The first Spiceworks Plugin Contest is coming to a close. Plugins you build and share help add even more features and functionality to Spiceworks. The winners of this contest receive US$ 250 gift certificates to Amazon.com and the grand prize winner (chosen by Spiceworks) wins an expenses paid trip to Spiceworld Austin! (See more details)

The winners will be announced at Spiceworld Austin in Oct. But now it’s your turn to help us pick the winners. Before getting started first check out the plugins in the plugin section of the community.

Vote for the plugin contest winners!

Last night Spiceworks did a community update with brought loads of bug fixes as well as new features ready and waiting for Spiceworks 4.0

And something tells me the new My Local Groups section on the community home lies a little…

Well ok its probably that i subscribe to random groups when i post in them…

Good to see new stuff coming out of the community all the time

Spiceworks reduced the cost of SpiceWorld London to £145!

Why & How’d You Do It?
Too good to be true, you say? Not at all! One benefit of being our last SpiceWorld-On-the-Road of 2009 is that we’ve received feedback, learned lessons…& applied our findings along the way. Meaning we figured out how we can scale back all the bells-and-whistles and bring the most popular elements of a SpiceWorld (i.e. Spiceworks training, access to our product experts & the chance to hob-nob with other IT pros) across the Atlantic to you in a no-frills fashion – one that’ll cost us less than we originally anticipated.

The Bonus?
We know economic times are still tough, so hopefully the lower the price means more SpiceHeads who’ll be able to come…meaning you’ll meet more Spiceworks users from your area… and swap more Spiceworks tips & tricks + IT recommendations.

Where Do I Sign Up?
Visit the SpiceWorld London website to register — but hurry there are less than 100 spots available!

Ahhh, the “Spicies” Awards!By popular demand, we’re bringing ‘em back again this year — but this time, we’re making the sole focus of the awards on recognizing YOU, the users, for your standout contributions to Spiceworks!

Remind me again – what exactly are the Spicies Awards?

Spicies are intended to recognize the Hottest of IT! This year, they’ll feature 3 of the Spiceworks Community’s finest – those who have gone above and beyond to make a difference this past year – will be honored with a special Spicie award for their contributions.

Read more

Hey UK SpiceCorps Members & Spice Heads!

Quick favor! We’re applying for a Techworld’s award in the UK and could use your help.

If you could chime in here (in 500 words or less) and post:

“Why I like using Spiceworks & think it’s ‘the best network management product’…”

….we’d really appreciate it! Anything goes — just be as ‘real’ as you always are here in the Community.

And thx in advance – your authentic Spiceworks-using voice will allow us to add a heck of a lot more spice to our submission than others will.

Cheers,

Jen

Read more and join in here

.. so there I was with a telecoms engineer organising the move of the artwork department from our HQ office to our main print factory. The engineer popped up a ladder, stuck his head through the suspended ceiling and said something I cannot repeat here!
No wonder there have been data issues at this site!

I’ve only been with the company 4 months, and had heard rumours that the cabling at the factory premises were not… “tippety top”. I just didn’t expect it to be like this!

And yes, that is string in the background holding the CAT5 away from the electrical mains (apparently the ceiling collapsed a couple of years back with the weight!).

Thanks to the usability of Apps.gov, more businesses in the public and private sector may be encouraged to investigate cloud computing initiatives of their own. In fact, a significant amount of businesses already have – a recent survey from Spiceworks found that 57 percent of small businesses currently use some kind of cloud computing service.

http://www.edlconsulting.com/newsdetail.php?id=427&headline=Apps.gov:_The_cloud_computing_trendsetter

Not a very big mention but any mention is better than no mention?

It helps show Spiceworks provides useful information to a wide range of people.

This made me laugh when I read it on Spiceworks Facebook

Curtis Newman: I quit using Viagra, my hardware stays up with Spiceworks…..

Spiceworks has helped Curtis keep it up and get a good nights sleep, maybe it could help you?

Spiceworks Lets You…

• • Inventory Your Network & PCs
  • Monitor & Manage Your Network
  • Manage Your IT Assets
  • Manage Changes & Configurations
  • Map Your Network
  • Audit Your Software
  • Troubleshoot Your Network
  • Run an IT Help Desk
  • Be an MSP
  • Talk to IT Pros Like You
  • And much more

Read more and download it now, its FREE! 750,000 IT Pros you could be one of them.

Checkout Spiceworks Facebook profile here

Justin recently posted a great article on his blog about the future of Spiceworks.

I just read Andrew Phelps’ article on the Spiceworks Script Center (Beta) and a light bulb turned on.  I have made many predictions about Spiceworks in the past and some of them became a reality.

Here is my new set of predictions of where Spiceworks is headed and if some of them come true I really think it will change the way the IT vendors conduct business with new and exsisting customers.

Ever since the Points System launched this year SpiceHeads have really been more active in the community. Don’t believe me? According to compete in the past year community.spiceworks.com has seen a 109.65% increase!

BTW that is all organic traffic, because the only domain they advertise (PPC) is www.Spiceworks.com which leads you to a well crafted Landing Page.

In his post Justin talks about the future of Spiceworks in 3 ways:

1. Virtual Currency – What if Spiceworks gave you money for posting and getting best answers, what could you do with them and how it would increase the use of the community.
2. The iTunes of IT – At Spiceworld Las Vegas, Greg Kattawar (VP of Dev & Co-Founder) was speaking and kept referring to Spiceworks as “The iTunes of IT”, Spiceworks plan to be everything IT, they want to keep you using there product(s) as much as possible so you see their adverts and they can gain more money from companies like Microsoft and CDW (they really need to find someone like CDW for the UK)
3. Exit Strategy – What happens if it all goes Pete Tong? Justin thinks there are three options they could look at if they needed to… Read his post to find out what they are. For the record I hope for #3

Check out his full post here

Edited: 23/09/09 16:46 (GMT)

Save time by using scripts IT Pros have shared. Share the ones in your toolbox and help others.

So… The Script Centers been up for a while and when it was first launched my honest opinion off it was it was going to be filled with useless scripts no one will look at or use. So I didn’t bother doing a write up nor look at it much after the first day.

The other day, I decided to give it a second chance, I jumped onto the Spiceworks community popped into the Script Center and was VERY surprised.

The first script I saw was called, Windows Update Agent force script, email results version 2.6 this was exactly what I was looking for 2 months ago and gave up. I had a look at the top rated to find Set up Outlook signatures with Active Directory information which I was going to use in the upcoming months with a new project.

I was taken back by the amount of great scripts already included in the Script Center.

At there moment there are only a couple of lanaguges:

• Batch
• Other
• Registry
• VBScript

But the list will grow over time as more people want to upload different types of scripts.

Why not check it out for yourself over on the Spiceworks community you maybe as surprised as me about the great quality of scripts.