Everyone else has been making their predictions for the coming year, so I thought I might do the same…

These predictions are based upon industry news, social media and blog rambling as well as some personal wishes.

Will any of it come to fruition? I guess at the end of 2011 you can remind me how wrong I was.

A few IT Predictions for 2011:

• Google Android based devices will continue to dominate the market in smartphones, pads, and everything else from alarm clocks and personal weather stations to set top boxes.

• Wireless carriers will discover that loading their own “value added” bundled software on top of the phones they sell is really a turn off and that keeping the smartphone just as the manufacturer and OS provider intended it to be will enable a faster rollout of updates and make for happier customers.

• Dish, DirecTV & cable TV providers have a fight on their hands… Services like Netflix and a whole slew of streaming providers will fight to bring first run movies, and streaming of networks via the internet. We will see many new set top boxes, TVs with built-in streaming capability. The most exciting thing will be an the legal battles around this, not really the technology itself.

• Tablet and pad wars will continue. Apple’s iPad II will provide some stiff competition for the Android pads, but be prepared for Android based pads to spring up everywhere as more are cleared for import to the USA.

• Internet Tax? Yep, 2011 is the year. So much revenue is being lost that I predict we will see taxes placed on our online purchases. I believe it will be both good and bad. Some online retailers may no longer be able to beat out the local brick and mortar prices, so that could be good for us smaller guys, but it may slow down the injection of money into the economy. Either way, it’s coming.

• Cloud Computing: Over half of all businesses will look into using cloud based services, whether it is online storage, online backup, online applications like Microsoft BPOS or Google Apps, hosted anti-virus, hosted anti-spam or even hosted VoIP solutions. Of these, 10% will actually make the switch, and half who do make the switch will be totally happy, with the other dissatisfied due to bandwidth or network reliabilty. The number of fully satisfied people will go up as the technology matures.

• Malicious software will affect more Macs and Linux based machines in 2011. We’ve already seen a sharp increase in the number of exploited machines, expect this trend to continue. Add to this smartphones as a target.

• Network Connectivity: Charter Business has just come out with a 75×5 meg Pro75 package. This is great, but I expect this to reach 100×10 by the end of 2011, possibly as a free upgrade like they upgraded the 20meg to 30meg…

What do you think the very near future has in store for us? More solid state storage devices? Hard Drives reaching 5TB?

Either way, we hope you have a very Happy New Year!

This sure isn't DSL!

Tired of waiting for that ISO to download? I know the feeling, even with the 30megabit download speeds we currently have…

As if they were reading our minds regarding speed limitations, our Charter Business rep let us know the other day that they have turned it up a notch here in Greenville and are offering two new speed packages.

The “Pro40″ package is 40 megabit down and 4 megabit up… YIKES!  40m x 4m is incredible! 4 megabit up is nearly twice what we have now and an extra 10 megabit down will make those big ISOs arrive a bit quicker. Oh but that’s nothing at all. Seriously.

There’s a “Pro75″ package, yeah, and you already guessed it: 75 megabit down and 5 megabit up. Holy #&!% this is amazing!!!!!!!   All I want for Christmas is 75×5.

While it is not Google Fiber, it is available right now, without a huge outlay of cash. In fact, the 75×5 is less than the cost of a 1.5m up/down T1.

This type of bandwidth is necessary if you are contemplating a move towards cloud computing, and the uplink speeds will allow you to better serve remote users!

If you would like more information about Charter Business services and how it can help your business, please give us or your Charter Business rep a call. Our free network support evaluation will tell you if your current firewall, router, switch, etc may be a bottleneck in your new high-speed network infrastructure.  We are also your Upstate experts on cutovers from one internet service provider to another. Call us today – 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com

Today, at “High Noon” in Falls Park, a group of people, made up of men & women of all ages and from all walks of life, and even children, met up at the first “Flash Mob” that I am aware of in Greenville… To shoot each other with water guns! To the casual observer, immediately before noon, there was very little sign of anything significant taking place, just a group of people, who happened to be wearing Google’s colors of Red, Blue (The best one of course), Yellow and Green, to represent the color they liked best, or maybe the color of the letter they were in during the #GoogleOnMain event….

At “high noon”, cooler lids opened, and a fountain of Mentos activated Coke sprayed high into the air… Suddenly, the group pulled out (water) guns and began firing on each other! Some people had modest little water guns, others had fully automatic hydration systems shooting 25+ft. Then the bombing began! Water ballons were launched and many participants were instantly drenched with the barrage of ballons, again in the colors of Google’s famous logo.

Until the video is released, I can’t say for sure who won, but I have a feeling the Blue beat out of the rest =) (They may feel otherwise, but that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it)

The brainchild of Susan Sebotnick / @BitTyrant and Aaron Von Frank / @AaronVonFrank – they thought it up on Friday, made it happen today by using social media to alert a couple thousand people…   Due to the holiday, many were out of town though. Still, the turnout was terrific for Noon on a Monday!!!!

Some photos from James Akers Jr. / @JamesAkersJr are available here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=187731&id=507966821#!/photo.php?pid=4889169&id=507966821

Come join the #googleonmain #luckygvl people in beautiful downtown #greenville SC at Falls Park, where the original Google On Main even took place!

Bring water guns, wear T-Shirts in the color of Google’s logo…

RSVP here: FACEBOOK EVENT

Please read the instructions on that site….

The FCC wants you to signup to shape the future of broadband in America

The FCC is looking for about 10,000 good men and women to help test their broadband connections in certain markets and from certain providers by installing a piece of equipment to meter the throughput at their home.

If you are interested in participating, you can go to https://www.testmyisp.com/ and fill out the application. You must meet certain requirements, such as having a high speed / broadband connection like cable or DSL from prividers such as Charter, AT&T, Cable One, Cablevision, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Clearwire, Comcast, Cox,  Fairpoint, Frontier, Hughes, Insight, Mediacom, Qwest, RCN, Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner), Verizon, WildBlue/ViaSat, Windstream, or “other”, which will allow you to write in your broadband provider.

Apparently, they will place a simple device onto your LAN, and you must agree to the terms of usage, such as leaving it on 24/7, not trying to reverse engineer the device, etc.

Conspiracy theories are already out there that this device will be doing more than watching your throughput, such as watching your browsing habits. Possible, but unlikely. The company that has partnered with the FCC would probably not want to get that kind of bad press if this were found to be true.

I signed up our home and will let you know if we are selected…

Cisco offers a full line of Gigabit and switches, routers and firewalls

Have you noticed retrieving files from your server is feeling slower? Accessing a database on your network is sluggish? Moving large files takes a long time? Chances are good that you are using a 10/100 Megabit infrastructure, and that by simply replacing a few components, you could move to Gigabit speeds, possibly a 10x increase in speed, or more if you are using really old hubs and not switches! It’s like steroids for your business network!

As more and more data is stored, and multi-media files become larger due to better resolution and sampling rates, and reliance on server or network based storage increases, the network that you have used reliably for years may be showing its age.

Did you know that gigabit ethernet technology has been around for many years? In fact, your computers and servers, if purchases in the last few years probably already feature Gigabit NICs (Network Interface Cards), and all that may be holding you back from greater speeds on your LAN may be a change in hubs/switches and possibly some wiring & cabling upgrades?

Most business owners are not aware of that fact, nor has it been brought to their attention by their network support specialists. There’s good news too! Gigabit components have dropped in price considerably and it is not that much more to upgrade a piece of hardware to Gigabit than it is to replace a failing piece with a 10/100 component!

But be warned, there are some gotchas…  You might be purchasing a Gigabit switch and think that will be all you need and the wiring may not support the throughput, or you might find if you maintain a mixed mode, that some 10/100/1000 switches may not work with certain 10/100 cards, and the most popular is purchasing a cheap component and actually seeing a reduction in speed because it doesn’t support “jumbo frames”. So if you have any questions, consult your computer service professional or network support professional. Also, if you planning on a VoIP (Voice over IP) phone system, you may want to take that into consideration so you do not have to upgrade switches again to PoE (Power over Ethernet).

Homeland Secure IT offers a free evaluation, so feel free to call us if your business is in Greenville or the Upstate and let us look over what you have and see what it takes to get you up to speed! With Google high speed fiber internet possibly coming to the Upstate, wouldn’t it be nice if your computers/servers could actually use that speed?

We offer Cisco, Linksys, TRENDnet, NetGear, SMC, D-Link, SonicWALL, WatchGuard, HP ProCurve, Dell, ZyXEL, Intel, Sun, Belkin, 3Com and many other Gigabit network products!

I’m still feeling horrible after the accident on Friday so I am at home. Better to hurt at home than to go in to work and not get anything done, be more uncomfortable, feel more depressed and make everyone at the office as sick of hearing me whine about it as my family and even myself…  It hurts to type, so you get an embedded video today for your visit. Stay tuned because I am going to be listing the rules of our free camera give away as soon as I feel better, we have the new Flip Mino HD in our posession and we are ready to give it to some lucky person!

New Computer Wireless Network Technology to Drool Over

An article posted today on Wired got me all excited (Yes, I am that kind of geek)! They discuss the future of wireless networking and how the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) has announced that 60Ghz multi-gigabit wireless technology is now available to member companies to start turning out products that use the new high-speed standard.

Yes, you didn’t read that wrong and I didn’t make a typo…  multi-gigabit wireless! The article discusses this in more detail, so I will refer you to it to pull the details out, but imagine if you will, the ability to have a wireless LAN at more than 10 times the speed of current 802.11n Wi-Fi, or Wireless N rate. Heck, most offices do not even have gigabit switches in them, and my own home doesn’t.

That still means our bottleneck is the internet connection to our home, but a gigabit wireless, combined with say, Google Fiber Internet at gigabit speed is going to be amazing when it gets here! Of course, Google will bring that technology to Greenville SC first, so you better plan to move to the Upstate to fulfill your need for speed! =)

It seems like forever since the Google On Main event that made national and even international news. It didn’t stop with the amazing night of 2200+ people gathered at Falls Park in downtown Greenville SC with LED lightsticks, spelling out “Google” while aircraft flew overhead taking photos and video. Far from it.

Greenville has continued to make their desire for Google’s High Speed Fiber deployment known, through a Facebook fan page, untold numbers of blog postings and websites, face-to-face meetings, the official Greenville We Are Feeling Lucky website http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com and by voting in the questionable http://www.googlefiber.com/ voting page.

Well the UNOFFICIAL Google Fiber vote that was supposed to last until May 6th has now been extended another month, where there will be a death-match between the most popular cities I imagine. More information about that is available here: http://www.googlefiber.com/voting-challenge-round-2-begins-may-7/

The GoogleFiber.com site is very sketchy… The owner is from India apparently, and of course it IS an unofficial vote, and there has been cheating on the parts of individuals, as well as the exclusion of many people who wanted to vote while at work (They made it where you could not vote multiple times from the same IP, such as a corporate network uses)…

My two cents on this is – keep on voting, keep on supporting Greenville in any way you can. Also, post to Twitter with the tags of #LuckyGVL and #GoogleOnMain ANYTIME you have something positive to say about Greenville and technology.  Who knows, maybe we can catch the eye of Google and they too will decide that Greenville is the best place they could pick to deploy that tasty 1 Gbps high speed fiber network!

I have started a Race for the Cure team called G(o)(o)gle on Main, and invite you to join us in a 5k walk/run/race for the Cure! You can even join our team and SLEEP IN FOR THE CURE!!!!   If you cannot participate in the team, please make a contribution, even 5 or 10 dollars would be awesome. We are going to try to raise 5000 dollars.   That’s 1000 dollars a kilometer!

Google Apps offers in-the-cloud alternative to Microsoft Office products and BPOS

A major buzz word for 2009/2010 has been “cloud computing”, where your applications and servers are not actually hosted locally, but instead “in the cloud”, on a remote server or servers. Thus eliminating the need for you to purchase an expensive Microsoft Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, all the licensing, then the Microsoft Office applications for each of your users, not to mention the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading all this. Instead, you sort of rent the usage of this technology from an in-the-cloud vendor.

Let me go ahead and get the buzz words out of the way so the uninitiated will stop hating me.

In-The-Cloud, or “The Cloud” – Just think of the cloud as the internet. Something that is out there, elsewhere. Not local.  It would be “in the cloud”.

Cloud Computing, Hosted Solution, Software As A Service, SaaS – These are all the exact same thing, or variations on a theme. It means, the hardware and software is not all hosted locally at your site. Some or all of it is hosted at remote sites and accessible via the internet. Sometimes with a simple browser, and sometimes with a download of an applet or software package to access it. The largest part of the computing power and storage requirements takes place outside your facility.

Google Apps – A suite of software and services that is hosted in the cloud. These applications could potentially replace a Microsoft Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office, and the need to maintain and upgrade all that. What you get: Gmail, a mostly web based mail application similar to Microsoft Outlook. Google Calendar, a calendaring system similar to what Outlook offers. Google Docs, which is similar to everything the rest of the Microsoft Office suite offers, including document editing via a word processor, spreadsheets similar to Excel,  drawings and presentations similar to Microsoft Powerpoint.  You also get Google Groups, which is a group sharing system with mailing lists, and Google Sites, a web hosting/authoring package, and last but not least, Google Video, a place to host your video.

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite – This is the direct competitor of Google Apps, and offers the familiar Microsoft look and feel. With this you get a familiar Microsoft Office and Outlook interface.

These are both great solutions for some businesses. And as the headline reads, The City of Los Angeles ditched GroupWise, a very expensive system to go with Google Apps. Could this be the right solution for your business? A free consultation with us might just answer that question. Please call us today at 864-990-4748. We will closely analyze your needs and tell you if either of these options will work for your application.

Homeland Secure IT, LLC is a reseller of both Google Apps and Microsoft BPOS, as well as other hosted solutions, such as Servosity online backup to backup your computers and servers automatically!  We offer service to Greenville, the Upstate of SC, and national sales.