to them and you should be pretty safe. If you need to use the facilities (toilet), consider the occasional purchase at Wal-Mart as a token of your appreciation.

What about taking a shower?

This is easily solved. Get a gym membership. Preferably, your gym will open very early or be open 24 hours. You get the benefit of a workout and use of the showers.

How do I eat?

Dining is probably the easiest problem to deal with. Dine out, or buy food at Wal-Mart.

What about entertainment?

Get a van with a DVD player.

What about a phone or Internet?

Get a mobile phone and laptop with an EV-DO modem.

What if I have to travel out of town?

Park your van in a storage facility or drive yourself out of town.

What if I have a date?

Get a motel, playa.

Where do I get my mail?

You can use the good old USPS mailbox or rent a private mailbox.

Where do I keep my valuables?

Safe deposit box.

It is all outsourcable. A single person only really needs a place to sleep at night. Save some money; travel the world. Or, you can simply survive this economy. The application is up to you.

Highrise Added Deals and Did Not Tell You

I have been using HighriseHQ for over a month now. Today, I noticed a new feature that I had not seen, called Deals. I don’t think it was there when I started using the service. Highrise is very easy to use; but its simplicity also gave it some limitations on its use as a sales-oriented CRM. I was mostly using it to keep track of my interactions with people, not sales. The Deals feature, however, gives Highrise a boost in its usefulness as a Sales CRM. Of course, true to their core concept, the Deals feature is very simple to use.

Overall, Highrise has really worked out very well for me in combination with my Moleskine notebook. I write stuff in my notebook and later transfer to Highrise. This helps me avoid having to lug the laptop around everywhere. I was just considering moving my notes over to another CRM solution because of my recent move into a Sales job. One of the advantages that the really good CRM products have is that they help you keep track of your sales funnel. Typically, you keep track of prospects, qualify them, and eventually whittle down your list into closed sales. The sales process requires that you be able to juggle many different contacts through all of the stages and keep track. Of course, an important component is the ability to give dollar figures to your sale. The Deals feature lets you give a dollar amount to the deal. It also lets you mark the deal as “Pending”, “Won”, or “Lost”. I intend to use Deals when giving out quotes. I know that this will allow me to keep up with the volume of clients I will meet in the coming weeks.

On the surface, Deals looks like a specialized Case feature. You can add notes, associate people or companies, and add tasks to each deal, just as you would to a Case. This means that you don’t have to spend a great deal of time learning how to use the feature. This is good because there currently is no mention of the Deals feature on the Highrise website, nor any support links that I could find. I find it amusing that they added a handy feature to the service and failed to inform anybody.

Interview: Texas Wine & Song Festival

Tx Wine and Song ogo

Join me as I talk to the organizers of the Second Annual Texas Wine & Song Festival in Austin, Texas. You can listen to the LIVE podcast on October 12, 2008 at 2 pm CST on BlogTalkRadio.

The Texas Wine & Song Festival will raise funds for the SIMS Foundation. Find out more about the wine and entertainment at this year’s festival. You are welcome to listen in or call during the show.

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