As you know, I am a trainer, among other trades. As my Swedish colleague said – “your guitar has many strings”, and this string is of the most important ones. Among other benefits, this allowed me to meet many bright minds of IT scene and that way to get more material for analysis and correlations.

One of the most fascinating and unexpected findings for me was the fact, that musical skills are directly related with the ability of person to write better computer software. In other words, there were no bad software developers among those whom I knew or heard about and who also were good at playing musical instruments.
I am not even talking about composing of music, or singing, or dancing (which, at some degree, could be considered a musical skill, isn’t it?), just plain performing. More...

How about to own the official page of your country? No less! Create a page of your country (or state, city, district – whatever is more relevant to your country) and place huge banners throughout the city claiming something like “We have X and Y and now we have the Facebook page! What are you waiting for, like us!”. Instead of X and Y you can place what your country is known foremost and what your people are proud of. More...

“You see, there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.”

Merovingian, The Matrix Reloaded

Sometimes I think that lack of proactive thinking is a root of all evil. Buzzwords aside, I am talking about the analytical skills and using them.

By coincidence or not, but for the last few months, when I am analyzing the cause of someone’s failure in any area, it appears that lack of analytical skills, or thinking 2 steps ahead, was the paramount part of it.

As a metaphor to understand what I am talking about – let’s take a car. Imagine, that someone has created a car without brakes. Because he was only thinking about taking off, and not about how his journey would end.

A friend of mine once left home with about 120$ in her pocket. She took a ticket to a plane and fled to England. No plans, no language, nothing at all. She was 15 years old somewhat naïve girl. I wish I could have a better example of real-life lack of proactive thinking. More...

I am beginning the series of articles about various SaaS solutions offered by various companies – some known and some that you probably haven’t heard about, and since all of them share that characteristic of being the SaaS solution, it is important to describe first what SaaS is.

In the upcoming series I am going to describe multiple SaaS services and focus on the alternative ways to have the same functionality. My goal is to describe each of them so you could understand them without digging into the documentation or waste time trying. More...

There are many reasons why people decide to host their web projects on notebooks. Either way, the question is not why, but how. Like everywhere else, there are pros and cons in hosting of your web application on notebook hardware, so we are going to discuss here how to do it properly and get most out of it.

Possible reasons to host your web server on a notebook

Usually people think about hosting on notebook, for one or many of these reasons:

• The price of hosting is higher than expected revenue, or no profit is expected.
• There are less than 1000 users expected to use this web project.
• The web application is not consuming much of resources.
• Notebook is powerful enough.
• You can’t sell this old notebook, but also don’t want to refurbish it, as it is still working as designed. And now you have this web project of yours that needs cheap hosting.
• Your internet connection is fast and reliable and you see no reason or have no resources to acquire new hardware and data center (DC) allocation.
• You want to host the web application on-site but want to keep your electricity bill at minimum.
• You have to make your server mobile.

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This article explores the controversial product placement of Apple in the recent adaptation of Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

Prior to my recent movie experience, I was blissfully ignorant of the purported deficiencies of Apple notebooks. To be exact, the film appears to suggest that they could be among the most poorly engineered notebooks in existence. These were my thoughts as I walked out of the theatre, the echoes of the movie still lingering.

The financial cost to Apple for this product placement in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" remains unknown. The film is a fresh offering from David Fincher, graced with performances from Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, and set to the haunting tunes composed by Trent Reznor. However, the product representation in this film may be one of the most egregious I've ever witnessed.

To begin, believe it or not, the movie seems to imply that Apple MacBook Pros have a near-monopoly on the Swedish market. Indeed, it may remind you of the widespread use of Sony Ericsson mobile phones in Daniel Craig's other famous movie, "Casino Royale," even boasting capabilities that the real-world devices can only dream of.

Midway through the film, the protagonist's computer abruptly fails, the repairman declaring data recovery impossible. Is this what users should expect from their Apple MacBook? To replace her MacBook Pro, she embarks on a perilous adventure, rather than conveniently utilizing the warranty. Does the movie accurately portray the struggles of dealing with Apple's warranty system? 

As an aside, the film does accurately represent the irretrievability of data from a MacBook Air. However, it's worth noting the faulty device in the film wasn't an Air model.

The third “fact” gleaned from "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is that MacBooks are easy to hack. In the original book, Lisbeth Salander (the titular 'Girl') is portrayed as Sweden's preeminent hacker, with detailed accounts of her exploits. However, the film fails to highlight this crucial aspect of her character. Instead, we observe a punk girl seemingly breezing through MacBook security systems.

"But the files are encrypted!" one character protests, only to be dismissed with a casual, "Please…" Is the movie implying that the encryption within MacOS is deficient or even nonexistent?

Shifting gears, Stieg Larsson himself was an avid Apple fan, and his trilogy is peppered with Apple devices. However, the books manage to integrate these elements seamlessly into the narrative without the overt product placement that plagues the movie. 

This adaptation, coming only three years after the original Swedish film, seems to have a single-minded goal: to serve as a drawn-out, insipid advertisement for Apple and Volvo.

I won't delve into the critique of the movie itself, as my experience was undoubtedly colored by my prior reading of the book. Suffice to say, the performances and music were noteworthy, yet the film might leave you underwhelmed if you've read the book. Or, perhaps, if you happen to be a MacBook owner.

I thought about what some of my readers and other people said about the new feature of Google, called “Your World”, and all the concerns they had about it. The move was so smart, that it looks like Google outsmarted themselves. If to rephrase the saying “kill two hares with one shot”, the Google managed to kill the whole population of them.

And you know, I hate myself for what I am about to write, because for some reason I think it will be the first shot at the Black SEO frontier of the Battle for Relevance, but hopefully I am exaggerating the problem and it’s only in my mind. I was thinking so when I was writing the first post, too. More...

2011 was a year of great changes. For example, the SEO changed so much, that applying principles which were effective long time ago, would bring your website down. But surprisingly, the same we can say about the social networking. This post is about the dramatic changes I foresee in social networking in the year 2012.

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Bold title for an article, as it implies that I am not going to analyze the advantages of the subject but to prove right from the start why it is what I think it is. But the truth is – the question about e-Learning usually sounds exactly like that – why e-Learning is better, not “is it better at all” – people need an answer and they need it fast. So – here it is.

For about 3 years I’ve been working as senior mentor at New Horizons training center. I was training different kinds of people – established IT professionals and students, people coming to IT from other areas and even few ex-schoolboys. The training experience was the most precious part of that job. More...

It appears like in some things Chinese have more sense than the rest of the world. According to the article, they are going to cancel majors (i.e. higher education programs) which don’t lead to employment. They are going to analyze the stats of employment for those, who finished their majors and how lucky they are to land a job. So, if you are teaching Turbo Pascal and call it “Computer Science”, your days are numbered. If you teach it in China, of course.

I wish the same would be implemented in EU. During my career I found out one thing – an IT specialist with higher education is less preferable than the one without it. The reason is simple – higher education in Eastern Europe works just like in “Profession” – novel by Isaac Asimov. Dumb memorizing of irrelevant data which won’t do any good for business. They are not taught creativity and open-mind behavior.

Besides, the situation with employment becomes so interesting for those mentally challenged IT administrators, that some of them become very… I almost said “creative”… In finding a new job opportunity.

According to Security Week, a 26 year-old Hungarian male called Attila Nemeth hacked into the network of American hotel network Marriot through some dumb social engineering technique, and then… Tried to extort the employment opportunity at that company, at his terms. And as if it wasn’t stupid enough, he sent them a copy of his passport, and used plane ticket paid by Marriot to come for his job interview. After he was “interviewed” by Secret Service “HR personnel”, he’s about to be employed by one of American prisons for next 15 years and during that time he will have to pay up to $ 1 million to Marriot.

This makes me think, that Hungary has problems with two things, and one of them is employment.

Talking about employment and HR, a new research shows, that there is a direct relation between intellect and the sense of humor. Apparently, the sense of mirth is a reward given by brain when you discover the logical error in statement. According to my own experience and opinion, research results looks valid and natural. Bad news for people with undeveloped sense of humor.