Have I ever mentioned that I love SimCity? Not the last terrible version Electronic Arts called, “SimCity Societies.” That game isn’t about city building as much as it is about nannying the citizenry. No, I like to build the cities far more than I like to manage them. For me, SimCity 4 was the last real version of SimCity (released way back in 2003).

Cities XL, by Monte Cristo, is a city building and simulation game in the spirit of SimCity 4. It will be released in the US on Friday, October 9. This game builds on all the best parts of SimCity, but modernizes it in several important ways. I recently downloaded a demo of the game and played it for a week. Here are my thoughts and observations:

Cities XL Screenshot from citiesxl.com

3D Camera. Finally, the camera can be moved around 360 degrees and moved vertically from high above the ground all the way down to street level. But this game very badly needs the support of the 3dConnexion SpaceNavigator to make camera motion easier and more intuitive. Please, please, please!

Avatar. At the beginning of the game, you create your avatar. It represents you in various ways throughout the game, including an avatar mode where you can control your avatar on the streets of your city (another good use for the SpaceNavigator, by the way).

Landscapes. I was able to experiment with only three maps in the demo I was using. The three maps included a volcano landscape, a mountain lake, and an ocean-side beach. All three maps were larger than the largest maps in SimCity. Each offers varying amounts of resources like oil and fresh water. The maps are richly detailed and contain considerable elevation variation.

Utilities and Resources. The first building you place is your town hall. After that, you place a structure called the All-In-One. It provides important resources such as fuel, oil, water, electricity and waste management. Eventually, as your city grows, it will need more of these resouces than can be provided by the starter facility. It’s necessary, then, to scout for the availability of resouces, such as fresh water. If the resource is available, you can build a water tower. If not, you need to buy the resource from a neighboring city (or the ever-expensive in-game conglomerate called OmniCorp).

Road Network. Roads come in a full variety of sizes, from a narrow dirt farm road, through single-lane streets, and up to small and large avenues. The roads can be straight, angled, or curved (or any mixture of those three). The roads can be elevated and cross over/under each other, as well as intersect at various angles. Sadly, the demo didn’t provide access to more advanced transportation networks like highways, rail, water, or air.

City Services. As your city grows, the game reveals additional functional structures you can add. These include security (police), health, education, and fire protection. Placement of these structures makes your citizenry happier and more likely to attract a higher class of resident.

Zoning. Much like SimCity, you build your city by zoning. You can place residential zones to increase your population, retail zones to increase commerce, and industrial zones to increase productivity. All of the zone types come in varying levels of density and the residential zones also come in varying social classes.

Zoning Redux. There are multiple clever ways of creating zones in your city, and you’re free to mix and match as you go. First is the rectangular zone where you snap down the four straight sides of your zone and it arranges the plots inside. Second is the freeform zone where you click your way around the edge of the new zone, placing a border road; Cities XL then fills the zone with various plots. Last, you can simply place an individual zone anywhere you like. The zones nicely snap to the roads, whether they’re straight angled or curved.

The Clock. Cities XL runs at a constant pace, unlike SimCity where the clock speed can be slowed, sped up, or paused. The passage of time is denoted by a clock face within the user interface. It takes about a minute for each cycle. And with each cycle you pay your debts and collect taxes. The interface nicely displays whether you’re making or losing money each cycle.

Planet Mode. Of course, Monte Cristo has turned Cities XL into an MMO with the subscription-based planet mode. In this mode, you explore the surface of various planets and choose a vacant plot for your city. Each plot is of a certain map type and contains varying levels of difficulty. The demo, though, only had two planets and three maps to choose from. In this mode, you can also visit other user’s cities and explore them as if they were your own.

Social Networking. Annoyingly, there is a a floating chat window that persists throughout the gameplay. As you build your city, you can watch (and participate in) a constant stream of chatter in this window. It can’t be closed, but you can filter some of what appears in it. Also, when you create your Cities XL account, you create a profile page on the website that trumpets your accomplishments. This page is rather Facebook-ish, and I’m sure there’s much more social networking opportunity than I discovered, though.

The demo has certain additional limitations that prevented me from making a more thorough review. The demo is still available for download, but will cease working on September 30. The demo I used was operable for only seven days, and cities could not grow larger than 22,000 citizens before the program gracelessly exits. Also, many of the things to build are not available in the demo. In fact, Monte Cristo claims the real game will contain ten times the content of the demo.

My Rating: Provisionally 4.5 out of 5 stars (I need to play the real game to be sure).
Cost: $30 to $40, plus $6.32 to $9.25 per month for the planet mode.
Availability: Friday, October 9 in the US.

Craig Samson

I always opt for the self checkout lane at the grocery store. It allows me to live out my childhood dream of being a check out girl! The only problem, and it’s a big one, is the bagging area gets full and I need to stop scanning in order to bag. As I begin bagging the first half of my cart I’m forced to pile the bags on the floor because my cart (still half full) is still back at the register. Meanwhile the computer keeps prompting me to finish my order as the line of people waiting(who will, incidentally, run into the same problem) grow increasingly more impatient.

So annoying!

Well, that is a thing of the past. Now as you enter select Stop & Shop locations there are kiosks flanking the automatic sliding doors displaying rows of portable hand held scanners waiting to assist you! I simply line my cart with my eco friendly grocery bags and I’m ready to go. Scanning the product bar codes as I shop, I immediately bag my items right in my cart. When I finish shopping, I scan the bar code above the self check out register and my order automatically populates the screen. I pay and I leave with my pre-bagged items.

 Tips:

1. You need a Stop & Shop card.
2. When checking out use the hand scanner to scan the “Finished Shopping” bar code then scan your Stop & Shop card on the register.
3. Produce can be weighed on scales that issue stickers bearing bar codes and prices. Collect all your produce first then camp out at a scale and process it all at once.
4. If you have adult beverages you may opt to go through a short regular check out line. It’s still fast, but you don’t have to wait as long for an associate to check your ID.

Nice Features:

1. Running total on the scanner screen helps you stick to a budget.
2. Exact produce pricing helps make better economic choices
3. Scanner beeps and alerts you of deals based on your location in the store.
4. Grocery carts now have a scanner holder on the handle (right next to the cup holder:))

So now I’m addicted to Stop & Shop! (This, btw, is a great marketing ploy. They’ve engendered loyalty by creating a superior shopping experience.) Grocery shopping has never been so fun! Has anyone else had a chance to check this out?

Over the past few months I’ve written about various managed services we provide and how they can automate IT services, provide disaster recovery and data continuity, as well as fault and performance alerts on your critical systems. These are all great components of our flagship 180 IT service yet they do not address one of the biggest services we provide to our MSP clients, the Virtual Chief Information Officer (VCIO).

Make A Plan: The VCIO role is to work with our MSP clients developing a strategic plan (I refer to this as the Technology Roadmap) to map their business goals to their technology needs. This initiative generally becomes a 3-5 year game plan for delivering technology services. IT needs are prioritized based on both the business objectives and the client’s budget. The roadmap is flexible and can be adapted as your business needs change. Traditionally, we charge our client’s $175/hour for this strategic consulting service, but for our MSP clients it is included as part of the 180 IT service.

Learn the Ropes: Another objective of the VCIO session is to educate our clients to the changes in IT that might affect their environment. Topics might include how to leverage mobility services, what social networking might mean to data security and their corporate image, and to introduce technologies that might help a business in the future. It is a chance for you to leverage our expertise and experience and gain insight into what is being utilized in the marketplace to gain a competitive advantage. The average VCIO has been in the industry for 10+ years and has achieved a number of industry certifications.

Keep Abreast of Current Concerns: Two main questions have been repeatedly asked in our VCIO meetings lately. The first involves the October launch of Windows 7 and Exchange 2010 and the upcoming release of Office 2010. Our clients want to know what to expect and when they should (or will have to) adopt these products. The second question is around the recent announcement of retired products from Cisco. Many of our clients still utilize Cisco 2600 routers and PIX 515 firewalls which are end-of-life for product support and will soon need to upgrade or run the risk of being unsupported in the event of a hardware failure.

Our team will be contacting our MSP clients over the next couple of weeks to schedule a VCIO session with your team. If you are not an MSP client, request a session through your Fandotech Account Manager and we will waive our standard fee for the session if you mention this article.

We look forward to meeting with you and your organization. For more information please contact an Account Representative today!

Brian Doyle

Back in January, I wrote an article about the science, art, and magic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In that article I discussed a number of things you could do to your site to improve its search engine ranking. Now, all these months later, I’m writing this follow-up to explain how social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, can further help your endeavors.

We recently met with a Search Engine Marketing firm, Site-Seeker, to discuss an event we’re co-hosting next month. Our conversation flowed to social networking and how we needed to do more to support our marketing efforts. Curious about how we could utilize social networks as a marketing tool and a search engine ranking booster, we arranged for Site-Seeker to present to our management group a seminar on this subject in preparation for our October 15th event.

Let me first discuss a few of the social networking sites and how they may or may not be helpful.

MySpace. Don’t spend your precious time here, MySpace is a wasteland of disastrously hideous personal webpages. A true blight on the digital landscape of the Internet.

Facebook. Primarily a business-to-consumer opportunity, creating a fan page for your company can help generate positive word-of-mouth and increase your authority (more on authority later), as well as provide an avenue to advertise events and other business messages. Facebook is best for those businesses targeting consumers.

LinkedIn. A business-to-business opportunity, this social networking site is best for businesses targeting other businesses. This site provides a professional environment to network with other professionals and businesses in your line of work, as well as those businesses seeking services you provide, or businesses providing services you need. This site can be used to increase your authority and to make valuable business connections.

Twitter. A runaway success, Twitter has turned into the 900lb. gorilla of social networking overnight. This service lets you send out short messages (up to 140 characters, called “tweets”) to the “world.” If you’re lucky, one or more of your followers will like your tweet, and “retweet” it to their own followers, creating a ripple effect of information dispersal. This is a powerful and immediate social network.

YouTube. A bunch of weird, wonderful, and wacky videos typically created by everyday “normal” people. YouTube is a good avenue to share videos advertising or demonstrating your services. Personally, I still consider YouTube as entertainment, not a marketing opportunity (unless you’re selling entertainment, I suppose).

Social Networks Don’t Directly Help with SEO
At our meeting with Site-Seeker, we focused on Twitter with a secondary emphasis on LinkedIn. For our needs, LinkedIn, as a professional social networking tool, allows us to reach a business audience. Twitter, on the other hand, lets us instantly connect with our audience and more speedily increase its size. Facebook is not as useful for us, but if you’re trying to reach consumers, this is probably a better choice for you than LinkedIn. Either way, Twitter is a good place to start.

Normally, to improve your SEO ranking, we advise having other relevant sites link to yours. This is by far the absolute most important aspect to search engine ranking. It’s also the most difficult to achieve. So, wouldn’t it be helpful then to set up pages for your company on these social networks and post links to your site? Sadly, no.

When you post a link on these social networks, the networks specially inhibit search engines from following that link. This means that a search engine won’t see the links to your site from these social networks. Therefore, the links do not directly affect your ranking. So, what’s the use of the social networks, then?

Networking, silly! These social networks provide a channel directly to your audience. As your audience grows, so does your authority. And when you are the authority, you become the go-to resource when your type of services are needed.

With Twitter, you begin by following other people in your line of work (to “follow” in Twitter means to subscribe to that person’s tweets). In turn, those people will probably follow you. Continue to build your follower network, but try to follow fewer people than there are people following you. Further, post regularly. On occasion, it’s likely that someone following you will retweet something you tweeted. The retweet then gets sent to all of that user’s followers, thus increasing your audience and possibly bringing you new followers. This process goes on and on as you continue to build your followers and authority.

I see this as less search engine optimization, but more marketing. In the case of Twitter, perhaps we should call it Twarketing.

Craig Samson

Server Load Balancers (SLB) and Network Load Balancers (NLB) have been implemented in nearly every organization with more than three servers over the past fifteen years. In the beginning, the software based solutions were slow and immature and quickly gave way to hardware based giants like Cisco and F5. For the past few years the likes of Microsoft, Fatpipe, and SonicWALL have commoditized the decision by adding the basic features into the enhanced versions of their products. The world order seemed complete. The technical community is well trained and can implement the appropriate level of SLB or NLB required for a client of any size and shape with the established players.

But the 7 layer ISO model – you remember, Layer 3 is Network and so NLB is handled in routers and servers play in Layer 4 and 5, but Layers 6, 7 (6 is presentation software and 7 is the application layer) are now growing in sophistication and want to be able to control elements of load balancing due to software based situations. Application determines that the maximum number of users are active in the first instance of the Application, launch a second instance of the application and load balance. Enter Application Distribution Controllers (ADC).

Features of ADCs:
        Content Transformation
        Selective Compression
        Bi-directional Application Proxy
        Application Decision Trees for XML Rules and Transforms

So it’s easy, now we shift to software based ADC (think Citrix Netscalar technology) (yes, we do that!) The Netscaler handles the layer 4-7 ADC functionality and scales very well in large remote user communities. Still need router level NLB?

Not so fast say our engineers!

This seems like the logical next step from the network load balancing that we’ve done in the past and had good success. The F5 solution offers the NLB, SLB and the ADC functionality all in one unit already! And in addition to site failover, it has a host of other available bells and whistles. So the hardware based old guard is not going away. Some of the case studies have the F5 ADC well ranked against the competition.

The hardware based solutions scale well for many clients. The trick is to know when solution A or B is right for the particular application. (Yes, we can help you with that too!)

And the final issue with ADC technology is that the full potential is when the application, for the first time, is actively reporting to the load balancer metrics that only the application would know. This requires software engineers to help integrate these metric responses to the ADC within the code. Anytime an application solution is asked to work intricately with one or many applications it becomes a challenge to implement and support. Our Solutions Development team is poised to support the total installation package.

This is a burgeoning market technology and when applied correctly will optimize the quality of your end user experience.

Happy Load Balancing!

John W. Boyd, Jr.