Here at The Killswitch Collective, we are frequently building applications that are integrated into the sites we design. Depending on the needs of our clients, these applications can keep track of sales, visitors, registered user activity, you name it. Building these applications is in itself a significant task for our teams of programmers, but for our clients it is only the first step. As we turn over the finished product to our clients, they now have a business decision to make:

Do we simply let our employees using the software figure out how to use it by themselves? Or do we give them formal training in how to use the application?.

This is where research comes in. We strive to program all of our applications as intuitively as possible to keep the learning curve low, but ultimately each business we serve has its own employees with their own unique set of strengths and challenges. Developing training strategies can play a significant role in a company's adoption of new technology with both current and future employees.

Research helps to narrow down what sort of skills your company's personnel should be able to acquire in a training regimen. For simple, straight-forward functions, proficiency may be gleaned from nothing more than help documentation and a little one-on-one time with the software. For more involved applications and workflows, however, it might be necessary for more advanced training. For example, let's say that a site keeps track of sales records, and the easiest way to manipulate this data is to convert it to an Excel format. Excel is a very useful tool for making sense of numbers and drawing correlations between groups of data. Despite its popularity, however, there are still many people in the workforce with little to no experience with the software.

Taking this scenario into account, what would be the best approach to train these people in Excel? A how-to book? An Excel seminar? Hands on training? All of the above? The answer may be different for each organization and ultimately is factored by the overall expense, content expectation and return on investment. To put it most simply:

"What is the most effective way to get my employees to learn _____?"

1. Enroll employees into a training class.

Classes put on by third-parties are usually cost-effective thanks to the group environment. Most instructors have a class size limit (often no more than 30 students) so there is still a degree of one-on-one interaction with the teacher. If there are questions about the subject matter, most instructors are more than willing to help.

Advantages: Affordable (while limited) one-on-one support for students. Reinforceable materials are supplied and resources are developed. Fosters teamwork between cooperating students in the class.

Weaknesses: No oversight on the part of the employer. Classes are often 'one size fits all', so you run the risk of sending students who may find the subject matter to be too basic or too advanced.

2. Send employees to a seminar.

Seminars are by definition large gatherings of people that are there for the same purpose. Most seminars, especially those dealing with technologies, are quickly becoming popular (and crowded) events. Attendance can easily reach from the hundreds into the thousands.

Advantages: Plenty of documentation and information is available. The large numbers can often draw vendors touting the latest technologies and free software samples. Seminars give attendees the chance to network and make contacts with other people in their field.

Weaknesses: The large events can provide distractions from the goal of the seminar: training. One missed keynote lecture or hands-on-event can render a seminar ineffective. Participants have to be active learners to acquire the information they need. One-on-one support can be difficult to find due to the large numbers.

3. Hire a consultant to train employees in-house.

While owning the training facility is obviously a cost-saver, not all offices are adequately equipped or spacious enough to provide an effective training atmosphere.

Advantages: The cost is minimal if the company owns the necessary equipment (computers, white boards, sound equipment, projectors, etc). There are more consultants than seminars and classes available, which gives your company more leverage to broker a cost-effective deal.

Cons: Training either has to occur during the work day (which can impede daily workflow), or on the employees' own time over lunch, before/after work or on weekends (which would require cooperation and compensation). Either way, management should expect push-back and must be convinced of the value of the training.

4. Build your own training regimen.

This can be a daunting task unless you have a good support system, a competent research team and are confident understanding of your employees' skill levels. Many companies have pursued this route and find someone within the company who is an expert in the subject matter. They are asked, "What would you need if you were to learn the subject over? What would need if you wanted to learn the more advanced aspects of this subject?"

Advantages: If the company has subject matter experts who are comfortable with speaking and teaching, this can be extremely cost-effective since they are already on the payroll. It's cheaper to give a nice gift or small pay raise as a thank you than to pay thousands of dollars for any of the other training options. This training can promote teamwork within the company, and it gives employees a comfort level knowing that the expert will still be at the company after training is over.

Cons: Not every workplace has personnel with both the subject matter expertise and the ability to speak with confidence and competence. If an employee is pressured to do so, their training session could be disastrous and leave others questioning management's ability. While peer-to-peer training can have a pleasant familiarity to it, the students may not give the teacher the respect that an outside consultant would receive.

These are certainly not the only options so research, ask around, weigh the evidence and make your choice.

For a few years I have been experimenting with virtualization software and technology. Virtualization is not new, and chances are that some of the programs you use on a daily basis using simulation. Manufacturers want to pack as many features as possible into their products and virtualization allows them to create more attractive offerings to purchasers.

It has been only recently, however, that virtualization has caught the public eye as software has evolved to the level where entire operating systems can now be virtualized. Thanks to virtualization Macs can now run Windows, PC's can run Linux and a single computer can run several systems simultaneously. For Killswitch, virtualization means the ability to assess our development solutions in different computing environments without incurring the overhead of purchasing new machines.

Pros and Cons of Virtualization

Here are some possible benefits of integrating virtualization into your workflow:

1. It allows businesses and power users to test and assess solutions in different environments and configurations on a single machine.
2. It gives businesses the ability to test out a new system without having to purchase dedicated hardware for it.
3. It gives power users and businesses the flexibility to switch between different operational environments (for example, between desktop work and local server environments).
4. It saves money because a system can run on pre-existing hardware.

There can, however, be certain drawbacks:

1. Older hardware may not have the processing power to successfully run the native system, virtualization and the guest system.
2. Some functions and features may not work correctly if there are system incompatibilities with the hardware.
3. Memory limitations may prohibit the environment you are trying to test from properly installing.

Overcoming Obstacles

In my opinion, the biggest obstacles to widespread virtualization are memory limitations and company end user policies. We are barely breaking out of the 4 GB memory limitation that has plagued the computing world for the past several years. Finally there are motherboards that allow users to upgrade from the 4 gigabyte limit to 8 or 16 GB, provided you use the right processor and operating system. The more memory available on a system, the better a computer running virtual systems can handle errors and bottlenecks.

The other problem, which is progressively getting more annoying, is a company's EULA. I understand a company's need to protect its profit margin, but that should not come at the cost of consumer satisfaction. Allowing virtualization of a product does not take away from it; in fact, if the product in question is stable and user friendly, that product will fly off the shelves!

Let's say that your computer is running Ubuntu, but a piece of software you need is available for Windows only, there simply is no equivalent for the Ubuntu platform. What's a user to do? Obviously, you could go out, spend a lot of money and buy a new Windows machine to that one program. Thanks to virtualization, however, you can now load a copy of Parallels Linux on your machine and install Windows XP or Vista. Note: Virtualizing Vista Business and Ultimate violates the software's EULA. If anything goes wrong, you are on your own.

Here at Killswitch we primarily use Macintosh computers, so virtualizing Windows XP has come in handy. At one point we had a client who misplaced some Flash source files that were used to create a .swf file on their site. Wanting to change the content in this .swf file, we needed a SWF decompiler (and we needed it fast). Though we were concerned when we found out the program we needed was Windows only, we were quickly relieved as it ran perfectly on our Macs using Parallels.

Based on my personal experience, here are some software virtualization solutions that I would recommend:

Mac Software

Parallels: This is one of the premiere software packages that you can use to emulate another computing environment. The interface is clear and everything is well explained. I use this both in the office and personally at home.

VMware: I have used VMware and it is right up there with Parallels. Some of the more advanced functions are a little complicated, but there are several tutorials online that can help clear up confusion.

Windows Software

Virtual PC: This software is a veteran commercial product and is a leading virtualization program for PCs with a robust feature set.

Virtual Box: This program is free and very straight forward. You can load Windows, Linux and other operating systems, as well as server environments.

Living with Regret

Many of my articles deal with researching and the effect it has on the company's dealings with clients. Now, I feel that another issue has to take the forefront: system and assets back-up. I have had the worst luck lately when dealing with computers, company data and the need to back things up. Working at a Web firm, it's easy to take backing up for granted because everything already has two copies: all the articles, client assets, help archives, etc. exist both on our local drives as well as on the Web servers. But this is the exception to the rule as most businesses don't have such redundancy in place.

I still can recall my personal data loss tragedies... One day I accidentally erased my first PC's 500MB drive trying to retrieve a paper I wrote for history class. Another day I lost all my documents, media and impressive collection of ms-dos based games to a suddenly defective drive. The memories haunt me...

Thanks to continually dropping technology prices, a back-up array or separate storage solution has fallen within reach of the average home user. Still, people are losing their data in their own personal tragedies every day, simply because data back-ups only gets serious consideration about five seconds too late.

A while ago, I consulted with a company on a new computer setup. Under normal circumstances, this should have been a simple, straight-forward, "Buy, Back-up, Program and Go." Unfortunately, their current computer was using Windows '98 and its drive had crashed an hour before I had gotten there. Once a Windows '98 drive has spun its last sector there's simply no hope. I had the unpleasant honor of explaining that their data and projects had gone to 'a better place', all because they hadn't taken my suggestion to pick up a 80GB back-up drive for an easy $70.

The data of any business is a precious commodity, and working without a back-up system is walking on a tightrope without a net. Thankfully, there are many data storage solutions that can meet the needs and budgets of business and personal users.

Hardware Solutions

One simple solution that a user can get either for business or personal use is a 1TB (terabyte) drive, an amount that is virtually impossible to fill without a vast media collection. While this drive is not lacking in capacity, I would be concerned that a drive failure would result in such an immense loss. Personally, I prefer to spread out all my data on multiple drives so that if one fails I have a copy of it somewhere else.

For a business or user that needs to back-up multiple computers, a networked or wireless drive may be an excellent solution. The D-Link DSM-G600 Wireless G Network Storage Enclosure allows you to place drives on a shared network. Another solution would be an attached network storage like the Iomega StorCenter 1TB WI-FI Network storage drive. The drives are already formatted and ready to go, and have wireless connectivity and network adapters for additional server storage.

For those users that need storage on a tight budget I would recommend one of two choices. A 500GB external drive like the Seagate Freeagent Desktop costs between $90-150. For the more ambitions, you can combine a 500GB hard drive (about $100 and getting cheaper) with an external enclosure (check out the Eagle Consus W-Series SATA to USB and the eSATA External Storage System (ET-CSWESU2-BK) Black).

I recently have been introduced to an innovative storage solution called Drobo, the world's first storage robot. I have to say the concept looks promising, I wish that I could get my hands on one to play with. Based on information from their site, here are some pros and cons of the Drobo:

Pros:

• You can swap drives (SATA only please) in and out of Drobo and data is automatically and redundantly redistributed to protect from drive failure. This is like RAID only better: I don't trust RAID based systems because of their rigid nature. With RAID, adding or removing a drive requires a full reboot and, depending on the RAID configuration, a single drive failure could still corrupt the whole array.
• No babysitting required, the Drobo takes care of itself.
• There's no loss of productivity between files and data while drive swapping.

Cons:

• The Drobo's price of $499 and up is a significant roadblock to becoming an early adopter. Keep an eye out for this price to start dropping, however, as the technology spreads.
• It only comes with USB 2.0 connections, eSATA and standard networking capabilities would have been welcome features.

While using an external drive is sufficient for many purposes, some users are turning to software solutions that help automate the back-up process.

Software Solutions for Macs

There is an integrated solution that ships with every new Mac called Time Machine. Time Machine makes a full copy of your computer's data when it is initialized and then simply records the changes made to your data. Its automation is paired with a fun, intuitive user interface that let's a user 'fly through time' to find the file that was deleted, edited or saved over. Thanks to its excellent integration within OSX and other peripherals like Time Capsule, Time Machine is the likely choice for backing up Macs.

One other possible solution is MacBackups which does online, offsite back-ups of your Mac.

Software Solutions for PCs

Nero offers a back-up feature in its Nero 8 software. It can automate the back-up process and allows for manual back-ups as well

Norton Ghost is also an excellent option. It's not a tradition back-up program in that you have to restart and load PC-dos in order to make your back-up. The benefit to this approach is that it can restore your entire computer with your programs intact rather than simply your documents.

I hope this is a resource that can help make your back-ups easy and painless, but no matter what, please, PLEASE, back up your files!