In a press release, AT&T announced that on April 17th, select locations in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco will be sporting a new toy with their cellphone displays. A Microsoft Surface to be exact.

Initially the Surface will be used to display information about the cellphones for sale as well as display service area maps but AT&T hopes that in the future the Surface will allow users to drag ringtones, graphics and videos to the phones. Note that it says “the” phones suggesting the display models, and not a user’s phone… Perhaps just a way to cover their behinds in case the Surface doesn’t work out as they planned.

Store locations and images can be found on the AT&T website here.

This is always a question on people’s minds and it’s not always an easy question to answer. Especially in the tech industry where there is so much competition, salaries can be all over the place. A new site hopes to help change that. PayScale allows you to enter your job and salary information along with extra things like certifications, education, etc to help compare what you’re getting to what others have entered.

The free version shows you the percentage breakdown of what people are paid annually in your job description, hourly rates, how much they receive in bonuses and profit sharing figures. They also show you a number of anonymous profiles based on your area, job description, and experience level. The paid report goes as far as showing you what they make even but the free one gives you a pretty good idea at least of where you sit in terms of your income.

I find that not many businesses inventory their hardware and usually the reason for not doing so is that it’s a tough task and most that do I see end up as simple spreadsheets which get messy depending on how much information they keep track of.

Spiceworks is a great program which gives you no excuse not to take inventory. It took me about 10 minutes to scan my network and come up with a pretty good inventory of my hardware. I’m sure if I dig deeper into this program, I can get a complete profile of my software and with a bit more configuring, I can have Spiceworks scan my network on a set schedule to monitor any changes and notify me of any servers that go down or when drive space reaches a certain percentage.

The best part about Spiceworks though, is that it’s completely free!

So not only does it make taking inventory easy, it’s extremely easy on the pocketbook. Definitely worth checking out!

Since I last posted on here. Been busy with all kinds of madness. One of which includes a new server and business. As of late yesterday, our new server went into the co-location and my blog is now running on a proper connection! No more hokey old-computer-turned-server on Shaw cable!

We’re still getting settled in and everything, but it’s all pretty exciting stuff!

Stay tuned for more great things!

While this was written with more of a freelance/contract worker in mind, this can still be applied to anyone who has to deal with clients in general. FreelanceSwitch published this great article on the many types of clients that one would encounter through out their working life along with the pros, cons and how one should work with them. It almost seems like it should be made into a handbook everyone should get when jumping into the freelance tech pool.

So, let’s hear about which types you’ve encountered and your experiences with them!

The point of this isn’t to remind YOU of a task or anything but more of a reminder for those you deal with via email like a contractor or vendor. Someone you don’t have any real control over.

When someone is committing themselves to you on when they’ll start a project or task, you don’t want to respond to them right away or constantly remind them or nag them. The key here is not to respond until the time arrives when they promised to work on it.

This way, you don’t look like a nag and you save the other person a flood of emails and headaches. While I’m not sure how often someone really gets subjected to something like this (maybe I’m just lucky to have good clients?), to me it is defintely more of an email etiquette thing than anything else I think.

Read that carefully because there is a difference. Still don’t get it? Check out this article on the difference between the 2 statements. This article is aimed more at the employer vs the employee, but from the employee side, it should be an eye opener on how one should feel about the workplace they are currently at. Essentially as an employee, you should be more interested in the work you are doing instead of the company itself. An example would be going to work at Electronic Arts because you like the company and not because you’re passionate about game programming.

This may seem like something of an obvious statement to most of you, but I’ve always given this advice to friends of mine looking for work. Always look for a job which will let you do what you love. Don’t just get a job for the sole reason of having one or because you want to be a part of it.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a banner AD stating Dell Days were back and I didn’t get an email about it! I checked with Raman and he did not either but after checking the link he noticed that it was 10 Business Days of Dell… A different department all together I guess. I managed to catch this on day 1 so onward to Dell!