Save on Power Bills with Standby Mode

At Exoid, another "life hacking" site, there is a summary of how to enable stand-by mode on your PC. There are instructions for both workstations and servers.

Technology Transfer: From University to the Marketplace

The State Science and Technology Institute is a source of white papers and resources for background material about technology transfer. I'm about mid-way through their Resource Guide for Technology-based Economic Development. They also have a searchable database for whitepapers and guides. You can search by keyword and country or state.

The Small Business Innovation and Research program (SBIR) has been effective for Microdesign as well as our state's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program. Together these two programs provide funding in "phases":

Phase 0 - EPSCoR - $10,000
Phase I - SBIR - $100,000
Phase II - SBIR - $750,000

Each phase depends on help from the previous phase, and the assumption is that each combination of phases 0-3 consists of a single technology product or service, probably funded by a single federal agency.

Much of the SSTI discussion is about synergies between research universities, a skilled workforce, availability of venture capital, and an attractive working environment. Think Silicon Valley, Boston's Route 128 and the Research Triangle of Raleigh-Durham. Can this be replicated on a smaller scale in other places? Think Burlington Vermont, Portland, Maine, and Albany New York.

Tech Friday: Creating a Virtual Private Network

Over at Lifehacker, there is an excellent summary of ten networking tools to use on your home network. Several have been discussed here, but the updates are useful. One of more interesting is: Geek to Live: Create your own virtual private network with Hamachi

AT&T Excelerator Grants

For non-profits within the AT&T service area (and the former Bell South), AT&T has annouced their 2007 Excelerator Grant program. According to the announcement, most of these are funded at the $5000 level. This year the program will distribute 9 million dollars to "help local nonprofit organizations integrate technology into their operations and community outreach."



Deadline is May 4, 2007

American Power Conversion Support - Not

Same old story.

I've purchased thousands of dollars worth of APC uninterruptible power supplies over the years, I really like them, and consider this to be a default brand.

But two-three years after purchasing one, you need to consider replacing the batteries. The consequences of not replacing the battery smell bad; when the battery cells break down, circuits get shorted out, and you get a burning smell.

So...latest and greatest is one we purchased three years ago from Dell. Turns out it is an APC 2U rack mount Smart UPS, with a Dell part number. The "replace battery" light has gone on. After some investigation, the online manuals suggest that this happens two months or so before the battery needs to be replaced.

My first attempt to order a replacment from PC Connection fails. I got the 1400 VA size correct, but a 2U UPS has skinny little batteries that lie on their side, and they are actually enclosed in a sort of drawer that slides out of the UPS.

Like the good citizen I am, I attempt to use APC's web-based tools to determine the correct part number and item. (When you are ordering batteries to be shipped, the cost adds up.) How is the the customer experience screwed up? Let me count the ways.

1. Even though this is a recent unit, the model number does not appear on the web site.
2. Even though the model number starts with DL (for Dell...get it?) the model number does not appear, although there are several other similar part numbers.
3. If you try to send an eMail, through the form, the eMail form bombs
4. If you try to to the "online chat"...the chat doesn't work (nobody is at home...even during both normal business hours eastern time, as well as evening hours and weekends eastern time.
5. After you try the chat, and it says nobody is available to chat, the third time finally allowed me to send an eMail.
6. To India. The kind person was sorry, but he wasn't able to answer my question, but he would send this to his supervisor.
7. Who didn't exist, or didn't write back, or whatever... (I waited a week).

The story does have a happy end, and a suggestion.
Avoid steps 1-8 ENTIRELY. Just call the battery replacement hotline at 1(800)300-7141. Within five minutes, a cheerful, competant person will tell you that the thing you are looking fir is called an RBC-24. with a suggested retail price of $259.95 (Although it did take a few minutes because he said "the system is slow today".) Bingo.

The USDA Telecommunications Grant Program

USDA Telecommunications Program



The USDA Rural Development telemedicine grants have been issued according to a news release. These are for telemedicine and distance learning grants. Application deadline is June 8, 2007.

PCL XL Error on LaserJet 4020 and others

Found several entries about this error, which always seems to crop up when I'm under deadline. I think I'll try seeing if there is an updated driver first.

The quick and dirty way solution to this problem is to print the docuement to a PDF file first using Adobe Acrobat. Then print a hard copy from the Acrobat file.

Computing.Net - PCL XL error

Fabbing at Home with Fab@Home

First there was Asterisk, which allowed you to create your own home or office telephone system. Now there is Fab@Home, a 3-D printer that allows you to fabricate parts that you have designed in a 3-D CAD program. Their home page has news about the project, as well as movies and photos.

Monthly Introduction April 2007

Welcome to Tech for Non-Profits, the unplugged version of Microdesign Consulting. Part lab-notebook, part brain-extension, it is a repository for new and half-baked ideas that we run across as we provide software and database development, network support, and R&D for a growing list of clients in education, health care and non-profit organizations.

Regular features include Tech Friday, which may include code(!), our (mostly) annotated VoIP resource guide, Stuff That Works for hardware and software items that have passed the Five Minute Test, and Chron This Week, which is synopsis of technology articles of interest in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Topics on grantwritng and fundraising appear as we seem to have one or more grant application in progress most of the time.

Comments and suggestions are welcome. They are moderated, so will show up shortly after you add them.

Excel Dashboards

I was wondering if Charlie Kyd had fallen off my radar somehow, but just received his latest Excel for Business Newsletter full of ideas for using Excel as a financial mangement tool. Of interest this time is a link to another article he wrote in BPM Magazine, about using Excel to generate reports and dashboards from OLAP cubes. What's an OLAP cube?

OLAP is the name for a type of database technology that stores information in cubes, rather than in lists. A company might keep its general ledger accounting data in a simple OLAP cube that includes three dimensions: account, division, and month. At the intersection of any particular account, division, and month you would find one number. Most cubes have more than three dimensions, and they typically contain a wide variety of business data, not merely G/L data. Users with access to an OLAP cube of corporate information can define any consolidation hierarchy for the cube's dimensions. For example, in the "month" dimension, every month could roll up into quarters, which could roll up into years. Or months could roll up into year-to-date numbers. The individual data points (the cube's "leaf members") and the consolidated numbers would be equivalent sources of data. So users generating a report could choose data from a leaf member like Mar-2007 just as easily as they could choose from a consolidated member like Mar-2007-YTD.

The newsletter is great stuff, not least because anyone who has Microsoft Office has Excel.

How the Public Library Became the Heartbreak Hotel

Libraries as social service agencies.
Found at TomDispatch.com
Excerpt:

The belief that we are responsible for each other's social, economic, and political well-being, that we will care for our weakest members compassionately, should be the keystone in the moral architecture of a democratic culture. We will not stand by while our fellow citizens are deprived of their fellowship and citizenship -- which is why we ended racial segregation and practices like poll taxes that kept disenfranchised Americans powerless. We will not let children starve. We do not consign orphans to the streets like they do in Brazil or let children be sold into prostitution as they do in Thailand. We are proud of our struggles to meet people's basic needs and to encourage inclusion. Why, then, are the mentally ill still such an exception to those fundamental standards?

America is proud of its hyper-individualism, our liberation from the bonds of tribe and the social constraints of traditional societies. We glorify the accomplishments of inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, pioneers, and artists. But while some individuals thrive and the cutting edge of our technology is wondrous, the plight of the chronically homeless tells me that our communities are also fragmented and disintegrating. We may have gained the world and lost each other.