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Rumors are buzzing all around the web about Microsoft’s gadget project codenamed Origami. Origami should be a device smaller than your notebook but bigger than mobile phone or PDA. It should be capable of supporting features like GPS, Bluetooth, 3G cellular technology and Wi-Fi.

Go nuts with the rumors around:

Details unfolding on Microsoft’s ‘Origami’ (Cnet News.com)

Origami rumors unfold (News.com Blog)

What is Microsoft’s Origami Project? (Slashdot)

Microsoft’s Origami Project is… (NetworkWorld)

Microsoft said to issue specs for “ultramobile lifestyle PCs” (Engadget)

What is the Origami Project? (Scobleizer)

What is Origami Project? (design tastes good)

What is Origami? (Thatedgeguy)

What’s up with Microsoft’s Origami project? (WindowsForDevices.com)

Just finished reading Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli. I highly recommend this book to every System and Network Administrator. The book is packed with really useful tips for geeks who need to address the time management issues. I agree with most of the productivity tips given in the book and discovered that I was actually following similar techniques before reading it. I’ve written a productivity related article previously called Productive Network and System Administration. Currently I’m trying some of the techniques and softwares recommended in the book. A friend of mine has started a chapter by chapter review of this book in his blog, Human Modem. I recommend you to check his site for detailed analysis and review. Here I’m listing the tools, softwares and books recommended for time management by the author:

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I’ve been playing with the wordpress templates for a while. And if you are a regular visitor you might have noticed the changes. The main purpose was to make the site and information more accessible. As the number of articles are growing, I wanted to make sure that new visitors could easily access the older and popular articles. I’ve installed several new plug-ins and rearranged some menu location. You can see a new banner ad that rotates on the top, which gives a kind of change for the regular visitors. So, here are the actual changes I’ve made and motivation behind it.

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I was just checking my stats today and analyzing the links from external pages. It was pretty interesting to see the traffic coming from different sites (although it’s not very high). The most popular article so far in my blog is Buddha Boy of Nepal . Just wanted to post an update to my readers who are following the Buddha Boy’s story. Unfortunately there is nothing new about him but I found a site that has collection of almost all the links to news and articles written about him so far.

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I have to install email servers every now and then. Sometimes customers need a new email server, sometimes it’s scheduled upgrade or replacement of the old server and sometimes it’s because of failures. In carrying out these installations the procedure differs slightly depending on the reason why I’m installing the server. I’ve been doing this so many times that I happen to follow a certain pattern automatically which I’m listing out here.This should be useful for planning and looking at the bigger picture of an email server installation before plunging into the technical details of actual installation, configuration, testing and putting into production.

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Seems like windows users will have a lot of choice and sysadmins a lot of headache. According to Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, there will be at least 8 different versions of windows vista.

Windows Starter 2007: Aimed at beginner computer users in emerging markets who can only afford a low cost PC. As with the XP version, Windows Starter 2007 (note that it’s not branded as Window Vista) is a subset of Vista Home Basic, and will ship in a 32-bit version only (no 64-bit x64 version). Starter 2007 is analogous to XP Starter Edition. This version will only be sold in emerging markets.

Windows Vista Home Basic: A simple version of Windows Vista that is aimed at single PC homes. Windows Vista Home Basic is roughly analogous to Windows XP Home Edition

Windows Vista Home Premium: Whole home entertainment and personal productivity throughout the home and on the go. Windows Vista Premium is similar to XP Media Center Edition, except that it adds numerous other features and functionality, including Tablet PC support.

Windows Vista BUsiness: A powerful, reliable and secure OS for businesses of all sizes. Windows Vista Business is roughly analogous to XP Pro today. This version is aimed at business decision makers and IT managers and generalists.

Windows Vista Small Business: Designed for small businesses without IT staff.

Windows Vista Enterprise: Optimized for the enterprise, this version will be a true superset of Windows Vista Business.

Windows Vista Ultimate: The best operating system ever offered for a personal PC, optimized for the individual. Windows Vista Ultimate is a superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Business., so it includes all of the features of both of those product versions, plus adds Game Performance Tweaker with integrated gaming experiences, a Podcast creation utility (under consideration, may be cut from product), and online “Club” services (exclusive access to music, movies, services and preferred customer care) and other offerings (also under consideration, may be cut from product).

N Editions: Windows Vista for the European market, in order to meet the requirements of an antitrust ruling there. Windows Vista N Editions–Vista Home N and Vista Business N–will mirror the Vista Home Basic and Vista Business versions, respectively, but will not include Windows Media Player and other media-related functionality.

There’s whole lot of detail in Windows Vista Product Editions Preview

WikiHow is a collaborative writing project with lots of useful how-to manuals. They’re free, contributed and maintained mainly by volunteers. I saw some how-tos that could be useful for geeks.

• How to Improve your Posture
• How to Exercise While Sitting at Your Computer
• How to Exercise While Watching TV
• How to Massage Yourself
• How to Start Walking for Exercise

As the latest version of Windows called Vista will be out on the stores later this year. Michael Desmond wrties about Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista

1. Security, security, security: Windows XP Service Pack 2 patched a lot of holes, but Vista takes security to the next level.

2. Internet Explorer 7: IE gets a much-needed, Firefox-inspired makeover, complete with tabbed pages and better privacy management.

3. Righteous eye candy: For the first time, Microsoft is building high-end graphics effects into Windows.

4. Desktop search: Microsoft has been getting its lunch handed to it by Google and Yahoo on the desktop, but Vista could change all that.

5. Better updates: Vista does away with using Internet Explorer to access Windows Update, instead utilizing a new application to handle the chore of keeping your system patched and up-to-date.

6. More media: Over the years, one of the key reasons to upgrade versions of Windows has been the free stuff Gates and Company toss into the new OS, and Vista is no exception.

7. Parental controls: Families, schools, and libraries will appreciate the tuned-up parental controls, which let you limit access in a variety of ways.

8. Better backups: Windows Vista boasts a much-improved backup program that should help users avoid wholesale digital meltdowns.

9. Peer-to-peer collaboration: The Windows Collaboration module uses peer-to-peer technology to let Vista users work together in a shared workspace.

10. Quick setup: Beta code alert: There are some Vista features I hope dearly for even though they haven’t been built yet.

There are things that might give you a pause before plunging into Vista i.e cost, anti-virus, hardware spec and learning curve.

We are currently evaluating the Request Tracker (RT) in our office. Request Tracker is a ticketing system which enables to efficiently manage problems, tasks, issues, and requests submitted by users. RT is an online ticketing system tightly integrated with email. It’s written in Object-Oriented perl and utilizes MySQL database. RT manages key tasks such as the identification, prioritization, assignment, resolution and notification. For guides and reading materials there’s a book RT Essentials published by Oreilly and some online documents for installation and getting started. I tried to install RT in CentOS 4 with this installation guide, which is for RedHat Enterprise 4 and should work for CentOS 4, Fedora 4 and Whitebox Linux 4. But got stuck with 4 perl modules, without which the RT didn’t function well. I did try to force install the dependencies from MCPAN shell but the RT wouldn’t work properly with my forced installation.

So, this is what I did. I followed Installation Guide of RHEL4 and on No. 6) Install RT… I downloaded some extra RPMS and installed them. If you are having the same problem as me, the following step No. 6 can help you. It has worked for me so hopefully it’ll work for you too (no guarantee or warranty ). Good luck…

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The first Trojan targeting Mac OS X (OSX/Oompa-A) is in the wild but seems it’s not that critical according to this site.

You cannot be infected by this unless you do all of the following:
1) Are somehow sent (via email, iChat, etc.) or download the “latestpics.tgz” file
2) Double-click on the file to decompress it
3) Double-click on the resulting file to “open” it
…and then for non-Admin users, it fails to infect most applications.

Most of the antivirus companies have released updates to detect the threat and here is Safety tips from Apple for Mac users.