Must have downloads for 2012

 

My list of the coolest apps we should all have this year

 

  • MalwareBytes  – (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) – Malwarebytes, also referred to as MBAM is the quintessential malware removal tool, the free version scans on demand and the paid version offers real-time protection.
  •   7-Zip – (http://www.7-zip.org/) – 7-Zip has long since replaced Winzip in my Windows world for file archiving.
  • Virtualization – The simplicity of virtualization has reached a point at which everyone should at least experiment, here are a couple free tools, if you have an old server try VMWare ESXi
  1. VirtualBox – (https://www.virtualbox.org/)
  2. VMware Player (http://www.vmware.com/products/player/)
  • Web Browsers – With so many ways to surf the internet, I opt to use a variety of browsers depending on the mood:
  1. FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/)
  2. Chrome (https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/)
  3. IE9 (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie/home)
  • LogMeIn – (http://www.logmein.com) – If you ever think you will want to access your computer form a remote location, LogMeIn made that process accessible to everyone.  Long gone are the days of VNC.
  • DropBox – (http://www.dropbox.com) – Dropbox is too cool and potentially life saving not to have, at least the free version.
  • Net Nanny – (http://www.netnanny.com/) – Have kids? Get Net Nanny! I seen that an iOS version is coming soon, cant wait!

 

Bringing the power of AWS to my blog

I’ve been an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) fan for some time now and I thought it would be cool to incorporate some of AWS (Amazon Web Services) into my blog, for both personal exploration and to share things I pick up along the way.

I’ve read a few different blogs about people running their WordPress instances from AWS but reading and doing our two different things and WordPress blogs are dynamic…not static pages, subsequently it becomes a little more involved.

Over the past couple years I have used AWS to run a handful of Windows/Linux servers running things like Typo3/Joomla, Bugzilla, SES, etc.. This experimentation phase for cloud adoption has lasted longer for me than say virtualizing on VMWare but what’s the rush.

Future AWS explorations:

1) My next goal is to move the static content from this blog to the cloud, which is made easy by plugins
2) Setup OpenVPN instance for personal use
3) Explore moving Exchange 2010 Edge Transport Server role to AWS
4) Setup VPC (haven’t had a need to utilize this feature yet but I would like to look into how I could take advantage of this at work)
5) Along the VPC lines, what about moving Active Directory to the cloud? I can think of a few issues off-hand but I’m sure others have thought about this.
6) How can I take advantage of AWS and use it as a platform to serve up content for unattended self-service kiosks and digital signage
6) So many other things…….

And so it begins.

Quick……To the cloud!