Category: Uncategorized

This could be the best traceroute ever. Open up a terminal window and type the following:

traceroute 216.81.59.173

(If you're on Windows, use tracert instead of traceroute.)

After the first few hops, you should see the introduction to a grand space opera:

11  episode.iv                        (206.214.251.1)  77.898 ms  83.567 ms  80.729 ms
12  a.new.hope                        (206.214.251.6)  78.125 ms  79.867 ms  76.998 ms
13  it.is.a.period.of.civil.war       (206.214.251.9)  84.702 ms  81.991 ms  77.786 ms
14  rebel.spaceships                  (206.214.251.14)  81.739 ms  94.703 ms  78.449 ms
15  striking.from.a.hidden.base       (206.214.251.17)  77.288 ms  84.864 ms  78.935 ms
16  have.won.their.first.victory      (206.214.251.22)  89.925 ms  79.885 ms *
17  against.the.evil.galactic.empire  (206.214.251.25)  91.228 ms  81.122 ms  83.124 ms
18  during.the.battle                 (206.214.251.30)  79.435 ms  82.330 ms  76.135 ms
19  rebel.spies.managed               (206.214.251.33)  78.177 ms  79.974 ms  81.228 ms
20  to.steal.secret.plans             (206.214.251.38)  85.614 ms  82.502 ms  90.142 ms
21  to.the.empires.ultimate.weapon    (206.214.251.41)  80.341 ms  79.733 ms  81.725 ms
22  the.death.star                    (206.214.251.46)  79.428 ms  80.002 ms  81.904 ms
23  an.armored.space.station          (206.214.251.49)  80.747 ms  85.361 ms  82.703 ms
24  with.enough.power.to              (206.214.251.54)  82.147 ms  80.090 ms  80.863 ms
25  destroy.an.entire.planet          (206.214.251.57)  87.073 ms  79.466 ms  88.023 ms
26  pursued.by.the.empires            (206.214.251.62)  78.770 ms  94.894 ms  79.687 ms
27  sinister.agents                   (206.214.251.65)  78.413 ms  80.727 ms  76.812 ms
28  princess.leia.races.home          (206.214.251.70)  77.705 ms  79.948 ms  79.108 ms
29  aboard.her.starship               (206.214.251.73)  86.378 ms  78.789 ms  80.382 ms
30  custodian.of.the.stolen.plans     (206.214.251.78)  88.709 ms  77.027 ms  83.119 ms
31  that.can.save.her                 (206.214.251.81)  77.918 ms  79.163 ms  85.892 ms
32  people.and.restore                (206.214.251.86)  81.502 ms  82.661 ms  81.129 ms
33  freedom.to.the.galaxy             (206.214.251.89)  79.759 ms  81.916 ms  87.590 ms
34  0-------------------0             (206.214.251.94)  84.763 ms  82.466 ms  83.961 ms
35  0------------------0              (206.214.251.97)  89.143 ms  77.974 ms  78.518 ms
36  0-----------------0               (206.214.251.102)  80.817 ms  79.579 ms  81.443 ms
37  0----------------0                (206.214.251.105)  84.709 ms  80.502 ms  82.793 ms
38  0---------------0                 (206.214.251.110)  90.891 ms  83.410 ms  83.009 ms
39  0--------------0                  (206.214.251.113)  169.193 ms  80.361 ms  78.529 ms
40  0-------------0                   (206.214.251.118)  82.773 ms  80.476 ms  82.109 ms
41  0------------0                    (206.214.251.121)  81.907 ms  82.454 ms  85.116 ms
42  0-----------0                     (206.214.251.126)  85.721 ms  82.598 ms  81.911 ms
43  0----------0                      (206.214.251.129)  83.042 ms  82.609 ms  80.083 ms
44  0---------0                       (206.214.251.134)  83.906 ms  83.379 ms  93.897 ms
45  0--------0                        (206.214.251.137)  88.520 ms  85.748 ms  93.967 ms
46  0-------0                         (206.214.251.142)  85.520 ms  77.582 ms
47  0------0                          (206.214.251.145)  87.702 ms  83.947 ms  88.497 ms
48  0-----0                           (206.214.251.150)  87.136 ms  80.356 ms  85.498 ms
49  0----0                            (206.214.251.153)  83.413 ms  85.810 ms  83.094 ms
50  0---0                             (206.214.251.158)  83.446 ms  85.608 ms  81.386 ms
51  0--0                              (206.214.251.161)  82.131 ms  83.794 ms  83.073 ms
52  0-0                               (206.214.251.166)  90.717 ms  86.770 ms  86.475 ms
53  00                                (206.214.251.169)  89.096 ms  90.207 ms  83.345 ms
54  i                                 (206.214.251.174)  80.697 ms  88.438 ms  85.522 ms
55  by.ryan.werber                    (206.214.251.177)  81.985 ms  87.495 ms  82.695 ms
56  when.ccies.get.bored              (206.214.251.182)  84.011 ms  82.933 ms  83.208 ms
57  ccie.38168                        (206.214.251.185)  87.235 ms  84.001 ms  83.992 ms
58  fin                               (206.214.251.190)  78.290 ms * *

Apparently, this is what CCIEs — Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts — do when they’re bored.

This article also appears in Mobilize!: The CTS Mobile Tech Blog.

Free Ebook: The Executive’s Guide to BYOD and the Consumerization of IT

If people you know are trying to work their way through the hedge maze of letting employees bring their own devices to work, give them the free ebook The Executive’s Guide to BYOD and the Consumerization of IT. It’s a collection of what TechRepublic and ZDNet consider to be some of their best recent articles on the topics of BYOD and its older, more generic cousin, the consumerization of IT.

Here’s a list of the articles contained within the book:

• Consumerization of IT, BYOD, and mobile device management
• Survey: 62% of companies to allow BYOD by year’s end
• Can BYOD make the IT department a hero again?
• BYOD in the midst of war: How IT consumerization is keeping the US military in touch with home
• Five security risks of moving data in the BYOD era
• Surface RT versus iPad: BYOD tablet showdown
• BYOD is on the rise in Asia, but challenges remain
• 10 reasons BYOD may be a bad fit for your organization
• Case study: How Dimension Data is reaping huge benefits via BYOD
• 10 questions on BYOD in the enterprise, with Peter Price, CEO of Webalo

Once again, the book is free. If you’re a member of TechRepublic, you can download it immediately; if you’re not, you’ll have to register first (it’s free).

Download the ebook here.

More Tidbits from Forrester’s Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends Report

In our previous post, we featured Forrester Research’s Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends report — yours for the low, low, low price of US$2495 — and showed some data on what smartphones and tablets were used and wanted by nearly 10,000 information workers in 17 countries surveyed.

Here are a few more tidbits from the report that you might find useful or interesting. Alas, we don’t have the “two and a half large” to spare for the full report, so we’re working with material culled from the report from sites with larger budgets.

• Forrester could tighten up their classification of “information worker”. Their definition is “people who use a computer to do their jobs an hour or more a day.” That could apply to just about anybody with a job in North America these days.
• Where do people use smartphones? Apparently, a lot of the “information workers” (or should I just say “everybody”?) surveyed use them everywhere, if you take the data to be accurate: they’re using them at home, on the way to and from work, and at work…
  • 64% said “at my work desk”,
  • 69% said “at home”, and
  • 64% said “while commuting”.
• Over one-third are willing to chip in for better gear. 36% of the survey respondents said that they’d be up for ponying their own money to help the company cover the cost of a computer of their choice. Forrester interprets this as “I’d like to throw in my own money on top of the company so that I get a Mac”, and we think they’re right.
• Dropbox is big. 70% of the respondents say they use it; half of them say they use it only for work.

Mobile Workers are “The New Norm”

IDC Canada’s Canadian Mobile Worker 2012–2016 Forecast — priced at CA$4,500, which makes Forrester’s Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends report look like a bargain — suggests that mobile workers are the new norm. They define a mobile worker as someone who does some of their work each week outside the office. 68.9% of employed Canadians — 12.1 million in total — fell into this category in 2012. They predict that by 2016, this fraction will climb to 73%, or 13.3 million working Canucks.

The Globe and Mail interviewed the author of IDC Canada’s report, Krista Napier, a senior analyst at IDC and also a board member at Toronto’s Mobile Experience Innovation Centre. Some quick hits from the interview:

• Mobile workers are more prevalent in smaller companies, where they work away from the office at least three days a week. We’ve seen this ourselves; it’s not all that common in Toronto’s startup/small tech company scene.
• BYOD in Canada:
  • In 2012, 48% of IDC’s survey respondents said that they were already using personal devices at their main workplace.
  • In the same year, about 30% of Canadian companies had a BYOD policy in place, with another 26% planning to have one in place by the end of the year. That still leaves 44% without any BYOD plans. These guys might want to have a word with us about our services.
• One device to rule them all? Not in the near future, anyway, say Napier. People these days own more, not fewer, devices, and tablets and smartphones are supplementing rather than replacing laptops outright. Napier often leaves her laptop at the office, preferring her tablet and large-factor smartphone (from the description, it sounds like a Samsung Galaxy Note) when she’s “out and about”.
• Mobile work has its downsides: Most importantly, less face-time can lead to less collaboration and missed opportunities. There’s a reason why the expression for doing something half-heartedly is “phoning it in”.

This article also appears in Mobilize! The CTS Mobile Tech Blog.

Forrester Research’s recent Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends report (yours for the price of US$2,495) is based on a survey of nearly 10,000 information workers from 17 countries, in which they were asked about their usage of desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. We didn’t spring for the full report, but we were able to glean some numbers from online sources and we’ll share them below.

“Anytime, Anywhere Workers” Up 25%

The photo at the top of this article of my own work setup: laptop, tablet and smartphone. As someone who uses three or more devices and works from a number of locations, Forrester would classify me as an “Anytime, anywhere” worker. Forrester’s report says that 23% of the workers surveyed in 2011 fell into this category; in 2012, that number increased by a quarter to 29%, meaning that nearly a third have three or more devices and move around a lot.

Smartphones: It’s Android’s and Apple’s World; We Just Live in It

Back in January, we pointed to a ComScore MobiLens report that indicated that the smartphone world is an Android/iOS duopoly, with Android taking 54% of the market and Apple taking 35%. The duopoly also exists in the business world, but it’s a much closer race, with Android taking 37% of the market, with iOS following closely behind at 34%. BlackBerry users make up 15%; Forrester also reports that in the financial sector, this share is 26%, and across North America, their share is 20%.

The workers surveyed were also asked what smartphones they currently had and which ones they wanted. Android has a slight lead over iOS in terms of currently-used phones, but iOS is ahead by 50% when it comes to the “What I want for my next smartphone” category. It appears that the BlackBerry camp are sticking with their devices; I’m sure a good number of them are the sort who love their physical keyboards. The surprise is the number of people who want their next phone to be a Windows Phone: 10% of those surveyed.

Tablets: iPad Rules the Roost, But is There Hope for Surface?

As we expected (see this earlier article of ours), the iPad is the most-used tablet among those surveyed, with over twice the share of the runner-up, Android. Windows tablets make up for 11%; since this survey was taken in the fourth quarter of 2012, it’s likely that many of these tablets aren’t Surface RTs runnign Windows RT, but Windows 7 “slates” such as Samsung’s Series 7.

The growing demand for tablets at work isn’t surprising. What is surprising is the demand among those surveyed for a Windows tablet as their next work tablet. Surface sales have been slow, which suggests that what people want is a tablet that can run desktop Windows applications and not just Windows RT apps. The Surface Pro might appear to be that machine at first blush, but it looks as though it lives in that neither-here-nor-there netherworld between tablet and laptop.

This article also appears in Mobilize!: The CTS Mobile Tech Blog.