Featured Writing Samples:
“30 Days With Linux” – HardOCP.com
In March 2007, while I was working full time for NetQoS, I pitched HardOCP on the idea of a series of articles on operating systems. There were numerous flamewars at the time on the HardOCP forums, especially around the release of Windows Vista, which, especially in its early days, was buggy, had large hardware requirements, and didn’t offer much value to the end-user.There was a common boast that people “would just switch to Linux” because of Vista – and I wanted to see how viable that would be. So I used Linux as my home operating system for 30 days and wrote it up in a 11,000 word report, going through every step, writing for an audience of ”power users” – those who perhaps know how to assemble a PC from parts, but not necessarily how to program one.
Matt Zimmerman, Chairman of the Ubuntu Technical Board, wrote in after the article was published and said:
“I wanted to write in and thank you for your article entitled “30 Days with Linux”. Your methodology was rigorous, and your target audience is one which I think will benefit greatly from Linux information which speaks to them.”
“Joe Miller of Linden Labs speaks about VoIP in Second Life” – Network Performance Daily (Vendor blog of NetQoS)
In this article, I interviewed Joe Miller, VP of Platform and Technology development at Linden Labs, which makes “Second Life,” about their then-new plan to roll-out in-game VoIP technology. What I found very interesting was that in order to cut down on bandwidth, Second Life would take multiple input signals, but only output one audio signal to each user after digitally mixing the audio sources together in an a simulation of Second Life’s 3D space. This way, even with 100 people speaking at once, the bandwidth requirements would be identical for each user, with one audio stream uploaded to the server, and one audio stream downloaded to the client.
This was the article that caused Paul McNamara, the news editor at Network World to tell NetQoS CEO Joel Trammell that:
“[Boyko has] given me a newfound respect for what “corporate blogging” has to offer. That was a damn fine interview and we’d have been happy to run it in Network World.”
“Can VoIP provide the solution to last-mile broadband?” – Network Performance Daily (Vendor blog of NetQoS)
In this column, I wrote a speculative article on what would happen to rural Internet access if ordinary telephone service were phased out in favor of a VoIP solution.
“Bandwidth Caps and The Cognitive Surplus” – Network Performance Daily (Vendor blog of NetQoS)
When Time Warner rolled out bandwidth caps in Beaumont, Texas, I wrote this article explaining exactly what those bandwidth caps would mean as well as why it was a step backwards from a cultural perspective.