I'm a rural-living person who often consults people on how to get broadband Internet connectivity to their middle-of-nowhere homes. There's some good news for most of those people. HughesNet, the big guy in the satellite Internet service space operated by Hughes Network systems (no relation), has announced that later this month they will begin offering what they're calling the ElitePremium plan, with download speeds available as fast as 5 megabits per second (mbps). That's up there speed-wise with what many cable companies provide, and is easily a competitor to DSL speed capabilities. It'll be available to order on August 21st.

Satellite Internet has some inherent latency between the time a request is sent and the resulting data is fed to you, since the distance the signal travels, even at the speed of light, is pretty darned far. Many VPN systems have a difficult time on Satellite, also due to the time-shift latency. But the "start" delay is not huge, and once the "faucet is open," 5 mbps is pretty darned fast.

That's about five times the download speed I get on my Internet connection, which is an excellent terrestrial wireless offering from a local provider (which is Cascade Networks, if you happen to live in the Longview, Washington or Columbia County, Oregon areas). An antenna on my roof points at a tower on a mountain about 11 miles away, and that's the option I use.

So, more options and much faster speeds for us non-city-dwellers. Not a bad deal!

Every now and then you'll discover a couple or few smaller apps that work well together, or alongside each other. The type of situation where you get the 2+2=5 effect. Individually both apps are great, but when used together they becomes something even more. "Two great tastes that taste great together," to borrow an old marketing phrase.

That's been the case for me with two iPhone apps - Shazam (iTunes store page) and Pandora (iTunes store page). Today I use them alongside each other. It's my hope that someday they will be able to communicate with each other and share information.

I've written about Pandora here before. It's a web app that happens to have an iPhone client as well, where you can start with music you like and it helps you find more music that fits your taste and style. You create channels, or stations, and the Pandora service selects similar music for your to hear, and you can fine tune as you go.

Shazam is another of those magical "wow" apps for the iPhone. I use it in the car when I hear a song I like. Rarely do I know the name of the song, or even the artist. But as it plays, I just tell Shazam to listen to a 12-second portion of the song (a process called "tagging"). It uploads the resulting data to the centralized service, and back comes all the information about the song - Artist, title, album, everything. It's really amazing, and in my experience 100% accurate. From there you can also find YouTube videos and launch into the iTunes store to buy the music you've tagged.

I'll often take the name of an artist I discover from Shazam and plug the info into Pandora and start listening there. It's a great way to quickly and relatively effortlessly drill down into new music I have never heard before, but it's music that I really like.

Now imagine if you could use Shazam to identify a song and then inside Shazam choose an option to create a channel based on that artist in Pandora. That would be awesome, truly awesome. I have no idea how "possible" it is, but I can hope. :)

On a similar note - meaning various apps that work great together - ReadWriteWeb published an article this past week with a list of apps that complement each other well (including my Shazam/Pandora combination).

My title for this post sort of spins the title of the article I want to point you to, aiming for the positive side of the coin. The article, which is entitled "The Top 5 Reasons Tech Execs Fail," provides a set of bullet-pointed thoughts that can be read as a list of what tech execs need to do in order to succeed. I happen to agree with the authors' assessment.

Here's the short version of Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher's five points, slightly altered to read as a list of positive attributes of a successful tech leader:

5. Ability to Build World Class Team
4. Ability to Execute
3. Ability to Lead/Motivate/Inspire
2. Ability to Manage Operationally
1. Displays and Uses Financial Acumen

The authors point out in their article, "... when technology executives fail, it is not because they lack an individual skill. It is because they lack an an adequate balance of the many technical, operational and leadership skills necessary to make them a complete manager."

You should listen to your online friends. They often have great ideas, like in this case. I was recently turned onto a simple but effective alternative to bulky plastic cases and leather holsters for my new iPhone 3G. It's called the invisible SHIELD . The product, simply put, is pretty darned terrific. You hardly know it's there, and it protects like crazy. You can also get invisibleSHIELD for the iPhone first-generation device.

Now, let me tell you right up front that when it comes time to "install" the shield on your phone, you'll need a clean work surface, a little patience, 12 to 24 hours to let your shield "cure" on the phone,  and the ability to read and follow some simple instructions. If you make sure you have those few key things taken care of, all will go well.

In the video below I show and abuse my iPhone 3G (the only one I own...) with an Invisible Shield installed. In the video you can see that there are a couple scratches under the shield. Those came from a combination of iPhone and the keys in my pocket (before I ordered the invisibleSHIELD . In fact it was those exact scratches, which I got the first day I had the phone, that prompted me to find a real, working anti-scratching solution.



I can highly recommend the Invisible Shield.

Full disclosure: Zagg (the manufacturer of the invisibleSHIELD ) doesn't know I am doing this review. I found their product all on my own based on a real need, and clicking on the advertisement below takes you to my link on their product site - If you buy something there I'll get a small chunk of the change you spend. If you don't like that idea, no problem - just go to zagg.com and click through to the iPhone 3G page (or whatever product you want to cover and protect - For me, my MacBook Air is next).

  

I especially appreciated the Mojave Experiment that Microsoft recently shared with the world (where Vista-negative opinions were tested with a "new" version of Windows, code-named Mojave; it was then revealed to the participants after seeing the new version that what they were looking at was actually Vista). I've been using Vista since well before I came onto the market, and I can hardly stand to use WIndows XP computers anymore. Anyhow, check out http://www.mojaveexperiment.com if you haven't seen it, especially if you have a negative opinion of Vista today based on what you've heard from others. (Note: Scientifically speaking, the "experiment" would be badly flawed, but it's a marketing campaign and in that light it's pretty darned smart if you ask me. Plus, I've lost track of how may people who, never having seen Vista yet having a negative perception, decided to upgrade after trying for a couple hours (on my laptop) at my suggestion. With SP1 installed, for the record. Seriously, group think and manipulation goes both directions).

For those of us who are using Vista (or any other OS for that matter), it's nice to be able to fine-tune a computer system so it will perform the way we want it to. For Vista, Microsoft has released a document called Windows Vista Performance and Tuning as part of their Springboard series, which lets users know about a number of tweaks and decisions they can make to make the OS work well for their needs. It also effectively spells out in fairly plain language some relatively complex information.

Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and responsiveness, Windows Vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the system’s usability.This guide looks at the following areas of performance improvement:

• Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you use it.
• Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
• Making configuration changes that help a computer to start faster.
• Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
• Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop problems before they get too big.

There are a variety of other guides out there as well, but this one hits a number of important nails on the head that the average computer user can easily understand and use.

Last week we published an interview that Richard and I did on RunAs Radio with my friend and former co-worker, Simon Goldstein. Simon's a real pro and is good at explaining complicated business relationships and processes.

We cover risk management for IT professionals: What is it, what do you need to know, and why does it matter? As with all of our weekly RunAs Radio shows, it's about 30 minutes long and we cover a lot of ground in that time.

RunAs Radio, Show 67 - Simon Goldstein on IT Risk Management (38 minutes)

Note: You can find all our podcast feeds in the table here, and you can also subscribe to get the show every week in iTunes by clicking here.