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Welcome to My Computer Pages!

This is the gateway to possibly the most important section of my entire site: the computer section. For years I've worked to make contributions to the comptuer movement in any manner I could. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the world's slickest coder, so much of my efforts have gone into writing documentation, designing package installers for RedHat Linux or Mac OS X... that sort of thing. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that every ounce of "volunterism" gets noticed and appriciated. Some (outdated) articles on installing and debugging databases in OS X led to my first published book! Someone from Hawaii shipped me some gourmet coffee twice (I LOVE Kona!) in appreciation of a Tomcat package installer I'd designed for OS X.

And of course, this sort of thing (computer work) is how I make a living, so this shows off what I can do. By the way, if there's any computer work you know of, I am a freelance consultant, and I desperately need more work!

This is my company through which I do computer consulting. Follow this link to go to my much more "official" website. Please note I am always looking for future work, so if you know of any projects I would be suited for (or to learn more about the work I do) follow this link.

My last three years have been spent doing a lot of work with the development departments of nonprofit organizations and their donation and constituent databases. Much of this has involed the Raiser's Edge product by Blackbaud. It seems that many nonprofits are completely underutilizing their software (for which they pay a pretty big licensing fee every year) and these pages will focus on giving tips and tricks for getting the greatest mileage. Please note that my business offers consulting services for the Raiser's Edge in the New York, Los Angeles, and Northern Colorado areas! We are especially interested in expanding our Los Angeles and Colorado markets!

The most important thing is to announce my creation of the Open Synchronization Project. I'm still considering an official name for it. OpenSync would have been perfect, but it's already been taken by a Palm app. (Grr) So is NetSync, OpenNetSync, NetOpenSync, OpenAddress, OpenAddressBook are some possible permutations. Anyway, check it out here.

I'm putting this on my website just so it's available. It's basically an article I wrote a few weeks ago about how to practice "safe e-mail" in a way that will almost eliminate viruses, hoaxes, etc. Someday I'll re-edit it an see if there's someplace I can actually publish it.You can read it here.

In time I should be able to integrate this better into the main site. Until then, you can find my resume here.

This article points out current security risks of the new "iBlog" product that Apple is offering it's .Mac users as a subscription incentive. iBlog allows you to create a "private" web log, but it's security is almost nonexistent and worse, it may even attract unwanted visitors! The article can be found here.

(10.31.2003 update) iBlog is an interesting application with a lot going for it, but it also has several annoying qualities and some concerns about it's security, developer's responsiveness to questions and a few outstanding bugs. The article referenced here is a [justifiably] critical one, but I don't like to be one of those people who enjoys the facility of tearing a product/company down without trying to defend its good points. I have mirrored the home-grown blog of my website's front page with a version that uses iBlog. I've been maintaining my blog entries with both systems for the last few weeks. Take a look for yourself and see what you think.

written materials and original images copyright © 2003 by Murray Todd Williams

site issues, problems or corrections? contact webmaster@murraywilliams.com. Page last updated 2-nov-03 14:01