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….
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!
Help us run breast cancer out of town!
We saw where another local IT company, Plus Inc., has a number of their employees involved in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure that will take place in September and thought that was a great idea! In fact, two of us here donated to their goal… See, my wife’s mother is a 15 year breast cancer survivor, so this is near and dear to her heart and we couldn’t stop with just a contribution…
So we started a team for our company, and then it hit me, I was not thinking broad enough. We need to harness the power of a great event that took place a few weeks ago called “Google On Main”, and try to get the 2200+ people involved with that to join this awesome cause, so we have renamed our team from “Homeland Secure IT” to “G(o)(o)gle On Main” and have started telling people about it. Our goal is to raise 5000 dollars, which should be easy, right?
Why not join our team and participate in the walk/run/race? We would love to have the company and the inspiration for us to drag or fat bottoms 5k for this cause!
Okay, so you are lazy, you can actually “Sleep in for the Cure”… That’s right, you can contribute and select “Sleep in for the Cure” and while you sleep, your hard earned money is doing something useful!
The site to signup or support the Race for the Cure is:
More information about Google On Main is at http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com and you can follow #GoogleOnMain and #LuckyGVL on Twitter too.
Anyone interested in collaborative efforts should go check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/a_choir_as_big_as_the_internet.html
What you will find a collabrative effort on the behalf of 185 people in 12 countries, who participated in a “virtual choir”, sending in clips (245 I believe in total!) to be arranged into one piece that is beautifully done! Overcoming the noise issue of the various submitted clips would be challenging all by itself, then mixing the audio to the desired levels, and do the video editing on top of this would be so time consuming that I would never be able to do any actual work to pay the bills.
I believe this has to be one of the best collaborative efforts that I have seen on the internet in regards to music.
It also underscores the importance of bandwidth in music / video… 185 people sending one person a ton of clips would consume great gobs of bandwidth, especially if the submitters were sending high quality audio and/or video. Here in Greenville, SC, we are trying to catch the eye of Google, who is going to pick one city in America to use as a testbed for their unbelievably fast Google High Speed Fiber. In fact, it is so fast that it exceeds the speed that most home and business LANs operate right now. That’s right, the data that moves from your work computer to your business server is probably moving slower than the 1 Gigabit Per Second fiber connection would bring internet to you!
Imagine a group of musicians in the same town, performing their parts for a track from their home, while it is being recorded in a master studio for mix down, in real-time! The latency would be overcome with time correction. Everyone would hear the same click-track…. Any issues, corrected in post. Individual parts punched in from remote too. This gets me excited!!! THAT is why I am so adamant about the #GoogleOnMain / #LuckyGVL movement! http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com for more info!
Of course there are bazillion business collaboration advantages to high speed internet as well, but I won’t get into those now…. It is the weekend for a few more hours – enjoy it!
Please Vote for Google to Bring High Speed Fiber Internet to Greenville SC – #LuckyGVL #GoogleOnMain
I bet you wish I would just shut up about this Google High Speed Fiber Connectivity thing don’t you? Well I refuse!
Please take a moment to vote for Greenville, SC in this poll:
Again, even if you are NOT in Greenville, but live in the Upstate, or maybe another town in our region, the entire area would benefit from a deployment of Google Fiber! Take 2 seconds and select Greenville, SC… GoogleOnMain / Google On Main / LuckyGVL / We Are Feeling Lucky is only getting started!
Greenville is Feeling Lucky for Google Fiber
You would have to be living under a rock to still be in the dark about Google On Main / LuckyGVL (Just Google for #GoogleOnMain, #LuckyGVL, We Are Feeling Lucky, Greenville Google Fiber, etc). You probably already know that a couple thousand people in Greenville SC heard from various means, such as Twitter, Facebook, email, txt message or analog social networking like a phone call or a face-to-face meeting (people still do that?) that Greenvillians were being organized to meet at Falls Park on a beautiful Saturday night, wearing dark clothing, and that they would be taking part in something historic.
And historic it was! It has made local, regional, national and international news! Aaron Von Frank should be quite proud of himself and his band of merry men who orchestrated the endevour which involved so many people pouring into the downtown area, spelling out “Google” and having a great time!
Time Magazine has an article about Greenville’s GoogleOnMain this week, which has gotten even more people excited. Earlier in the week (over a week after the big event), people were meeting at another “Celebration” where the volunteers, sponsors and organizers were thanked and they discused how to harness this energy and take it to the next level.
There’s no end in site for Greenville’s Google On Main! I believe we are just getting started! Check out www.wearefeelinglucky.com for more information!
Here’s my daughter Megan in a video clip from the other day… She believes Google Fiber would help the education system in Greenville!
