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The Article…

Alan Cohen, VP of Marketing for Nicira, a disruptive startup focusing on altering the IT networking landscape, recently wrote a guest post for TechCrunch suggesting that an “Arab Spring” of sorts is occurring within IT. Reader comments have indicated a significant distaste for the analogous use of Arab Spring in comparison to IT – the one involving the loss of human lives, the other changes in business structure and Mr. Cohen has apologized for the offense some feel at the branding. I don’t think it was the best title for the post – but there has already been rampant discussion of that fact – and I would like to focus more on the content of Mr. Cohen’s post.

Cohen suggests we are seeing a seismic shift in the IT sector – similar to that which occurred in the 1970′s with the advent of the personal computer. He notes early innovators like the iPhone (antecedent to smartphones), VMWare (virtualization), and Salesforce (SaaS). While I agree with his historical evaluation of the situation and also that a seismic shift is occurring within the IT sector – I do not share his optimism about the nature of this change.

Cohen states, “If IT providers do not supply what the end users want, the latter, like
the brave individuals who took the streets of Cairo, Tunis, and Tripoli,
will take matters into their own hands.” He deems this “shadow IT:” “Bring your own device is shadow IT. Most SaaS applications start by
bypassing IT and going directly to functional groups (managing sales
through Salesforce or sharing through Box.net).”

Now, working outside the box with one’s own devices/services concerns me enough (e.g. smartphones, file sharing), but Cohen then suggests that it is time for revolutionary employees to step things up a notch – implementing their own infrastructure: “If IT does not provide the end user with the infrastructure they need,
the latter can rent it, by the hour or month from companies like
Rackspace or Amazon. All you need is a credit card and no approval from
IT.”

Cohen concludes by challenging those within the IT industry, “But if you are in IT, you have to ask yourself: What side of history will you wind up on?”

Problems with the Article…

I do work in IT. I’ve been a geek practically since I was born and have worked full-time in the industry for the past six years. But this isn’t about my IT credentials…and it shouldn’t be about defending IT as IT. Truth is we have our weaknesses. Many of us who work in IT are a bit antisocial, introverted, ADD, OCD, or (append acronyms here). We aren’t always the most flexible folks to work with and there is certainly room for growth in our lives and skills…That said, I do think there are some serious problems with the sort of revolution Cohen is endorsing here…and I think his IT guys probably grimaced reading this article as I much as I am now.

Lets talk for a few minutes about the dangers inherent in this sort of “revolution:”

Reduced Productivity – While using a device familiar to the end user may be a pleasure and expedite that individual’s productivity, it may result in a decrease to organizational productivity. For example, if one finds an Apple iPhone easier to utilize than the company provided Android or Blackberry devices (or whatever might be the standard) it is very likely that generally you will not require IT support in utilizing your phone…but then there come those times when you do…

• When the device craps out and refuses to boot.
• When you can’t get the company email/calendaring software to sync with your phone.
• When someone steals your phone and you really, really need to have that sensitive business data remote wiped.
• When you sell your phone on eBay and someone pulls sensitive data off the storage because deleting data isn’t enough.

At these times stress goes up and productivity goes down – for you and for the IT department. In time that could have been spent deploying five new computer systems only one thing is now accomplished – getting a non-standard piece of hardware working again (or wiped or whatever).

Reduced Security – There is significant danger in the use of non-standard equipment and services for achieving business goals. It is hard enough for IT to maintain complex password requirements on the variety of internal systems any organization utilizes, let alone managing password requirements on non-standard devices. This is especially true of file sharing services. A handy example would be the recent takedown of MegaUpload. While largely used for illegal purposes, numerous individuals used that site for personal or business purposes – to manage their files. It seemed “safe” – and now it isn’t. Doesn’t matter how hard your IT department tries – if you put your files on a system that is raided by the feds, say goodbye to that data – even if it is important financial info. for the management of your institution.

Reduced Effectiveness – Cohen greatly oversimplifies the simplicity of the services currently available to perform complex functions. Amazon, Rackspace, nor even Salesforce are “insert your credit card get your DVD rental” simple services. For the last few days I’ve been spending a decent number of hours pouring over books and documentation on Salesforce – and it isn’t a piece of cake. Do you want to set up Users? Roles? Profiles? Groups of Settings? Are you sure that the way you setup the permission inheritance will prevent Sally Jane from seeing everyone else’s social security numbers? Do you want to use Salesforce? Force? Heroku?

Valid Pain Points…

I understand there are real pain points for end users in organizations. Not being able to share files in a simple and efficient manner is frustrating. Using outdated and clumsy software to manage customer relationships is frustrating. Learning new technologies and devices outside your comfort zone is time consuming. These are real issues and IT needs to pay better attention to them…but…and this is a big BUT…looping around IT will not decrease but instead increase these pain points.

Sure, you might be able to happily use an iPhone even though IT says no and never have a single problem…but then again…and as the complexity of the device/service increases the issues exponentially increase.

Finding a Road Forward…

Now the real question is, what is a workable way forward? How can end users and IT cooperate to achieve optimal effectiveness, productivity, and security? Well, it isn’t an easy or short road…but then again, real revolutions never are. I’d suggest that the consumerization of IT is a short-term bandaid fix for the real needed change. Too often we take the easy way out rather than working through the difficult decisions that really need to be made.

• Communication - IT needs to get better at communicating what they are doing in their little forests of IT solitude and why we aren’t really just sitting around playing video games and watching youtube. On the other hand, we need end users to get better to actually listening to IT. So frequently folks ask me, “How did you do that?” But they usually don’t want me to tell them…b/c as soon as I open my mouth their eyes glaze over and their fingers drum impatiently on the desk. Now, I know I’m using some technical terms – but I’m willing to explain them if you are willing to ask questions and listen. Maybe with time you’ll learn more about the tech terms I use and I’ll get better at describing technology in clearer terms.
• Prioritization – One of the biggest challenges facing everyone everywhere is the constant call to do more simultaneously and faster. Oftentimes the issue for IT is not lack of desire to improve a given service to the end user, but lack of time. This means the organization as a whole and its individual departments need to determine what projects are most important – and what projects (in spite of being so important) are less important.
• Consideration – IT needs to consider not only what is the best technology but also what will have the greatest net positive effect for end users. Meanwhile, I’d recommend instead of bringing in new devices and services to circumvent IT folks ask IT, “what can I do to have the greatest net positive effect for you?” By focusing on those areas you reduce time IT has to spend in them and free IT to focus up on working on those devices and systems you really want.
• Forgiveness – We can all be nasty at times…and if you haven’t personally been nasty to someone, I guarantee someone else in your department has. A lot of us walk around with a heavy bundle of war wounds. You walk into an IT person’s office (or vice versa, into an end user’s office) and a single word, your position, or what happened earlier today may cause that person to dive underneath their desk as if someone just shouted that mortars were incoming. Getting along means letting bygones be bygones and when new items come up, dealing with grace and humility – for both sides.

What do you think? What is your experience working with IT folks? Or working with end users? Is consumerization of IT really the way forward? If not, what is the alternative?

Image via CrunchBase

• If you don’t use credit you won’t have a credit score, which means you won’t be able to get credit when you need it.
• If you use credit but go through a tough patch or for whatever reason get some dings on your credit you’ll experience skyrocketing interest rates and a rampant tightening of available credit.
• If someone happens to steal your credit card – physically or virtually – you may not know until significant funds have been expended.

For a long time it was very difficult to even know what your credit score was…sure you could send away for one in the mail, but it cost money. Only in recent years did government regulations require the credit agencies to provide consumers with a copy of their credit report for free annually (if they requested it).

Thankfully, as in so many other industries, a technology company has managed to turn the established industry on its head overnight…Yes, I’m talking about CreditKarma.

CreditKarma is a nifty little site I’ve been using since whenever they came out – ohh, might have been a year or two or three ago. I joined b/c they offered free credit scores. Now granted, this is a little different from a credit report. This tells you what your credit score is (numeric) but not all the nitty gritty on whom your lenders are, how much you owe them, and so on….but for most purposes this is plentiful and unlike Quizzle (owned by Intuit/Quicken) you can refresh your score as often as you want for free.

Now they have made available free credit monitoring. Used to be you had to pay between $5-$20/mo. to get credit monitoring to make sure someone wasn’t stealing your identity or that false charges weren’t being added to your report. Now CreditKarma has made it free.

CreditKarma has a bunch of other nifty features…but instead of me describing them all why not just go sign up and try it out for yourself? Its 100% free and it takes less than five minutes from start to “hey, that is my credit score and I’m getting free credit monitoring.”

Related articles

• The end of paid credit report monitoring? (finance.fortune.cnn.com)
• Keep Up with Changes to your Credit Report with Credit Karma (beast4romtheeast.wordpress.com)
• Credit Karma Launches Free Credit Monitoring, Enrolls 100,000 Users In A Day (techcrunch.com)
• Credit-Watching Consumers Tap Phones to Check Scores for Free (businessweek.com)
• Fixing Your Credit is Doable. (isellerfinance.wordpress.com)

As you can see there are a large number of options – and this is just a partial list. Lets take a closer look at a few of the best candidates:

• Quick Adsense – This plugin has over 200,000 downloads and a 4 Star average review rating from sixty-nine reviews. It offers straightforward customization of where ads will be placed on a page but also requires you to generate individual code bits from Adsense for each slot.
• Adsense Manager – While downloaded over 330,000 times it only has an average review of 3 Stars from ninety-six reviews. It doesn’t appear to be under ongoing development – althought the author did release an update to enable the plugin to work with the latest version of WordPress.
• Ad Injection – The third most frequently downloaded adsense plugin with 95,000+ downloads and holding 4 Stars with thirty-four reviews. Appears powerful with a lot of customization options, but also a fairly intuitive user interface.
• This is the plugin that is my most preferred at the moment.

Related articles

• WordPress Announces WordAds To Compete With Google AdSense [News] (makeuseof.com)
• Add Google AdSense Ads to Your WordPress Blog (hackingworlds.wordpress.com)

1. ^[1] I think. If I missed one, let me know. ↩
2. ^[2] See also Ad Codes widget. ↩

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Introduction:

I’ve been following the Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) news for quite some time now – and am fascinated by it. I also followed the news on the bailout and so on. I have felt entirely incapable of commenting on it for lack of knowledge – even though I have followed it much more closely than many others. I’m trying to rectify that a bit. Here I’ve attempted to outline some of the major points of the current unrest and provide links to various resources on the topic that were helpful to me.

I found most of these articles relating to #OWS via StumbleUpon. Interestingly, the articles that have floated to the top of StumbleUpon appear to be overwhelmingly pro-#OWS. It’d be cool if StumbleUpon released some statistics on how folks are rating #OWS related sites in aggregate, and based upon perspective. I’m wondering if the StumbleUpon user base is more pro-OWS than the general population?

The Apparent Issues:

• Income for the majority of individuals has plateaued or is declining, while income is significantly increasing for the wealthy.
• Attempts to lessen the deficit are being proposed or made in what many consider core services – e.g. education, research, infrastructure, and social services.
• The financial rewards from focusing in non-innovative sectors (such as finance) are significantly greater than those in “more beneficial” sectors such as technology, science, and education.
• The financial industry’s reception of a tremendous sum in financial bailouts at almost-no-interest, with very little oversight and in which the “trickle-down” effect to the middle class was insignificant.
• Income inequality encourages those outside of the wealthy to expend finances beyond their financial abilities.

The Apparent Contributors:

• Technology has reduced the needs for unskilled and skilled labor in many areas.
• Globalization has provided access to low-cost workers around the world to corporations.
• Provision of rights to corporations to supply unlimited support to politicians in campaign funds while minimal abilities to legally hold culpable organizations and individuals culpable for unethical actions.

The Apparent Excuses:

• Those who have wealth are those who have worked hardest – the wealth is the reward of their endeavors.
• Those who desire change are attempting to undermine capitalism and move us to a socialistic or communistic government.

Bibliography:

• Stiglitz, Joseph E. “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” Vanity Fair, May 2011.
• Batra, Ravi. “The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism.” Truthout, Oct. 11, 2011.
• Fullerton, John. “Listening to Occupy Wall Street.” Capital Institute, Oct. 17, 2011.
• Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. “The Fight for ‘Real Democracy’ at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street.” Foreign Affairs, Oct. 11, 2011.
• Gautney, Heather. “Why Occupy Wall Street wants nothing to do with our politicians.” Washington Post, Oct., 21, 2011.
• Captain, Sean. “The Demographics of Occupy Wall Street.” Fast Company, Oct. 19, 2011.
• Horgan, John. “Dear Occupy Wall Street: Read Jeffrey Sachs!” Scientific American, Oct. 11, 2011.
• Ramsey, Dave. “Dear Occupy Wall Street.” Oct. 19, 2011.
• Luhby, Tami. “Who is the top 1% for income?” CNNMoney, Oct. 20, 2011.
• Udargo, Max. “Open Letter to that 53% Guy.” Daily Kos. Oct. 12, 2011. (HT: Juli Hamilton)
• Bessey, Sarah. “Occupy Wall Street: A Greater Purpose.” Relevant Magazine, Oct. 25, 2011.
• McCracken, Brett. “Occupy Wall Street: A Deeper Problem.” Relevant Magazine, Oct. 25, 2011.
• Baldwin, Alec. “What Occupy Wall Street Has Taught Me.” Huffington Post, Nov. 16, 2011.

Best Quotes:

• “The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.” – Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair.
• “According to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget office, the bailout created nearly 1.5 million jobs. Even if we accept the administration’s claim of four million, the bailout was extremely wasteful and enormously enriched the rich. Dividing 800 billion by four million yields 200,000. In other words, the government spent $200,000 to create one job. When the average wage is less than $50,000 per year, where did the other $150,000 go? This suggests that companies that hired those four million people received $150,000 for each job they created…It is clear that the bailouts, Bush’s and Obama’s, were extremely wasteful and hugely enriched the opulent.” – Ravi Batra, Truthout.
• “When the government bails out mega banks and Wall Street firms, it amounts to shooting the economy in the foot. Our president seeks to bring about change, which was his campaign slogan. But once elected, he got sidetracked by thinking that change is possible through compromise. This has never happened before. Never in history have the exploited prospered by cooperating with the exploiter.” – Ravi Batra, Truthout.
• “During my trip to Zuccotti Park last week, I learned that OWS is first and foremost about restoring democracy in America.  That’s a bipartisan ideal I can get behind…OWS as I understand it today, is building a civil disobedience movement of everyday people who are fed up with Wall Street’s corrupting influence on our Democracy.” – John Fullerton, Capital Institute.
• “I support the non-violent movement “OWS” to restore true democracy in America.  While we must speak truth to power on Wall Street (more on this to come, and change is coming), this is not, in my judgment, first about the bankers—there are many good and hard-working people on Wall Street.  Nor, I hope, is this about the divisive message “We are the 99 percent.”  It’s about the idea of what Wall Street has become, and the corrosive effect it has had on the Republic.” – John Fullerton, Capital Institute.
• ” One obvious and clear message of the protests, of course, is that the bankers and finance industries in no way represent us: What is good for Wall Street is certainly not good for the country (or the world). A more significant failure of representation, though, must be attributed to the politicians and political parties charged with representing the people’s interests but in fact more clearly represent the banks and the creditors.” – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Foreign Affairs.
• “If together these different protest encampments — from Cairo and Tel Aviv to Athens, Madison, Madrid, and now New York — express a dissatisfaction with the existing structures of political representation, then what do they offer as an alternative? What is the “real democracy” they propose?…The clearest clues lie in the internal organization of the movements themselves — specifically, the way the encampments experiment with new democratic practices. These movements have all developed according to what we call a “multitude form” and are characterized by frequent assemblies and participatory decision-making structures. (And it is worth recognizing in this regard that Occupy Wall Street and many of these other demonstrations also have deep roots in the globalization protest movements that stretched at least from Seattle in 1999 to Genoa in 2001.)” – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Foreign Affairs.
• “Do not wait for the encampments, then, to develop leaders or political representatives. No Martin Luther King, Jr. will emerge from the occupations of Wall Street and beyond. For better or worse — and we are certainly among those who find this a promising development — this emerging cycle of movements will express itself through horizontal participatory structures, without representatives.” – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Foreign Affairs.
• “Occupy does not speak the language of party or ideology, and this has not boded well for a system that relies on polls, predictability and reductive thought. Social movements are, by their very nature, complex, organic and indeterminate. They operate at the deepest levels of how we view each other and the world we live in.” – Heather Gautney, Washington Post.
• “But at the end of the day, Romney, Obama and Cain are only symptoms of a much deeper problem. Corporate-sector experience has become a golden gateway to political power, and this inner circle is essentially closed to average citizens, regardless of their knowledge and experience.” – Heather Gautney, Washington Post.
• ““Occupy Wall Street is an otherwise unaffiliated group of concerned citizens who have come together with the general purpose of holding Wall Street (as the drivers of an increasingly undemocratic power structure) accountable for their fiscal recklessness and criminal perversion of the democratic process. We are a bunch of people like you and me who came together and said ‘enough’! We will not remain passive as formerly democratic institutions become the means of enforcing the will of only 1-2% of the population who control the magnitude of American wealth.”” – Flyer quoted by John Horgan, Scientific American.
• “Compensation for CEOs, which in 1970 was 40 times the average pay of workers, was 1,000 times greater by 2000. The gap between rich and poor is greater than at any time since the late 1920s, just before the Depression. Meanwhile, the IRS allows powerful corporations to “hide their profits in offshore tax havens.” Even Google, which is supposedly so hip and progressive, engages in a “tax dodge.” According to Sachs, Google funnels billions in profits into off-shore subsidiaries, which pay lower tax rates than the U.S. corporation does. Sachs points out that Sergey Brin​’s “ingenious work in creating Google’s search engine” was supported by the National Science Foundation​, which means that our tax dollars helped Brin get his start.” – John Horgan, Scientific American, quoting Jeffrey D. Sachs.

Possible Solutions?

Unfortunately this article was getting far too lengthy…so I’m keeping this for a separate (soon-to-come) article.

Interesting News…

• Lucke, Rick. “Citigroup Escapes Responsibility; Support Occupy Wall Street.” Salon, Oct. 21, 2011.

Related articles

• Food Day and Occupy Wall Street (truelovehealth.com)
• Eugene Linden: Occupy Wall Street Is the Tip of the Iceberg (huffingtonpost.com)
• Cenk Uygur On Similarities Between Occupy Wall Street And Tea Party Movements (mediaite.com)
• Adbusters Calls for Occupy Wall Street to Expand Its Message (usnews.com)
• Asher Smith: What Distinguishes Occupy Wall Street From the Tea Party? Follow the Money (huffingtonpost.com)
• Peter S. Goodman: Protesters Are Occupying Wall Street, But Not Yet Changing It (huffingtonpost.com)
• China’s Occupy Wall Street Strategy: From Headline News to Banned Search Topic (globalspin.blogs.time.com)
• Occupy Wall Street Inspires Michael Moore To Make A New Movie! (perezhilton.com)
• Religion Claims Its Place In Occupy Wall Street (timesunion.com)
• Goldman Backs Out Of Fundraiser Honoring Occupy Wall Street (huffingtonpost.com)

Image via CrunchBase

The need for renovations in the banking industry is obvious – not just from a management and trust perspective but also from a consumer facing perspective. BankSimple is an upcoming web-based bank that hopes to offer just such a service. They aren’t even live yet, but have been garnering significant press. Here are the distinguishing features of their service they’ve revealed thus far:

Phones are Answered by Real People – No Automation.

This is a nice feature, though personally I don’t spend much time on the phone with my bank. I already do almost everything via the web-based interface…but automated menus are a pain in the behind, so this would be nice.

Terms are Explained in Simple English instead of Complex Legalese.

This is a nice feature, though I don’t really see the current terms from banks being too complex. They are annoyingly long – but I think they have simplified (due to new laws?) over the years and don’t generally sneak too much concerning into them.

No Hidden Fees (this includes overdraft and late fees).

This is nice, though I didn’t see any details on how BankSimple intends to handle when an individual overdrafts their account. I also wondered when a late fee issue would ever arise – since at this point it seems to be a checking/savings solution, not any sort of loan solution.

Deposit Checks via Phone.

I like this feature. This is one of the few remaining reasons I still go to a bank in-person – to deposit checks.

Mobile Based Banking Management.

This is another nice feature and if done right could offer some sweet abilities to manage financial information ala Mint.

Customers First.

Well, they all say this one, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

Automatic Integration of Checking and Savings.

This feature is a no-brainer and hopefully will set a precedent for the rest of the banking industry. Essentially, BankSimple makes it as if one has only one single account – while transparently redistributing funds between interest bearing and regular checking accounts.

Advanced Financial Management Tools.

I wasn’t amazingly impressed – until I watched the video. Okay, the whole safe-to-spend concept looks well thought out and pretty sweet. The goals feature is awesome. The intelligence for natural language search of transactions is pretty cool as well…and I’m hoping this means that they won’t be providing us with limited access to our transactions – my bank currently provides a rolling two years (or something like that) of transactions, then makes then unavailable. How annoying!

Other Features.

Honestly, they’ve got a bunch more…but I’m not going to spend all day typing up all of their features, go look for yourself.

What Is Missing?

So, what is missing from BankSimple’s package? Well, there is one thing that I’m not sure if they offer that my bank doesn’t offer that I sure would like. What? I’m so glad you asked. Right now I can see scans of my checks that others have deposited but I can’t see scans of the checks I have deposited from others. Sometimes I see that I deposited x amount on x date and I want to figure out what checks exactly I deposited (yea, yea – I should just note them individually at time of entry) – but there is no option to view a scan of the checks!

Other than that, I’m drawing a blank at the moment…I mean, they are even working on an API. Who has ever heard of a bank having an API?

I wish BankSimple the best of luck and am hopeful that they will not stop innovating here but continue to press forward and revolutionize the banking industry. No-fee PayPal-esque transactions? Integrated microloans? P2P lending? Loans? Credit Cards?

Related articles

• BankSimple Interface Revealed at Finovate (bradleyleimer.com)
• Bank Simple – Not Traditional Banking But Definitely Not Banking 2.0 (diversity.net.nz)
• Forget The Big Banks, BankSimple Will Provide The Same Services Without Screwing You Over (singularityhub.com)
• BankSimple…Semantic and executing Web at work! (flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com)
• BankSimple Shows Its Web-Based Banking Tool On Video (techcrunch.com)
• A first look at BankSimple, the new online bank interface in private beta (thenextweb.com)
• BankSimple deposits $10m for banking overhaul (gigaom.com)
• This is What BankSimple Looks Like (readwriteweb.com)

Cover via Amazon

Introduction

I don’t read a lot of fiction…well, let me rephrase that…I read a lot of fiction but not when compared to the amount of non-fiction. I’m always looking for a good fiction read to relax with – and share with my wonderful wife (Charity). When it comes to fiction I’m fairly picky. While I read widely in my childhood and teen years when it came to fiction I’ve since significantly refined my tastes.

Unfortunately, I find it fairly difficult to find good fiction books, so when I find one I want to share it. It is my humble opinion that every individual should seek to maintain a supply of recreational materials (e.g. books, movies, other venues) which they can utilize whenever the need arises. Recently I found another work (and author) to add to my list.

The Awakened is the freshman endeavor by Jason Tesar and is a three-part trilogy. I have only finished the first book (and am currently blazing through the second) – but I’ve read enough to know that I love it!

Synopsis

I prefer not to know much about the storyline from the books I am about to read. For those who are like me here are a few key themes that may peak your interest: ancient, nephilim, angels, mythology, parallel worlds (maybe?), action, intrigue, ethics. For those who are interested in a real synopsis, here is the description from Jason Tesar’s page:

“THE HISTORY: Over five thousand years ago, a renegade faction of angels abandoned the spiritual realm and began their inhabitation of earth. Worshiped as gods for their wisdom and power, they corrupted the realm of the physical and forever altered the course of history.
THE PROPHECY: Amidst the chaos of a dying world, a lone voice foretold the awakening of a warrior who would bring an end to this evil perpetrated against all of creation. But with the cataclysmic destruction of earth and rebirth of humanity, the prophecy went unfulfilled and eventually faded from the memory of our kind—until now!
THE AWAKENED: The physical dimension is fractured. What remain now are numerous fragmented worlds moving simultaneously through time, sharing a common history, connected only by a guarded portal. On a parallel earth, in the city of Bastul, Colonel Adair Lorus disappears while investigating the death of an informant, triggering a series of events which will tear his family apart and set in motion the resolution of an ancient struggle.
Kael, sentenced to death after rising up against the cruel leadership of his new step-father, is rescued from prison and trained in the arts of war by a mystical order of clerics. Excelling in every aspect of his training, Kael inwardly struggles to give himself fully to the methods of his new family, or the god they worship.
Maeryn, bitter over the disappearance of her husband and supposed execution of her son, fears for her life at the hands of her newly appointed husband. Finding comfort and purpose in her unborn child, she determines to undermine his authority by reaching out to an underground social movement known as the Resistance.
After being forced from his home, Kael’s former mentor, Saba, uncovers a clue to Adair’s disappearance. Sensing a connection to his own forgotten past, Saba begins an investigation which leads to the discovery of a secret military organization operating within the Orudan Empire.
In book one of his debut series, Jason Tesar delves into the heart of an ancient legend, embarking on an epic saga that will journey from earth’s mythological past to its post-apocalyptic future, blending the genres of fantasy, sci-fi, and military/political suspense.”

Review

Jason Tesar has a great future as an author – if his works continue to maintain the quality and innovation of The Awakened. The novels offer consistently quality wordmanship, a compelling storyline, intriguing mysteries, and a sweet balance of story progression and parallel threads^[1]

Tesar’s work is likely to appeal to a wide variety of readers. His works should attract fans of C.S. Lewis‘ Chronicles of Narnia and Space Trilogy. They may also attract fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, though the works are not in the strict fantasy realm, being much more along the lines of Lewis’ Space Trilogy. More contemporaneously, I would recommend Tesar’s works to fans of Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Michael Crichton, James Rollins, Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, and Tosca Lee.

If you like cerebral, action-packed page-turners – Tesar’s work should immediately hit the top of your reading list. I’m really excited at the quantity of work Tesar is turning out and optimistic that he will continue to deliver the quality of work he has demonstrated thus far.

Ohh, and did I mention the books are available for $2.99 for the Amazon Kindle and even better the first book is free!?!

Related articles

• Book Review: “Awakening Dreams (Grace Awakening Book One)” (thecheapreader.wordpress.com)
• Book Review: “Blood Red Road” by Moira Young (slclteens.wordpress.com)
• The Animal World of C.S. Lewis (bipedsandbrutes.wordpress.com)
• FORBIDDEN by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee (W/ Giveaway!) (bookjourney.wordpress.com)
• Book Review: Blood Red Road (eulana.com)

1. ^[1] Many authors abuse parallel threads to offer ‘page-turning’ suspense instead of real suspense. The flipping between threads is done to force the reader to turn the pages, in an endeavor to get back to another thread in the story…to get to those threads which advance the story. Tesar uses parallel threads but not to create this forced reading experience, but as a means of advancing the story and maintaining a complex and thrilling plot. ↩

Image via CrunchBase

Here is the problem. Folks like me run websites like this one and use shared hosts like Bluehost. As the sites grow and our traffic increases the site speed slows down. This leaves folks like me in a difficult spot. How do we get our sites to run faster? We could move to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). These are generally affordable but they also are much more manual than Bluehost. I can get a WordPress up and running in five minutes using Bluehost – whereas with a VPS I’m left working with the command-line – not only installing my own WordPress from scratch but also configuring Apache, MySQL, and PHP. A dedicated server offers the same problems at a higher price.

Then there is the option of going with a cloud-based service. These services are pretty attractive – the ability to scale is magnificent, but the price is somewhere between a VPS and a dedicated server – and usually costly enough that any ad revenues one receives will be consumed several times over by the hosting costs. Again, there is also the simplicity issue. I haven’t found a cloud service that can compare to Bluehost for ease.

For some people this may not be as big of a concern. Some folks love delving into the code. I do too, but I also love creating and curating contents – and usually my focus is on the latter…and thus why I love Bluehosts streamlined and wizard-like interface.

Bluehost, unlike most other shared hosts, does offer a higher performance hosting option – still shared. I purchased this, but still was seeing my pages clock in (according to Pingdom) at between 10-13 seconds in loading time. This simply isn’t acceptable if you want to keep folks attention.

This is where CloudFlare comes into the picture. CloudFlare isn’t a replacement for your current hosting plan, but a supplement to it…and its not just for little hobbyists like myself – it can be used by smbs and the enterprise. The best part is that for the hobbyist the service is free, and for smb’s it is only $20/mo.!

CloudFlare offers all sorts of features – focusing around performance and security. We’ll focus mainly on the performance aspect. Lets talk for a moment about how the “big guys” make their sites load so fast:

• Raw Processing Power – The big guys have lots of processing power to run their sites. A hobbyist on a shared host is one of hundreds of sites on a single physical server. The big guys use multiple physical servers with load balancing to provide massive amounts of computational power that can handle large loads of traffic.
• Code Optimization – The big guys have the budgets and the time to commit coders who pour over the code again and again looking for ways to optimize the code, removing extraneous bulk and making the end-product that is delivered to the user as small and quick as possible.
• Content Distribution Network (CDN) – The big guys also use servers in multiple locations to provide the same content. In this manner they are able to direct visitors to the servers that are geographically closest to them, reducing the amount of time it takes for data to travel from the server to the end user’s computer.

Now, CloudFlare can’t really help us with the code optimization – but they can supplement our processing power and provide a content distribution network (CDN) and this is exactly what they do. They take all of our static material (material not drawn from a database) and host it on their worldwide network of servers, providing local access to viewers and massive amounts of processing power.

Update: This morning I was pleasantly surprised to have received a reply via Twitter to this post by CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince who wrote,

“@davidshq thanks for the review. Only nit: actually we do code (HTML) optimization. Try CF’s Rocket Loader. Adds another 20% speed boost!”

Sure enough, Matt wasn’t lying and I turned on Rocket Loader and Auto Minify to receive even greater speed boost as CloudFlare automatically compresses and expedites various aspects of my code.

Granted, the “big guys” still have the advantage of coders who can review code line-by-line to remove slow code, but with all CloudFlare’s features, how much longer will this sort of manual optimization be necessary in all but the most severe cases?

(For those like me who had a little trouble finding Rocket Loader, check out this CloudFare FAQ)

For those who are wondering, even sites like WordPress which utilize a database back-end are largely static sites when it comes to viewers. A technique to increase responsiveness of sites and reduce load is caching. This involves the creation of a static page containing the content that is pulled from the database. In this manner the content is pulled from the database once and then the users view the static pages. When a change is made to the content, the data is pulled from the database again and used to create an updated static page.

I’ve only been running CloudFlare for a little while on this site – but I’m already seeing tremendous performance gains – specifically in site speed. Before adding CloudFlare loading the main page of the site (directly from bluehost’s servers) was taking 10-13 seconds, now it averages between 5-7 seconds. This is a huge drop in loading time!

What is the practical result of all this? Well, it probably means that I could downgrade my bluehost account to the basic hosting and just rely on CloudFlare to provide the computational and geo-distributed power. It also means that folks like myself can wait much longer before needing to move to a more robust hosting solution.

This is truly an amazing service (especially for free!). It takes around five minutes to configure (literally!) and I’ve not even scratched the surface of the features that are offered – for example, a robust anti-spam intelligence that grows with its network of sites. So, if you haven’t already – go check CloudFlare out. No, I’m not on their payroll!

Related articles

• CloudFlare’s CEO talks about the broken Internet, and how to fix it (thenextweb.com)
• The Fastest and Easiest Means of Speeding Up Your Site (marketingtechblog.com)
• CloudFlare CDN (standalone-sysadmin.com)
• Review: Website protection using CloudFlare (maltainfosec.org)
• CloudFlare gets $20M to make the web safe – and fast (gigaom.com)
• CloudFlare named “tech pioneer” after protecting LulzSec website (arstechnica.com)
• CloudFlare, Dropbox, Palantir And Kickstarter Named Technology Pioneers By The World Economic Forum (techcrunch.com)
• Increasing Website/blog Speed with CloudFlare and Super Cache (andrewsegawa.com)
• How To Speed Up Your WordPress Loading Times (tokitover.com)
• How to transfer your domain from Bluehost For 123-Reg – 123-Reg.co.uk And Bluehost.com (onlineseoshop.wordpress.com)
• Unsolicited Review: Cloudflare (christopherspenn.com)
• GoDaddy vs BlueHost vs FatCow – Battle of WordPress hosts (chimac.net)
• CloudFlare Makes The Web Faster, Safer (bjconquest.com)

• Summit Day One Recap.
• Summit Day Two Recap.
• Summit Day Three Recap.

And here are the items which stood out to me from each day:

Day 1:

• “Even if we don’t know if we’re going to make it, what else can men of good consciousness do but fight into the bitter end… I’ve got a lot of flags on my boat, but I don’t have a white flag.” – Jacque Cousteau (as quoted by Ted Turner).
• Suicide is the number one cause of death in the United States, Australia, and Japan amongst teenagers.

Day 2:

• More than one million children die of malaria every year.

Day 3:

• “Best-selling author Peter Sims took the stage to talk about how great ideas are developed from small gambles. He said ideas are not developed instantaneously but require little mistakes and modification before they take off.”
• “Ms. James spoke about how organizations and non-profits need to think of the people they help as partners. She pushed entrepreneurs and activists to not just to help those in need across the world, but to engage them in dialogue and bring them into the solution as well.”
• “Exposure to indoor smoke pollution from coal stoves is the fifth largest killer in the developing world.“
• “Robinson said 10 million women worldwide are forcibly married before they’re 18. She added that 64% of illiterate adults are women and that girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth.”