In his brilliant book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes the tremendous impact that the Pepsi Challenge had on the soft drink industry in the 1980′s (see pp. 155-159). Pepsi was trailing way behind Coke in market share, but it looked like there might be a sea change. Pepsi began running ads featuring the Pepsi Challenge. The [...]

I was fully prepared to wait an hour or more in line, and even to return on another day if necessary, to get an iPhone. The timing was right. My wife’s phone had just died and it was out of warranty. We were at the end of our contract with Verizon Wireless, and we were [...]

It’s harder than you’d think to produce a list of all the e-mail addresses that are on your Exchange server. I found a Visual Basic script that will produce such a list. A sample entry for a single user looks like this: cn: David Schragmail: david@schrag.netProxy Addressessmtp:David@schrag.localsmtp:dschrag@schrag.netSMTP:david@schrag.netsmtp:dave@schrag.net (I really should have replaced the @ symbol [...]

Microsoft Response Point was announced sixteen months ago. Today — maybe! — it’s worth checking out. As I noted last November, the initial release of Response Point had a very 1.0 feel to it and was lacking many features already present in competing phone systems. Just this week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft announced [...]

I had to create a support ticket at Dreamhost. I like their style. Here are a couple of the questions they ask, along with the options available in the pop-down menu: I’m not sure how well these responses work for people whose first language is not English, but I definitely appreciated the effort.

Microsoft really, really wants small businesses to start buying Vista instead of XP. For the next three months, they’re offering “Windows Vista Small Business Assurance,” which gives free support and “one-on-one coaching” from “specially-trained support agents.” Support is available 10 AM to 7 PM Pacific time, or 1 PM to 10 PM Eastern. (In case [...]

Great public radio interview this week with Felix Dennis. Some choice quotes: One of the sacrifices that anybody makes who is determined to have more money than their neighbor is time…. And it’s not only them that’s doing the sacrificing…. Your spouse is going to sacrifice, your children are going to sacrifice, and so are [...]

I narrowly averted a serious problem on a client’s server today. I got an alert from the server that the C: drive was down to about 50 MB of free space (and falling). That’s very bad. It turned out that the problem was caused by an expanding log file created by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. [...]

Microsoft’s Kevin Beares and I have been engaged in a squabble about the SBS Community Survey. (See his blog entry and all the associated links and comments.) Kevin asked me to stop debating the survey’s methodological merits, which I will happily do at this point. He also posed the following questions: How about telling me [...]

A few other solo IT consultants have asked me how I get my clients; that is, what marketing strategies work best for me. Currently, 100% of my new business is generated through referrals. Referral sources include current and former clients, other IT consultants, friends, and people I’ve met through professional networking. My business has matured [...]