The Great Lakes Geek Show

There seems to be a lack of true programmers in the current Internet-centric scene. You need real back end developers besides the pretty front end stuff. And I don’t care if you use the LAMP stack or Microsoft’s platform or what – but you’ve got to be able to program, not just rearrange components from a library or tweak prewritten templates in order to be a true web developer. http://www.greatlakesgeek.com/glg/one-minute.htm

2010 sure was an interesting year in the tech, science and business worlds that the Great Lakes Geek lives in.In fact, it was hard to keep up with it all. I have stacks of paper and gigabytes of digital content to consume and I may never catch up.

You are probably in the same boat. So in 2011 we are going to add to our lengthier podcasts and video casts with a quickie weekly podcast.

If you have a minute (maybe 90 seconds tops) listen in each week.

So how do you come up with a list of the Top Tech Titans in Town? That's what I did for my March column in Inside Business magazine. The January issue listed the most powerful Business people in town and I thought Tech needed its own list. Hear the rationale behind some of the selections and the categories. By popular request I also publish the Top Ten in the the popular vote. And I include the Up and Comers category which got cut from the magazine version.

In these days of Web 2.0, Google and Twitter it is easy to forget that the largest computer company in the world is Big Blue, IBM. Sam Palmisano was keynote speaker at the annual Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit on October 6, 2009. He used the occasion to introduce IBM's new Personal DNA Sequencer Project. He also spoke about the health care system and the 4 essential qualities of any reliable system.

And IBM knows systems!

Windows 7 launches on October 22. So is this going to be another version like the troubled Windows ME or Vista or more like the robust and popular Windows 98 and Windows XP? The Great Lakes Geek has been testing Windows 7 for several months and will give you the scoop in a series of podcasts on the new OS. This first podcast deals with the 3 main problem areas of Windows Vista and sees what Windows 7 does to correct them.

Imagine you go to the Doctor and have a routine CT scan. Thousands of CT scans are done every day. What if the scan accidentally finds spots on your lungs? You don’t have any symptoms so the Doctor tells you to go home and forget about it for 3-6 months. Yeah right. You go home and worry that you have lung cancer. In 3-6 months you go back, have another scan and the Doctor checks to see if the spots changed or grew. I saw the inReachTM System from superDimension at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit this week. It lets doctors get to those spots without surgery so that the patient can have peace of mind and/or treatment started earlier.

Twitter and other Social Media have brought us new platforms and opportunities to connect with other people. The key is to maximize the effectiveness of your connections. For example, if you just follow people who think exactly like you do, it may feel good to have your views reinforced but do you actually learn anything? Valdis Krebs is a social network analyst. He has some interesting strategies for maximizing the effectives of your social media relationships.

Social media is hot. Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are surging in popularity. Such popularity brings out the bad guys who try to exploit and profit from it. We may not be in a security mindset as much as we need to be when we are using social media because the posts are from our friends – and we trust them. Social Media Security expert Tom Eston gives advice on staying safe when using social media. http://www.greatlakesgeek.com

Why would 1000 or so people come together on a hot July night to spend a few hours with people that they probably have never met? Networking opportunities of course. Drew Grdina hosted a meet up for Clevelanders who use the social networking platform LinkedIn. The large and proactive crowd could be a reflection of the economy or just a reflection of the eagerness of people in NE Ohio to make things happen. Whatever their reason for attending, these 1000 people are rewriting the rules by using online social media to create real world relationships.

How many in boxes do you have? Our guest today has 23 in boxes including one he just discovered on his WII. So how can a marketing professional ever hope to reach all those in-boxes? Similarly, 15-20 years ago there were only a handful of ways to reach potential customers – TV, radio, print, etc. Now there are over 30! But don’t worry. Jeff Rohrs knows that this is a crazy time ranging from the evolution of the inbox to new venues in social media. His expert advice in this podcast will help you decide on a practical strategy to reach your prospects.

Many of us have been so wrapped up in social media – Linked In, Facebook, Twitter and the like – that we haven’t really considered how they change things from an employer’s perspective. Can you screen interviewees by what’s on their Facebook page? Can you ask an employee for their social media password? In this podcast 2 expert attorneys from Brouse McDowell answer some of the legal questions of social media.

Reach for a relationship, not for someone’s wallet. Be authentic and genuine. Sound like a Sunday School class? Nope, it’s some sound business advice from Brad Kleinman. Brad just completed the 3rd annual eMarketing Techniques Conference in Cleveland and has learned a thing or two about using social media tools for business. We caught up with Brad Kleinman during the e vent and learned more about the successful show and speakers that focuses on Social Media. Brad also shared a few of his winning tips for doing business on Facebook.

Having innovative institutions of higher learning in a community has a positive effect on the entire community. When the institution is held in high esteem nationally and globally, as is Case Western Reserve University, the technologies and innovations that they create and attract can tremendously impact a region. Case’s annual CollabTech event featured 3 world-class announcements any one of which would be a feather in the cap of any university. In this podcast, CASE CIO Lev Gonick discusses the event and these 3 possibly game-changing collaborations.

There are two kinds of people out there – those who get Twitter and those who don’t. It’s easy for someone to grasp the usefulness of a social network like LinkedIn or Facebook but a lot of people have a problem understanding the value of frequent 140 character messages on Twitter. Jason Therrien of Thunder::Tech uses Twitter himself and for his clients as another tool in their marketing and branding kit. In this podcast, he shares some reasons why you might want to tweet and gives some useful tips.

Hot dogs, nachos, popcorn and other such foods are common at the ballpark. But they aren't the most healthy food choices you can make. Until now you didn't have a lot of options if you wanted healthier snacks while watching the Cleveland Indians. In 2009, you can choose healthy, delicious food items at Progressive Field as the Tribe teams up with Cleveland Clinic. Go Tribe and pass the Baba ghanoush!

No matter what your politics, the secret ballot should be held sacrosanct in the US. The secret ballot lets people vote how they want without fear of intimidation or retribution. It’s the American way. As Steve Forbes says in this podcast, removing secret ballots is “more of a Soviet style way of doing a union election.”

In this snippet from a conference call, Steve Forbes focuses on the two most glaring problems with the Employee Free Choice Act which he calls the Employee Forced Choice Act, the removal of the secret ballot and the binding arbitration clause.

All entrepreneurs make mistakes but you rarely hear about the failures. Everyone likes to talk about their successes but there is real value in learning about the mistakes that others have made – and how they fixed them – so that you won’t fall into the same traps in your own ventures. Plain Dealer writer Marcia Pledger has collected 100 or so of her popular My Biggest Mistake columns into a book with the tagline Lessons from the Entrepreneurial front lines.

Just try and read the trade press and avoid terms like The Cloud, Virtualization and Software as a Service (SaaS). It can't be done! But these concepts still generate some confusion. In this podcast, Woody Walton explains Microsoft's offerings such as MOS, BPOS and Hyper-V for Virtualization. And how Software + Services can provide a richer user experience than pure SaaS from a thin client browser.

We are all patients or future patients. That’s the statement made by Chris Coburn, executive Director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations. But the innovations presented at the annual Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovations Summit have as much to do with economics as medicine. Coburn speaks about some medical innovations on the horizon, but his frank opinions on the economy are noteworthy. As he says, the New Economy is alive and well in the 40 or so block around the Clinic. Listen to where we stand outside those 40 blocks.

The Corporate Club series of business networking lunches at Landerhaven kicked off its 20th year with the annual Economic Forecast event. Richard DeKaser, Senior VP & Chief Economist, National City Bank was the speaker. Landerhaven CEO Harlan Diamond told MC Michael Settonni why they started Corporate Club and about some of the deals that were made there – such as Gateway and the deal to bring Cleveland Cavs GM Danny Ferry back to the team.

A lot has changed in education and technology in the last 20 years so who better to bring us up to date then an expert in both fields. Lev Gonick is the CIO of Case Western Reserve University. This means that he has the duties, and headaches, of a CIO as well as the opportunities and challenges in dealing with thousands of really bright students who have only seen punch cards in museums. Listen as Lev Gonick explains why this is such an exciting time for technology and education

In these, or any, economic times, ‘free’ sure sounds good. And free software sounds great to a small business. But , says developer Joseph James Franz, you should think of it as ‘free’ as in free speech rather than ‘free’ as in free lunch. Franz helped organize Free and Open Software (FOSS) Day in Cleveland in 2008. In this podcast, Franz explains FOSS and gives reasons for and against its adoption.

When you ask someone what is their biggest achievement, their children are a common answer. And Henry Winkler answered the same way, albeit with a bit of humor. But then he talks about his learning disability and how he overcame it. Who knew that the Fonz was dyslexic? Winkler has written a series of books about kids like himself and he offers advice to parents of children with learning challenges.