Category: Web

I have a Windows Home Server Vision

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

While I’m not that concerned about offsite backup for my Window Home Server. The problem has been dealt with in detail by a few fellow beta testers.

Check out a detailed look at the problem here and a further look at setting up IDrive-E with WHS ( the chosen solution) here.

Now, it seems pretty clear that an offsite back-up solution is a gaping hole in Windows Home Server. This is the case for one of two reasons. Either Microsoft deliberately decided that it was not going to bother ( possible, but unlikely in my view). or Microsoft has something up its sleeves ( if not for this first release of WHS, then then for the next one).

Now entirely by coincidence (sarcasm intended), Microsoft announced a limited private beta of its Live Folders service.

At the moment its limited to 500Mb of storage.

What if Microsoft integrates the two services together (Live Folders +WHS)? I mean, think of it.

  • Your OS files don’t need to be uploaded since Microsoft already has the original files (Since you are using a Microsoft OS). Only the Changes need to be backed up.
  • Microsoft products like Visual Studio, Office and Flight Simulator ( all three are the largest installed programs on my PC) don’t need to go since Microsoft already has the original files
  • This leaves us with your personal files. Once all your stuff is up, only changes need to be moved, making it much faster.

Once 20 Million households (the current MS estimate for the WHS market) all upload their data, Microsoft can literally organize the worlds data far more conveniently than Google.

Not that I’m being alarmist, but its a scary thought.

I can see Google coming out with a similar app, but in the form of a Universal Binary to reach a cross-platform audience (case in point – a friend of mine mistakenly reformatted a UNIX drive. WHS could not have been used to recover lost data. Any suggestions on recovering the data on the drive?).

In closing, Mary Jo Foley says, ominously:

Software+Services (S+S) is Microsoft’s alternative to software-as-a-service (SaaS). Unlike Google, Salesforce.com and other pure-play Web 2.0 companies, Microsoft is making sure that there’s both a services and a software component to all of its products, going forward. That’s the crux of S+S.

Shel Isreal needs help

~ rbonini

Shel’s engaged in a new project to, in his words:

I have 60 days to produce three anecdotal research reports on The Americas; Asia Pacific and Europe-Mediterranean-West Asia and I need your help.

A report on what?

Here’s what I am doing.  I am trying to answer a single, overwhelming question: “What is going on in the world with regard to social media? I am looking for useful statistics, but those are often outdated before they are published as we learned with the book.

And Shel needs our help on this project:

I suggested to Mike that we conduct and report on this project, transparently, online on this site in the same way Robert and I wrote Naked Conversations. If the book had magic, had not come from the research or the actual writing.  It came from the collaboration we had shared with the blogosphere.  Bloggers gave us leads. They corrected the facts.  They let us know when we were making valid points and when we had gone over the top.

I proposed that we do the SAP Global Social Media Research on this blog, in collaboration with the blogosphere, that we do it transparently and that what we find we share on this blog. This, as far as I know, would differentiate it from any market research and the process in itself would become an example of thought leadership.

…

I want your stories.  For those of you who started reading this blog after the book was published, I interviewed most of the people in a Q & A style and posted them on this site.  Then other people left comments.  Those interviews got incorporated into chapters.  Early versions of the chapters were then posted and we received more comments before finalizing the chapter.

So, please start those cards and letters coming now.  If you have a story that reveals something about blogging, blogging trends in any country of the world please let me know.  SAP is more interested in business than consumer, but what people are doing is  valuable in that it shapes  all markets. You are encouraged to leave a comment here.  If you are shy you can email me at shelisrael1@gmail.com.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing this unfold ( I missed this the first time around with Naked Conversations). I fully intend to participate.

Well, what are you waiting for?

iPhone Watch

~ rbonini

Lets see what iPhone news I can find this morning.

Although Jobs announced that no SDK would be release for the iPhone, thee are a number of web applications that have been announced.

Don Farber points out that Etelos has made sure that its CRM App runs on the iPhone.

Don says:

the ideal use for the iPhone and Etelos is “listening to iTunes while sending out a group message to your prospects while riding a ferry across Puget Sound.”

Ajaxian points us to a list of iPhone Apps that is already exhaustive.

Mary  Jo Foley has the scoop that Exchange and the iPhone will play nicely. This is an obvious move for Microsoft as it wants to ensure the widest  possible distribution of Exchange ( Even if Mitch Kapor doesn’t like it and is building a replacement 🙂 , but I digress)

Continuing the speculation over iPhone licensing, Don MacAskill complains loudly that there are no corporate licensing terms for the iPhone.

He says:

I’m so bummed. We’ve got our sleeping bags ready to go so we can get iPhones for the SmugMuggers. We even have SmugMuggers who flew in from out of town so they could join the party on University Avenue (click that link, it’s worth it). Like most companies, we have a corporate plan with AT&T so we can share minutes, save money, etc etc.

They won’t sell us iPhones. Not one phone, not twenty phones. For any price. At all. Neither will Apple.

 

Which is really strange. Apple and AT&T should be trying to get as many people as possible to get an iPhone. On the other hand, as one of Don’s commenters points out,  AT&T could be waiting for the semi-religious demand to die down before coming out with a business offering. It make sense to get the phone out to the masses.

Talking of an iPhone SDK, Simon Brocklehurst says :

As I’ve said before,  iPhone will be an incredible device to develop applications for; and, Apple simply won’t be able to develop all the great new applications themsleves.  Neither will Apple have the bandwidth to build one-to-one relationships with many software development companies in ways that make the economics work.   So, Apple will need to come up with ways of helping any developer to build great native applications for iPhone.

Scoble comments in Don’s post and asks if anyone is brings a generator to charge everyone’s devices  while they wait in line 🙂

This is the smallest subset of iPhone news available. Just a few things I found interesting. More as the news comes in.

Trying Popfly

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

If the mashup embed works, it will show up below ( it shows up fine in Windows Live Writer Beta 2).

Well. I tried. Although the embed is in an IFrame ( i.e, no javascript), it does not show up in WordPress. Which is nonetheless disappointing, and one of the disadvantages of having this kind of setup.

In any case, Popfly works great. I created a photostack that grabbed random Blaugh comics in a couple of minutes. Worked great. So simple to use.

Back to creating mashups. More soon.

Software Engineering

~ rbonini

Steve McConnell, of Code Complete fame, just put the following post up on his blog:

The February 2007 issue of IEEE Computer contained a column titled “Software Development: What Is the Problem?” (pp. 112, 110-111). The column author asserts,

“Writing and maintaining software are not engineering activities. So it’s not clear why we call software development software engineering.”

The author then brushes aside any further discussion of software development as engineering and proceeds to base an extended argument on the premise that software development is not engineering.

The post caught my eye as I’m thinking of switching from a Computer Science degree to a Software Engineering one.

Steve says:

Numerous software development activities have clear counterparts in other engineering disciplines, including:

  • Problem definition
  • Creation of models to verify the engineer’s understanding of the problem
  • Feasibility studies to verify viability of design candidates
  • Design as a central activity
  • Creation of detailed plans for building the product
  • Inspections throughout the product-creation effort
  • Verification that the as-built product matches the product plans
  • Ongoing interplay between the abstract knowledge used by engineers and the practical knowledge gained during construction
  • etc. 

 Which is why software development is often compared to bridge building ( albeit one can only take the comparison so far).

Which brings me to Scott Rosenberg’s book, Dreaming in Code. In the Epilogue , he tells the remarkable tale of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The construction of the bridge was halted by Governor Schwarzenegger  in December 2004 and a new design was called for (which arrived in July 2005 in the guise of an exact copy of the original). By this time the bridge was nearly half built. Says Scott:

As I read about the controversy, I couldn’t help thinking of all the software management manuals that used the rigorous procedures and time-tested standards of civil engineering as a cudgel to whack the fickle dreamers of the programming profession over the head. ” Software development needs more discipline”, they would say. ” nobody ever tried to change the design of a bridge after it was already half built!”

The State of California had done a fine job of undermining that argument.

Touche

All joking aside, however, Software development is indeed treated as a field of engineering. Says Steve:

  • The Computer Society adopted a Code of Ethics for Software Engineers almost 10 years ago.
  • The IEEE Computer Society approved the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge 2.0 in 2004, which was adopted as an ISO/IEC Technical Reference 19759:2005.
  • Curriculum guidelines and accreditation standards have been established for undergraduate software engineering programs.
  • In the United States the official engineering accreditation board, ABET, has accredited 13 undergraduate software engineering programs since 2003, and in Canada 9 such programs have been accredited (by CEAB).
  • Numerous provinces in Canada license professional software engineers, and professional engineers are chartered in software in England. 

 So do we treat software design in the same way as we treat algorithms, or do we try to do new and novel things  (the way I like thinking of engineering) with our software?

Perhaps both. While there are well established principles when it comes to bridge building, bridges ( or, indeed, any kind of construction – take the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain) emerge from construction rather unique. Each bridge features something new and novel.

So is Software Development more a blend of engineering and art?

Windows Home Server RC1 Install, part 2

~ rbonini

Its nearly a week since I last wrote.

The first install went all the way to its completion, did the admin password thing and all. The only problem was that the Server logged in automatically on startup. I tried everything.  There might have been a few other things not working 100% but I can think of them right now.

So I  re-installed and this time it was perfect. Got everything working like a Swiss car. Copying my data back on to the server took a while, from a external USB drive. And then I backed up the PC’s which took even longer.

The Windows live domain wizard is very nice and sleek. I like the way it recognized me and presented me with the previous domain I’d used with the old install.

The router configuration wizard doesn’t work, again portfwd.exe hogged system resources, like 98% of the cpu and prevented anything from getting done. The solution to the resource hogging is to disable the service via the Administrative tools in the control panel.

I think it might be useful to get a list of compatible routers. It would be worth it to get a router that plays nice with WHS(otherwise there is no point to remote access).

The new install screens are very nice. You’re kept up to-date with the progress (I recall that a few people were unhappy with the Beta 2 install in this regard).

The thing is that with each new release, I find myself having to go less and less into the Console or even Remote Desktop. With each release, WHS is becoming more and more headless in the true sense of the word. 

All things considered, WHS might not be the all-in-one solution with WSUS, SQLServer ExchangeLite and so on, but it does exactly what it intends to – serve.

Digital/ Analog Book Hybrid

~ rbonini

I just came across this interesting post from O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference. 

bluebook_touch

Manolis Kelaidis‘ idea is to embed hyperlinks in traditional books, or as  the website puts it: 

The blueBook created at the RCA and pictured here is a traditional book over-printed with conductive ink. This conductive ink creates hyperlinks on the page which, when touched by the reader, activates a processor concealed in the cover of the book. This processor then connects via bluetooth to a nearby computer, triggering different actions.

It is rather Ingenious , with a capital I.  I can see this technology going places. For example: I’m currently reading ,yet again ,the lord of the Rings. The book could sense as I move from scene to scene and bring up the appropriate artwork, or music from Howard Shore’s excellent score, or bring up trivia, etc. Obscure names could link to an online glossary of all of Tolkien’s books.

In a technical context, links could be provided to get updated code samples, errors or updated technical information that adds to or supercedes the text.

This is a true hybrid since we get the best of both worlds: a user experience that has yet to be surpassed, and the functionality of eBook readers.  

Question is, will it take off?

PS In response to Tim O’Reilly’s question in the comments:

But Sarah’s comment is also really crucial to understand: “people made a real emotional connection.” Why was that?

The emotional connection comes in because of the format: books. People can and do form emotional connections with books, I mean, I still have my Famous Five books  in a cupboard – I refuse to throw them ( no matter what the improvement to the order in said cupboard). I can’t imagine forming such an emotional attachment to an eBook reader, laptop or webpage.

iPhone Addiction Help

~ rbonini

Steve Rubel passes on this hilarious collection of advice for people with iPhone-on-the-brain .

Get a black light poster of Mr. Jobs. Put it up in your bedroom. Close your eyes and chant softly: “Oh Steve, all-powerful maker of the most beautiful iPhone, please send me my wonderful gadget. Please send it, Steve. Please send it now.”

If the poster actually responds, you’re in deep trouble. If your room remains silent, you know you have the mental health to wait at least one more day.

Since I’m in the UK, I’ve given up all hope of even seeing the iPhone until late next year.