I've had AT&T's U-verse service since October 2009, the day we moved into our house. At it's heart, it's really a fantastic service offering... IPTV, whole home DVR, advanced DSL, all wrapped up into a nice package. But for the last 6 months I've been struggling with a lot of different issues ranging from broken DVRs, freezing TV signal to Internet connections that go away at random. While the issues have not been persistent enough to track down an exact cause, they've been frustrating. The other day, after watching Face Off on HBO (for the first time, I know) and getting right to the climax of the movie, the whole TV signal froze and wouldn't come back. It was 1AM and my wife was already sleeping, so I muted by frustration and went to be deciding to look into alternatives the next day. Monday, I called up the two traditional cable providers in the area looking for pricing. Then, I hit Twitter with my plan:

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Late winter, early spring... it's that time of year where the entire technology world begins to wonder about what Apple has planned for the next version of the iPhone, which, come late June will be the device that sets the trend for mobile technology into the next year. Like it or hate it, the iPhone is the standard that all Android, WebOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phones must either match or surpass to be taken seriously. So what will this phone feature? It's impossible to tell until Steve Jobs takes the stage to tell us, and even then there will still be many unanswered questions until it gets into the hands of the consumer. Even though the release of the next generation iPhone happens like clock work, I'm still constantly asked questions like "when will the next iPhone be out" or "should I wait to buy it?" -- This article serves to help anwser those questions right now. By the way, if you thought I mistaken when I said Steve Jobs will take the stage, let me clarify:

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It's been somewhat disgusting to watch tech blogs and Twitter today discuss Steve Jobs' health based off rumors and unconfirmed photographs. Let the guy get better and give him some privacy. I'm not going to lend more space to this because aside from what the shareholders and consumers need to know about the absence in his role as CEO of Apple, what happens in his personal health is his business. Why give credence to grocery store check out stand trash? Can we all agree to leave the rumors to the release of the products, and the facts to the health of a human being?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C4PVmkJKsk I'm a pretty heavy Gmail user, and my ties to their mail service are only going to get deeper once my day job puts their mail infrastructure on "the Googles" in the coming months. I obviously put a lot of faith in Google's ability to protect my data, both from theft but also from destruction. But as an sysadmin, I know that people make mistakes. Systems fail. Sometimes using Gmail does have hiccups. Sometimes I mistakes. (Rare I know, but possible.) It's not just Gmail though where my data is stored in the cloud. As an avid photographer I have quite a collection of image on Flickr, and then there is my social presence on Facebook and Twitter. How does one go about protecting all of this data that is created, but stored on systems not under their control? For me, it's Backupify.

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Today was an interesting day in the tablet world. We learned that what was left of Palm has now officially been smashed into HP, and that HP is serious about really building on the momentum that Palm had started to build with webOS. HP announced a plethora of new things today (which you can read more about over at Engadget, who I stole/borrowed the wonderful chart above from) but the most interesting today was their new tablet, the HP TouchPad. I have been getting a lot of crap from people for talking a lot about Apple on this site recently. If you're bothered by this, feel free to stop reading now, or write your own articles. Fact of the matter is, they're key to a lot of the technology I'm interested in right now and they execute it better than anyone else.

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The boys who cried wolf (AKA The Wall Street Journal, et al) are all indicating that Tuesday will be the announcement of the long awaited iPhone 4 on Verizon. I hope they're finally right. Not because I'm going to switch, no, I'm actually pretty satisfied with my AT&T service, having been a customer for a long while before the launch of the first iPhone. I'll just be glad when the noise makers and complainers can have another option. I hope that Verizon's network works better for them than AT&T (although I kinda also hope it's just as bad) so that they'll shut up. I also look forward to another network getting some of the load so that my service will be even more reliable than it already is. I can't be alone in this thinking, if AT&T's network is so god damn horrible across the entire country as the people in San Fransisco and New York make it out to be, no one would use it. Fact is, myself and millions of other subscribers made the choice to use it long before the iPhone. I even used to live down the street from the world headquarters of Sprint, and still used AT&T because I got better service. I'm not discounting that there are people with horrible AT&T service. I've been places where that is the case, I know people who have this problem on a regular basis. It sucks, but chances are no has one forced you to use an iPhone this whole time. I'll also be glad when this golden phone finally does arrive, so we can stop obsessing about it. The phone will come out, AT&T's subscriber numbers will slightly decrease, Verizon will see an increase, Apple's profits will go up. The sun will still rise in the east and set in the west. Choice is good, but the tech world needs to stop treating this like we're awaiting the second coming of Christ, and treat this like what it is, like what happens all around the world with the iPhone on multiple carriers. The same phone, on another network. (Image credit to Gizmodo, from back in 2005, proof people hated them before the iPhone)

If the recent Gawker password breach (re)taught us anything, it's the old and valued lesson of "don't use the same password everywhere" -- but as often as I repeat that phrase and cringe a little bit when I find out someone else did it, I've been just as guilty of this cardinal sin of network security myself... from time to time. It's hard not to. When you're as active on the Internet as I am, it's impossible to resist the urge to duplicate passwords, especially if you're against writing them down. So you're left to memorize them all, hope you don't forget, and hope that you can later rely on the splendid password reset via email later on. All of the Gawker fun also taught (or should have taught) website administrators like myself to take better care of their users. Gawker fouled up in a huge way (beyond simply exposing user data) by not taking proper steps to secure the information in their database once it was exposed. Gawker used an easily crackable cipher system (DES) which was depreciated by a new industry standard (AES) long ago.

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The folks at Coveroo have been kind enough to allow TechVirtuoso to give away three of their custom device covers to our fans! This is an awesome service that Coveroo provides, one we've reviewed in the past, and I use one of their custom laser engraved covers on my iPhone all the time. This is the simplest contest we've probably ever run. In order to promote our Facebook fan page, we're going to give away the covers to three randomly selected fans. Nothing you have to do except "Like" us on Facebook. We'll be announcing the winners of the give away, exclusively on our Facebook page, these days:

• Friday, December 10, 2010
• Monday, December 13, 2010
• Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Look for a posting around noon (central time) each day. As we expect more people to become our fans through the course of this contest, your chances of winning early are better than later. You can easily become our fan by visiting facebook.com/techvirtuoso or just by clicking on the "Like" button on the Facebook widget in the site sidebar. If you just can't wait for the chance to win a custom cover of your own, you can also order one from Coveroo using our special 15% code, XMAS15, good from now until Christmas Day. They ship fast and make great personalized holiday gifts. While you're at it, be sure to follow facebook.com/coveroo as thanks for offering this great discount and free contest to our visitors! They give away a free cover ever Wednesday!

I'm a huge fan of Evernote. It ranks right up there with Gmail in terms of applications I live my life in. When people sit down with it for a while and begin to use it, or have someone explain all the interesting ways it can enhance their productivity, it doesn't surprise me that they become as hooked to it as I am. I first became exposed to it when I got an iPhone 3G in 2008. It had existed as a platform a couple years before that and was popular with the Windows Mobile & Tablet PC crowd, but wasn't really on my radar. At the time, I dismissed it as nothing more than a note taking app for the iPhone. The only reason I started using it was because I wanted something that would sync the notes on my iPhone to another system, since iTunes didn't do it at the time. Not really something I'd adjust my workflow around. Sure I'd used it off and on, but it hasn't been until the last few months that I've come to realize all the ways it can be used. It's more than just a simple mobile app, it exists on nearly every platform and helps sync your documents, notes, images and throughts between computers and between mobile devices. Their cloud keeps all your clients linked together and helps put the data and knowledge you keep in their service ready for use at any time. I've decided to share some of the exciting ways I use (or have seen it used) to make myself more organized, more productive and less scatter brained. Evernote has begun to replace my normal Windows file system for keeping track of data. Now obviously, when I say everything I don't mean put your iTunes library in Evernote, or your Adobe Lightroom catalog. No, I'm talking about all your text files, PDFs and screenshots. The stuff that the normal system administrator has scattered all around their hard drives, but would greatly benefit from a centralize repository.

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Most system administrators can tell you about the importance of being organized but few can pull it off very well. We're always being pulled in different directions, by different people. There are always those fires that need to be put out ASAP, sometimes at the least opportune times. So it's hard to always make the most efficient use of your time and keep things organized. We'd like to see what are some of the ways our visitors try and stay organized. What are the tools and methods you use to keep track of projects, your personal calendar, tasks, your files, your notes, etc. We welcome our visitors to post a comment in this thread and let us know what are the ways you keep yourself on track. We'll gather up the best ones and share them in another post, and for a couple of the best ones we have something special to give away to you. (It's a secret) To get you started I'll give you an example of my personal tools:

There is one program I use on every system and mobile device that helps me keep track of things. The main one is Evernote. It's a great piece of software that runs on all my Windows boxes, as well as my iPhone and Blackberry. It can keep track of screenshots and sync them into the cloud and to all my other devices. I also have the Chrome plugin installed so when I find something I need to remember (for instance, steps to fix a problem) I can highlight it and with a couple clicks instantly import it into Evernote. Since there are clients on both my iPhone and Blackberry when I'm on the go and need to make a note of something I can write it down or snap a picture and sync it up into the system for later use. Evernote also gives you an email address that you can add to your contacts to forward important emails into the system with. I have that setup with both my personal email and business email, so important emails get dumped into Evernote for quick retrieval. Evernote helps keep my thoughts, findings and important documentation easily accessible.

There you go, it's that easy. So lets hear how you keep yourself organized!