The Converging Network
The Converging Network by Mitchell Ashley is about the convergence of technologies, products, social media and the entrepreneurial spirit. Specializing in product design, development, networking, security, virtualization and Microsoft, Mitchell shares his experiences and observations about being an entrepreneur in today business climate.
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Police Bullets Converge On Bank Robbers and Getway Car
I was driving back from a meeting downtown today and needed to stop by my house to pick up the zip pouch with my bank stuff in it. I needed to make a deposit at the 1st Bank I use down the street.Driving west on 120th on the border dividing Westminster and Broomfield (Colorado), I came up on two pol …
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How to get started at blogging
Write a one sentence blog post per week.
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Reintroducing The Alan and Mitchell Podcast
Well, we're back at it again. Alan and I are doing the podcast again and we are enjoying it even more. During this episode, Alan and I talk about: Is the CISO role really just a consulting gig Security Essentials free malware software Microsoft Forefront 2010 for Exchange and Alan's leavi …
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Podcast Naming Contest
Alan Shimel and I are back doing our podcast again. We recorded an episode last night and should be up in the next day or so.We've started a podcast naming contest and we'd love your suggestions. The winner submitting the name we select will get a t-shirt with our new logo on it (including the name) …
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The Year The Media Died
Now, I'm not actually a subscriber to the theory that traditional media is dead to be replaced completely by digital and social media. Newspapers may be drying up while social media is ramping up but things are never as black and white as they may seem they'll be. But, I ran across this Mad Avenue B …
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Generations Of Communications and How They Influence Business and Products
Part 1: One of the reasons I enjoy creating software is that I'm fascinated by researching and understanding users of the technology we create. I sometimes refer to myself as a software anthropologist. That's part of why I also enjoy user interface design. So, enough about me... lets get on to the t …
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Social Media Is Building Schools In Africa $10 At A Time - Please Donate
Earlier this year, a client I advise about social media and web technology approached me asking for help with a fund raising effort on Twitter. The idea was to raise enough money, $10,000, to set up a young Kenyan boy and his brother with a store they could operate and make a living. This situation …
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Video Interview About $200m Russian Facebook Investment
Michael Arrington at TechCruch (a great site, btw) posted an interview on YouTube that he did with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies, the investor who just plunked down a $200m investment in Facebook at a $10B valuation. The interview focuses on the question of …
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Is Your Avatar Doing You Justice?
In a blog post It’s All About The Faces, Brad Feld talked about the impact on his readers after changing from his normal portrait style avatar to a more artistic version. Followers commented how he seem so much less accessible, resulting in Brad changing back to his orginal picture. That blog post …
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This Is The Matrix... On Microsoft Windows
My editor at Network World Microsoft Subnet, Julie Bort, posted this video parody of the movie The Matrix that pokes fun at Microsoft Windows. No matter if you're a Linux fan, Mac user or Windows regularly, I think everyone will enjoy this video.
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Recession Accelerating Social Media Adoption
"Crisis brings opportunity to change." Keep that quote in mind for a moment as you read this blog post. You can't watch a cable news channel, particularly CNN, without hearing some reference to Twitter. Facebook has pretty much supplanted myspace as the dominant social networking platform, thanks in …
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Blog Shoutout - Steve Baker
I had the pleasure on Friday of speaking at a business breakfast about the topic of blogging. During the process I discovered that the group organizer, Steve Baker is a blogger as well. Stevesan entrepreneurial business guy with lots of wisdom and experience to share. Hes sharing that by authoring a …
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Product Bistro: A Product Manager’s Dream and Nightmare (cont’d)
Continued from a previous blog post… The Digital Age Will Save Us… Uh Huh If you haven’t noticed our world of software is changing right from under us. We rarely receive CDs or DVDs when you buy software. All the Microsoft products I use in my business all come direct via the web, downloading an i …
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Product Bistro: A Product Managers Dream and Nightmare
If you create products (or run a business that does), it’s your professional and personal goal to create something everyone wants so badly that products fly off the shelves like Nintendo Wii’s at Christmas (and most of the year, actually). There are countless examples of this kind of demand, in …
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Blog shout out: www.Paths2Trust.com
We have another network security blog in the house. Not too far on the heals of Secure64 CEO, Steve Goodbarn, two of his technical guys have decided to join the ranks of the network security bloggers. The blog, www.Paths2Trust.com, is co-authored by Joe Gersch and Bill Worley. Joe, the head of devel …
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Journey To The Last Lecture
I'd heard through many different paths about Prof. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture given at Carnegie Mellon, but like so many things I want to do, I just hadn't gotten around to checking it out. I remember hearing about his lecture on TV, seeing the book The Last Lecture when it came out, hearing others …
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Recession YTD, Brain Damage Already Done
It's official. We've been in a recession since December... of last year. 12 months already. CNN reports that most US recessions last 8-10 months, and global recessions average 16-18 months. Obviously we're in a global recession, which means somewhere around another 8-12 months, if history is any ind …
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Blog shoutout - Steve Goodbarn
It's always satisfying when someone takes your advice and as a result I'm happy to welcome a new blogger who's decided to join us. The new blogger on the block is Steve Goodbarn, CEO of DNSSEC vendor Secure64. Steve's a client of my business, Converging Network LLC, and we've been talking about doin …
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Podcast #62 - Mike Rothman goes to the dark side
Fast on the heals of our podcast with Steve Goodbarn of DNSSEC vendor Secure64, Alan and I whipped up an interview with Mike Rothman to talk shop about security and his goings on at his new company, eIQ Networks. Honestly, I thought Mike had sworn off working for another product company and would ne …
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Today is World AIDS Day 2008
Seems like we don't hear very much about HIV AIDS anymore. Maybe we're over saturated with news reports, we're just numb to it, or we thought the problem went away. If you're like me, you recall hearing we've made progress and HIV AIDS isn't growing as fast as it once was. If you think the HIV AIDS …

