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ZENworks Server Management

by | Nov 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized, ZENworks

Wow. There has been a flurry of activity with ZENworks Server Management in the last month or so.

Martin Irwin in WorldWide Support built a set of CPKs to deploy ZENworks 6.5 SP2 across your infrastructure; he is now working on delivering this with the standalone CPK engine (think of this as a small part of the ZENworks Server Management subscriber agent) to all customers. That is way cool.

Peter Lambrechtsen in New Zealand has almost finalised a CPK (hopefully soon with the standalone engine) that will let you deploy ZENworks 7 in your network.

All very cool – and showing real savings for customers deploying ZENworks in an enterprise.

Centralised deployment, across hundreds of servers – in hours. Now that’s value.

More free and kinda-free wireless

by | Nov 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, travel, Uncategorized

McCarran Airport in Las Vegas has fast free wifi.

The JW Marriott Resort in Las Vegas has a voucher-based wifi implementation – but it only blocks ports 8 (http/https) – not anything else. So if you don’t mind not having web browsing you can – hypothetically – do email (GW, POP, IMAP, SMTP), other stuff (SSH, RDP) and also things like IM. Oh well.

Zappos – a web site that works

by | Nov 1, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

I’ve been using Zappos for a while – it’s a great example of how a web-based service can and should work.

Here are my positive pieces:

  • if you know what you want – it’s really easy to find and buy a pair of shoes. Look at real shoes in a real shop; buy online. (Oh how traditional stores must hate that)
  • if you want to look for something new – it’s nice and clean navigation to find what you want to compare. The images of the shoes look clear and realistic. That’s good.
  • great shipping policy. Free shipping – I’m often ‘upgraded’ to 2 day priority at no cost. That’s just splendid.
  • excellent returns policy. Print out the return label online; put it on the box; arrange pickup. No cost, no hassle. Compare this to other online stores (urg – Swatch are awful for this) where they issue an RMA then make you ship the product back. Or they ship you a return document. It’s all time and hassle.
  • feedback on purchases. Just like any other successful site you can comment on the goods purchased (shoes – how much can you say about a pair?) and on the service itself.
  • purchase history. I liked those shoes so much I’ll buy some more. Or you can view what you did purchase and look for similar things.

Overall Zappos is pretty splendid.