1. managing your technology environment
northeast cluster
fielding graduate university
march 17, 2007
carol thomas and glen gatin

2. three environments your desktop environment
your personal web environment
your collaborative environment

3. desktop environment issues system capacity performance security space
general management
recovery disks
backup of software
performance:
vary by operating system… I’m going to talk primarily about Windows based machines today, but certainly if you use a Mac you want to know the equivalent there
these are the issues I usually hear about… are there others?
system capacity (how do I know what’s on my system?)

4. tools to manage know your system safe computing practice 101
belarc advisor (belarc.com)
safe computing practice 101
windows updates
anti-virus protection
anti-spyware
backup, backup, backup
know your vendor

5. things to do clear your cache clear your history
uninstall programs you no longer use
backup old files
defrag your disk
manage your system tray
know your startup
analysis
bad things always seem to happen at the worst possible time, so make sure that you attend to these tasks on a regular basis… I set aside time about once a month to run analytics on all of my systems… running the analytics takes NO time from me as long as I start it up

6. your personal web environment
browser
IE, Firefox,
portal page
google, yahoo, aol
integrate , calendar, todo lists (PIM)
blog
wordpress, blogger/google
audio/video blogging (hipcast)
web based storage
x-drive
productivity tools
google docs etc
zoho
our environments are ours alone… what works for me will not necessarily work for you…
the best way to work with these is to just work with them… everything is customizable to you… that’s why it’s personal!
one question I get frequently… how do you know what to use?
well… I look around, I read the various blogs and forums, I look for recommendations and I trust that others who have gone before me have thought about what works and doesn’t work. if I’m early in the adoption cycle for a product (ie Twitter, Carmun and Zoho) I recognize that I might be making a decision that I will back out of. Over time things evolve and we need to evolve with them… so I’m always thinking about how I’ll be able to carry work forward with me. The best example I can give is my evolution in ISPs… started with CompuServe, went to AOL, then EarthLink… all carried an system with me… I didn’t move the with me as it wasn’t anything I needed permanently… decided to try web-based systems, started with Yahoo, left that for an early EarthLink service, then moved everything to desktop based Thunderbird (because I had so many accounts to manage – work, teaching at five different schools, personal, etc. Thunderbird is tied to a desktop… didn’t want that, so went to GMAIL. GMAIL is my primary tool. I have two active accounts: one that is for school and one through all of my other funnels (I have about a dozen accounts I manage through that site). GMail does the management for me. How did I figure it out? I read the GMail blog… looked at what others were doing and then customized that to make it work for me. Took me a few weeks to get it right, but it works GREAT. And, because I travel a lot I needed both GMAIL and Google Calendar to sync to my PDA. That works great too… I had to buy one add on product to make it work, but I’ll show you my calendar and you’ll get to see why it’s so important to me to be able to do this.
But… it isn’t about me… it’s about personalizing and my experience is just that… mine. Yours will be different.

7. collaborative web environment social networking
rss feeds (geek speak)
making and keeping relevant connections
del.icio.us
resource sharing
skype
conversation sharing
application sharing