Peter Vatistas

TuitionU is the 1^st web site that provides the chance to rate and review resources and products in higher education and financial aid. TuitionU’s position is neutral so all providers of content, resource, and tools are welcome to participate and help grow the site. This helps create a true “one stop shop” for higher ed. TuitionU provides immediate answers to questions and access to tools and resources through a wealth of content provided by industry professionals. At TuitionU.com you can find the following:

* Peer to peer ratings and reviews for schools, lenders and much more.
* Talk to students, teachers, parents and industry experts.
* Articles related to higher education and financial aid.
* Blogs, forums, videos galleries, image galleries and of course friends!

Lots of tools can be found at TuitionU like the following:

* Student Loan Comparison
* Private Student Loan Calculators
* Student Loan Calculators
* College Cost Estimator
* Private Student Loan Payment Calculator
* Expecting Family Contributing Estimator
* Planning and Budgeting for College Calculator

I am really fascinated by this higher ed community because you find real information and advice from all sides of the industry. Parents can talk to parents about their children’s school, loans, teachers or even get insight from other students and industry professionals. Students can talk to students, parents, even schools and lenders about their options and needs for higher education.

TuitionU is a win-win for anyone looking to learn more about all aspects of higher education and because TuitionU is non-bias, you’ll always get the best answer - not a sales pitch. Where else can you rate your lender or teacher and know for sure its not a marketing team boosting the numbers? No where!!

Check out TuitionU and see for yourself how this community is really making a difference for everyone.

I thought this was pretty funny:

While Google’s spider “crawled” the whatsmyip.org site it managed to record it’s own IP in the title and publish it in the Google SERPS. Funny stuff.

I have been a member of Microsoft’s IT Advisory Council for quite some time now and I am really impressed with the community response for Microsoft related issues and discussion.

The IT Advisory Council is a select group of IT Professionals and Developers, which purpose is to share your views, ideas and opinions, helping Microsoft shape future initiatives. As a member, you play an integral part in providing the ITAC and Microsoft with feedback on Microsoft customer offerings, licensing, support, marketing materials and community initiatives.

Members communicate with each other via an online portal and a program of face-to-face and online events. Each event is currently limited to 12 members to ensure rich discussion and members will be eligible to participate based on a point-system in the portal. Membership also involves completing a monthly online ‘task’, which can be completing a mini-survey or sharing member experiences on the portal forums and blogs to help Microsoft understand what it’s like to be in Microsoft “expert” shoes.

The ITAC is a locked community meaning that just not anyone can join and participate. The ITAC offers an application process for anyone interested to join. After you complete the application process your information is reviewed by a board of administrators and moderators and you are notified within a week whether your accepted.

Give it a shot, apply to the Microsoft IT Advisory Council and help make a difference!

Google raises awareness for energy conservation by changing the Google homepage to black, “turning the lights out”. On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. I think this is a fantastic idea and really the first attempt I’ve every seen to raise awareness and actually start something globally.

I’ll be turning off my lights tonight, will you?

Click here to go to the Google Earth Hour page.

OpenDNS is a fantastic free service for filtering phishing sites, adult sites, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  It also does perform DNS lookups faster than any site that I have seen to date.  It is easy to admin and you can control your entire enterprise with this service.  Best of all it’s free.

One feature I love about OpenDNS is how I can globally set shortcuts to use a short word for a long address. There’s nothing to install and it works how you want it to, no matter which browser you’re using. Add, remove or change your OpenDNS shortcuts at any time.

OpenDNS provides you with the tools to see what’s happening on your network, coupled with the tools to take action. For example, discover that myspace.com is the most frequently visited site on your network, and then block it with a single click.

“Free yourself of DNS-related Internet outages with our zero-downtime global network. Eliminate DNS as a problem source on your network. Using OpenDNS means fewer support calls and headaches, letting you focus on more important issues.” 

Click here to read more and sign up for OpenDNS.

Here are just a few screenshots of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1. Funny thing with IE8 is there are many Microsoft sites that do not work well with IE8. What? I thought that was a little funny, thats all!

It was a big day for Microsoft yesterday, heres just a few things they released to help shape the web:

• Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1: Microsoft unveiled for the first time Internet Explorer 8, showcasing Internet Explorer’s commitment to developers. Internet Explorer 8 offers an unprecedented level of interoperability and tools, enabling developers to be more productive while delivering innovative experiences for end users on the Web. Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 for developers, released today, provides the most extensive support for Internet standards of any Microsoft browser and reduces the amount of time required to bring new experiences online.
• Silverlight 2 Beta: Silverlight 2 supports managed code, includes the core of the Common Language Runtime and adds over two dozen user interface controls (such as Button, CheckBox, Date controls, GridView and Layout) that are designed to be used right out of the box, or to be tweaked with styles. If you need full control over the look and feel, the appearance of any control can be fully determined by templates and control behavior can be modified by hooking events, or ultimately by creating custom controls.
• Expression Studio 2 Beta: Expression Studio 2 works seamlessly with Visual Studio to enable better designer and developer collaboration. New features include PHP support in Expression Web, and support for Silverlight in Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Media Encoder and Expression Design.
• SQL Server Data Services: Microsoft announced a preview of SQL Server Data Services, a building block service designed for developers and businesses that need scalable, easily programmable and cost-effective data storage with robust database query capabilities. MIX08 attendees will be able to register for an invitation-only beta of Microsoft SQL Server Data Services.

“One issue we heard repeatedly during the IE7 beta concerned sites that looked fine in IE6 but looked bad in IE7. The reason was that the sites had worked around IE6 issues with content that – when viewed with IE7’s improved Standards mode – looked bad.

As we started work on IE8, we thought that the same thing would happen in the short term: when a site hands IE8 content and asks for Standards mode, that content would expect IE7’s Standards mode and not appear or function correctly.

In other words, the technical challenge here is how can IE determine whether a site’s content expects IE8’s Standards mode or IE7’s Standards mode? Given how many sites offer IE very different content today, which should IE8 default to?

Our initial thinking for IE8 involved showing pages requesting “Standards” mode in an IE7’s “Standards” mode, and requiring developers to ask for IE8’s actual “Standards” mode separately. We made this decision, informed by discussions with some leading web experts, with compatibility at the top of mind.

In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly (using the http header/meta tag approach described here).”

I think it is about time the Internet Explorer team over at Microsoft is listening, Mozilla has been listening for years. I still prefer Firefox over IE for two simple reasons:

1. Add-ons. Mozilla’s Firefox has a very strong following and there are a ton of awesome add-ons available.

2. Security. I’ve never had one issue with security using Mozilla Firefox. One of my websites was hacked some months ago and BS javascript was added. I never noticed it nor had any issues because I was using Firefox 2. One day I decided to check how my site looked in IE7 and WHAM - pop-ups, browser crashes, and a few new programs were installed on my computer (not to mention all the stupid viruses).

I am kind of excited to see what Microsoft pulls out of their hats on IE8 - they always seem to surprise me.

Read more here. 

Today Intel announced their new line of low-power processors which are specifically designed for mobile internet devices (MIDs). I think this is huge news for what is to come in the near future from Apple, Microsoft and others.

The Atom (formerly called “Silverthorne”) and the Atom Centrino (formerly called “Menlow”) are based on an entirely new micro-architecture designed specifically for small (Intel Atom’s measure 25 mm², making it Intel’s smallest and lowest power processor yet), low power devices while maintaining the Intel Core 2 Duo instruction set compatibility consumers are accustomed to and includes support for multiple threads (better performance and increased system responsiveness).

Here is an image of the new killer processor:

Click here to read more on the new Intel Atom

The other night I was organizing all my files, pictures, and music on my computer and I realized if I were to lose even one folder I would be screwed. Normally I run backups every night using an external drive but I never really checked it. I decided to check my backup drives to make sure everything was working properly and the data was there, it wasn’t.

Now just so you know, at one time or another my backup drives were working properly and when I needed to restore any data it was not that hard. For some reason my main backup drive had failed and then data was lost but fortunately for me I still had everything on my main drives. That got me thinking, what is the best and easiest solution out there for backing up my data without worrying about replacing hard drives or making sure everything is running properly. I am an IT guy by day, I don’t want to be an IT guy at home.

A few hours later I found the solution I was looking for and it was a bit overwhelming. I posted my question for a remote backup solutions in many forums, blogs, as well as emailing my IT friends and colleagues; almost everyone said “Mozy“. So I went to the Mozy website and signed up for their MozyHome Free account, 2GB’s of storage! Here is a few features Mozy offers to all their customers, free and paid:

* Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
* 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
* 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
* Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
* New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
* Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
* Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.
* MozyHome currently supports Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4
* MozyPro supports Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista.

Those are some pretty slick services and support for no up front or monthly charges. Whats really cool is their software that is installed on your computer. The application itself runs in the background and has a very small footprint with regards to your memory (RAM) and CPU utilization. Another cool feature is how you can set the amount of bandwidth you want it to use during backups. Because I have a cable modem I set that puppy as high as it can go but for anyone out there who has DSL or less you can throttle it to whatever you need.

Whether your looking for a backup solution or not, Mozy is the only free, full-featured remote backup service. Get peace of mind - click here to try Mozy today.