Tony Bevilacqua

Yahoo reports that Microsoft will stop making HD DVD players for its XBOX 360 video game system after Toshiba Corp. ceded the HD video format battle to Sony Corp.’s Blu-ray.

Microsoft was one of HD DVD’s main backers, along with Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp., and its support for the format was seen as a big win for Toshiba’s format.But support for the HD DVD waned as major movie studios — Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co., News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. Entertainment — picked Blu-ray to distribute high-def DVDs. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. struck what seemed to be the final blow just over a week ago when it said it would only sell Blu-ray players and discs.

Read the entire story, and the continued demise of the HD DVD format. Do you have your blu-ray player yet?

OpenAds have re-branded (Again) over to OpenX. Recently OpenX has received significant investment, and it seems that this has helped this latest move towards another rebranding of their organization.

OpenX has been through its fair share of identities, phpAds… phpAdsNew… Max Media… OpenAds… the list goes on. What’s in the future? OpenX will begin to offer a hosted service and continue quickly evolving their ad serving suite.

SpawnPoint and PHXX have been active users of phpAds, phpAdsNew, and OpenAds over the years, serving millions of ad impressions through this open-source software. I am quite excited to see the evolution of their software, and this “hosted service” that is on the way.

Word of advice to the OpenX team, add the ability to “Forecast” ad serving over periods of time; this is an essential tool for ad sales team looking for information and delivery expectations for clients. This missing feature causes quite a few issues with our group. This feature is offered by DoubleClick (DART).

This morning I spent some time trying to figure out how to hack the Entourage 2008 signature editor… didn’t work out so well. I was hoping that somewhere I could find the raw HTML files that are created by the signature editor in Entourage… nope.

I have searched around the net a bit, and from what I have read, their “HTML Support” is limited to changing the colors, size, and adding an image. They don’t allow you to externally insert any sort of HTML code, HTML code that is entered goes it as text and doesn’t render. Entourage 2008 apparently storages the signature source within your Mail Datastore, Great.

What does this mean? No HTML code, no external images, no links on text, or on images! I did however, find a work around to get a link into your signature.

How to Add a Link to Your HTML Signature in Entourage 2008

1) Send an email with your prefered signature in HTML from another computer to yourself.
2) Copy it from inside Entourage 2008, and paste it into the Signature Editor.
3) Done.

Yep, pretty sad work around, but it’s the only way that I could find to pull it off. Pasting from Safari, or even Microsoft Word failed. For now, I’ll be forced to leave out an external image from the Entourage signature.

I thought that I might as well put up my certifications as they are today, for those of you that may be interested. I have a diverse set of certifications that I want to get done in the future, and hopefully expand into some higher level Project Management (PMP) and IT Project Management (ITIL).

My Certifications:

CompTIA A+
CompTIA Server+
CompTIA Network+
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Vista Configuration
HP Certified Professional
IBM Certified Warranty Technician
oh… and Certified in Standard First Aid and CPR-C!

Certifications that are in Progress:

Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Security
CompTIA Security+
CheckPoint CCSA

In the past week, I have been reminded by the dire importance of not putting all your IT Assets and Infrastructure into a single basket. When IT supplies the front end to your business, your identity and your infrastructure for your business model to be even possible, it is important that keep this area of your business under control.

Information Technology is more that just keeping your computer up and running, so you can check your email and print documents. In many cases, IT Infrastructure dominates the entire model of a business - processing transactions, providing information and attracting new clients. It can’t be shoveled aside and only dealt with only when business stoppage occurs.

IT needs to be kept healthy, it needs love, it needs redundancy, it needs to be maintained. Although you may have your bases covered with data backups, disaster recovery, and redundancy… what about continuity in the case of a loss of resource? What happens when you lose critical IT staff? Is your business ready to manage and move forward?