Cvent.com review

A business associate / friend of mine asked me to do a review of this site since I have some experience in ordering stuff needed for exhibitions and trade shows for your booth. I will focus on their Event Management products/services since this is their service we would use the most. You can reach Cvent.com here if you have any inquires.

It starts by you filling out some forms about your company and yourself. click the "Next" button to continue kind of stuff. Since I'm doing the Event Management thing it lets me search four types of venues. Sleeping rooms, meeting rooms, lunch/dinner meetings and service providers. I'll use the Communicasia 2009 show as our test subject and since I will be using a test account from Cvent.com I really cannot order anything, thus 'no harm, no foul'.

First I will see what trying to get room pricing is like. I whip up a new RFP and go through several screens of Q&A regarding my location and venue of choice until I get to search the hotels. I get back over eighty results with a picture of the property and a blurb about the hotel for each one. The fist thing I noticed was lacking was a distance to the convention center from the hotels. We like to walk to the show in the mornings so proximity to the convention center is important to us. You also don't get pricing immediately. You submit your RFP and expect it back by a certain date so you can base your decisions on it. Personally I would go with expedia.com, travelocity.com, or whatever your choice-of-the-day might be.

Next I thought about ordering electricity for the booth. I thought that would fall under the 'Service Providers' category so I clicked on it. It listed over a half-dozen providers such as Entertainment and Food Service, but alas no electrical. So I performed searches of the Singapore area foe entertainment and food service and came up empty handed also. I myself would use myfreemanonline.com to procure any services needed for the show as well as stuff for the booth.

In all fairness the upcoming show I used was in a distant city-state and maybe Cvent does stuff in the Americas a bit differently. They claim to be an event planner so maybe I'm using them as the wrong tool. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I was told by a co-worker that their web surveying software works pretty good.

Take 2

For those of you not in the know, in my spare time I'm busy fighting cancer. The doc said the brain MRI scan looked good. Just some residual surgery stuff was showing up on the scan. The chest scan told another story though. That lung tumor was growing again and would require more chemotherapy. oh wow, fun in the sun as you know it. The doc said I was going for my "2nd Line" treatment and the drug he was using was approved for this. He is using Taxotere, and the generic name for it is Docetaxtel.

I have gone for my second treatment as of yesterday and so-far-so-good. No nausea or vommiting as of yet, so that is a good thing. Maybe if I remember to take my anti-nausea pills on schedule I won't have near the problems.

If you want to learn more about the various types of chemotherapy try this site.
http://chemocare.com

VPN Tunnels, Oh What Fun.

A few years back I was tasked by the boss to create a secure connection between one of our servers and a really big telco. I'll call them Acme Telcom to protect the innocent. He also wanted to use an opensouce solution. I had to pass a testing phase first and Acme Telcom said that the only the only people to have any success with it in the past used BSD as the operating system and blah-blah programs to get the VPN tunnel working.

Well BSD wasn't going to work for me since the server used some flavor of Linux (the exact name escapes me at this moment) and after reading some reviews and have a good-old look at the few programs out there I settled in on Openswan. I've never seen it written anywhere but I think
it is an acronym for Opensouce Secure Wide Area Network and the program allows you to create secure connections across the web.

I wasn't able to find much help on the web, which I considered kind of weird so I got the company to plunk down the bucks to buy me the book "Openswan" by Paul Wouters and Ken Bantoft, and published by Packt Publishing. The book was full of options for the program itself and discussed in chapter 9, interoperability with other vendor implementations. Which is definitely what I was looking for. All in all it was a good read and I would recommend it for its covering of the history of IPSEC alone.

Within a week of reading this book I was able to go from not knowing squat about VPN tunnelling to having five tunnels running simultaneously from the same server and pushing SIP messaging across said tunnels to Amce Telcom's POPS. Not to shabby if I say so myself considering I was the first to do this with Acme and Linux.

What Is A DID anyway?

A DID is a fancy term for what is basically nothing more that a phone number. It stands for 'Direct Inward Dialing' and it comes from an old term when a business would have several phone numbers assigned through its PBX that would make a certain phone ring when that number was called. It allows you to call that number without having to dial the operator or front desk first.

Welcome to the 21st century where now Voice-over-IP applications are making major inroads to the consumer. With VoIP customers both big and small littering the playing field it leaves a lot of room for suppliers of VoIP products and services to hawk thier wares.

One such service available is the DIDXchange available here. It was designed with wholesalers in mind and what they provide is a place for DID sellers and buyers to come together in one, centralized location. A supplier is able to post thier extra DIDs that they have available from anywhere in the world and buyers can select them and route them to thier customers. Bear in mind that DIDX is only able to provide an incoming service or 'origination' in telephony-speak at this time.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Lets say you 're Israeli student that is studying abroad and you get homesick a lot, or you are a business person with partners in Tel Aviv. Well my friends do I have a deal for you. Now you can get an Israeli phone number that will ring on your home phone or PC and beat the toll charges associated with a long distance call.

The idea is simple. You're in the United States (or wherever) and you get an Israeli number (or wherever - there are a lot more places.). Now your friends, family, business partners, etc., dial a local Tel Aviv number and they are able to connect to you, using VoIP and the plain-old telephone system. It is that easy.

The numbers, or DIDs for the technically inclined are sold through DIDX and in particular note 708443 (This is the DID seller's unique ID) in your wholesale DIDX buyer portal for good quality, hard to find Tel Aviv numbers. DIDX is setup to only allow wholesalers at this time so if you become one of these or know one let them know about the DIDX website.

Comfort Food Or Bust

You have to admit there is nothing quite like the smell of comfort food cooking in the kitchen, especially when you come home after a long day at work (or play), and it is almost done cooking. It is like a little slice of heaven right in your own home.

I have to admit that I have become something of a 'Foodie' over the years. I'm not real picky and will eat just about anything but if you say you can cook I would expect you should be able to make a Hollandaise Sauce from scratch.

I grew up in Hawaii and on of my favorite things to eat at elementary school was Shoyu Chicken. You coould tell it was Shoyu Chicken day in the cafeteria because all the kids would have a sticky ring around their mouths. Shoyu is also called Soy Sauce. Real hardcore Foodies would probaby use Aloha Shoyu available from the manafacturer at www.alohashoyu.com. That said, onto the recipe.

• 1 package chicken, about 5lbs., I prefer thigh meat.
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon ginger, minced or 1 teaspoon powdered
  
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 cup dark, brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
  
• 1 cup shoyu
• 1 piece of star anise (Badia is the brand I found in the Mexican food section. You mileage may vary.)
  
• 6 cups water or chicken stock
• 1 bunch green onion, chopped with some of the green tops

In a 4 quart pot added the oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot add the garlic and onions and cook them until the onion is soft, about 4-5 minutes. Add the chicken and brown on both sides. Add the shoyu, ginger, water, black pepper, brown sugar and star anise. Stir together well and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and cover. Simmer for about 45 minutes until the chicken is done. Serve with some white rice and your favorite vegetable. Yum.
Serves 4

What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Wow, I cannot believe its been since April that I last blogged. I guess time flies when you are having fun. Back in June 2008 I had an MRI done and discovered I had a brain tumor along the lower, left part of my brain. Well that explains the dizziness, nausea and vomiting better than simple vertigo ever did. I made peace with God, said my "goodbyes" and two days later they were cutting the tumor out of my head.

I spent about three weeks in the ICU, which was way to long if you ask me, but they wanted the pressure on my head to equalize. I eventually had to have a VP Shunt put in to equalize it. It runs from the top of my head and drains excess 'brain-juice' on my stomach. During this time I also discovered that I had a lung tumor going on and it was the culprit that caused the brain tumor.

Lots of radiation and chemotherapy has seemed to work and I am glad to say that the lung cancer is in remission and I think they got all the brain tumor on the first try. I may not talk nice or walk nice but I'm still here and in the end that is all that matters.

Did I mention I finally got service on my Nokia n95 phone. . .

If you're one of the curious or macarbe here is a video of me in the hospital