Category: Web

Windows Home Server

~ rbonini

The black box has been humming along quite nicely for the past few weeks. I’ve nothing to actually say about its because nothing has really gone wrong.

The folder duplication works great. My only small gripe is that it keeps reminding me that duplication is failing for one file in  my Music folder. And I can’t tell it to ignore this issue. So I’m reminded of this about 10 times a day. This is actually a good thing as its driving me to get a new hard disk  – its an itch  that needs to be scratched. Once I get around to buying it, the new hard disk should take me well over 1Tb of storage. Which is perfect for SageTV (which I will take a more serious look at once WHS has been released).

The only other small thing that I’ve found is Remote Access goes out the window as the Router changes the Servers IP address and messes up the port forwarding. If the Wizard actually worked, I wouldn’t have this problem.

Its rather startling to have a Microsoft product that just works. Its uncanny. After years of using XP is till have to wrestle go get stuff done occasionally. WHS is totally a painless experience (unless you happen to be testing extreme use cases).

The rumor mill reports that a Release Candidate is due to be released in the very near future. And once again I will spend a happy weekend installing it.

Now for WHS news that is sort of connected, but isn’t really, the WHS team has a new member ( blog here). The official blog post announcement from the team:

The Windows Home Server team decided to offer a summer internship to one of our earliest beta testers and top forum contributors.  Tom Z. is a high school student from Arizona and he will be spending the next 2 months with us working on a wide variety of projects from building home server demo hardware for various events to trying to code his first add-in

Its really interesting to get an outsiders view of a) the team and b) Microsoft.

If you read a few of his previous posts you’ll see that he’s also beta testing Windows Server 2008. I assume that this will be come the backbone of WHS 2. The fact that the server can be installed in a Core configuration has interesting ramifications for WHS. if you look at the Server Storage tab you’ll  see that the OS takes up 10GB. Under a Core setup, the OS could install in 1 Gb or less.

My point is simply that WHS 1 is the beginning of something extra ordinary. I can’t think of any other company that has ever tried to target Server- grade software into the homes of ordinary people.  And bring about a product that works as slickly as WHS.

In short I’m excited at the prospect of what WHS 1 will do (as in, turning the whole network into one massive PVR via SageTv), I can’t wait to see what the Team have up their sleeves for the next iteration of this grand experiment.

 PS. This is my third post with the new Live Writer. Its a great improvement over the old one. More later.

Surface Computing, here I come

~ rbonini

Ok, maybe I’m being over optimistic about how soon Surface will be available to the average Joe.

It is a great idea, revolutionary in scope (Apple has not yet tried coffee table sized iPhone screens) and is full of possibility. It’ll go the way of the Xbox and prove to be a sell out success. Its the natural complement to Microsoft’s suite of home focused products. Media Centre is the PVR; Home Server makes sure everything is backed up and in a central, universally accessible location; your friendly 360 also has the capacity to stream music and photos as well as play games and DVDs in Hi-Def; the Zune fits in here somewhere as well, but don’t ask me where. Now Microsoft comes in an turns the coffee table into an interactive experience that ties in with all the above and acts as a thin client for them plus bringing its own functionality to the table.

Mary Jo, while usually right on the ball with Microsoft, takes a differing view:

But do I really need a table at a restaurant (or in my home) to tell me the best food pairings for my wine choice? Or to generate for me a customized version of a map of local attractions?

Unless there are some surface-computing form factors that don’t look like a chunky coffee table or a retail-store kiosk, I have zero interest in a Surface. For now, the first iterations of Microsoft’s Surface Computer seem a lot to me like the first “Origami” ultra-mobile PCs: Products in search of a market. (And not very well-designed products, at that.)

True. But if there is no market, there no reason why one can’t be created. Microsoft is doing exactly that by starting off with enterprise-level deployment in hotels and suchlike. Once people see “the Surface” in action, they’ll be wanting one as well.

I’m not a wine buff, but I do enjoy a good meal. And have no problem taking instructions from an ultra cool coffee table (for the acronym lovers among us that’s: UCCT).

Partial Feeds

~ rbonini

Partial Feeds are the worst kind of feed there is to subscribe to. They drive me insane.

Fortunately, a few bloggers (in my blogroll, that is) are seeing the light and changing to full text feeds. Recently Michael J. Totten changed to full text feeds and I read more of his stuff now as a result.

Steve’s post at the Ransom Thoughts blog ( found via Scoble’s link blog) has the exact same thoughts about this. He goes a bit further than me and says he’s unsubscribing from partial feeds.

Feeds are there for the express purpose of giving people easier access to your information, not baiting links to drive up the PageRank and roll in the AdWords revenue.

Remember the blogosphere is a community with a vast amount of information contained in its many pages (and feeds). Since it is a community, a single blog survives only by the grace of others that link to it.

So be nice to people when it comes to full text feeds – let them read your stuff with as little effort as possible – it’ll help your blog in the long run.

The first comment to Steve’s post puts it best:

Life’s too short for [a] clickthrough.

In the Name of Google….

~ rbonini

Shel Israel’s latest post had me metaphorically rolling on the floor with laughter:

1. If you ask God for enlightenment, you may never get an answer.  Google gives you one in just a few seconds.

2.  God may or may not help those who help themselves. But Google helps those who blog and blog often. Posting three times a day is likely to give you more quantifiable results than praying three times a day.

3. People seem to get into trouble when they start thinking their god is better or more powerful than other people’s gods. Google is even-handed.  it gives equally to all people who asks it the right question.

4. For an allegedly all-knowing being, some people seem to think it is important to flatter God all the time. Perhaps they think he/she/it is insecure. Google needs none of that. Like your mom and her homemade food, Google only requires that you visit now and then and you will be rewarded.

5. So far as I know, not a single person has ever been killed, or even assaulted, in Google’s name.

Quite right. Now, about Microsoft….

Quote of the Day

~ rbonini

I can’t belive I’m quoting Scott Adams, but here it is:

Okay, so my plan is this. America becomes the disaster recovery center of the world. To some extent, we already are. We generally offer help when needed, and we have lots of assets for that sort of thing. But we haven’t taken it to the next level and “Switzerlandized” the concept. We need to be more known as the country that finds people under rubble, as opposed to our current plan of being known as the people who put people there in the first place.

Go on. Read the whole plan.

Microsoft Surface, part 1

~ rbonini

Like the rest of the blogging world (Scoble, ScottGu, Sam Gentile to name a few), I’m assimilating the possibilities of this new Microsoft technology.

( in fact, I think I’m making Microsoft sound like a not-so-bad version of the Borg – They are characterized by relentless pursuit of targets for assimilation, their collective consciousness that enables rapid adaptability to almost any defense, and the ability to continue functioning properly despite seemingly devastating blows. They have become a powerful symbol in popular culture for any juggernaut against whom “resistance is futile.” – couldn’t resist that quote)

I’ve just gone to the Microsoft Surface site and found that its using, wait for it, Adobe Flash Player 9.

Beta or not, Silverlight should have been used here – when you use your own products, it inspires confidence in your customer base ( in Microsoft’s case, .Net developers).

And I like the logo. Its in similar vein to  the Silverlight one. The new, high tech, sci-fi like logos Microsoft are now using show how Microsoft is positioning itself to ride these new technologies into the future and guarantee its continued existence. Just a thought.

Desktop Search

~ rbonini

By spectacular accident today, both my keyboard and mouse died for some damned reason I still can’t figure out. Maybe it was the KVM switch? Maybe it was the tea that spilt over my desk and slowly dripped onto said switch?  In any case, I went out to buy a new keyboard and mouse since a headless desktop PC is effectively useless. While out shopping I picked up a new DVD drive to complement my other one that no longer plays DVD right. I got Nero Essentials 7 with it. I did a full install ( since I do have the drive space).

And lo and behold a desktop search box appears in my taskbar. Its called Nero Scout. I thought this was interesting since the Desktop Search space has already got Microsoft and Google bumping heads.

According to the Nero Website:

Nero Scout is a unique media database application that provides instant access to your media files from any Nero application, Windows Explorer, and many standard Windows applications.

Hmm… a media database???Right.

Now I can’t vouch for either of the the above mention desktop search programs since I haven’t used any of them yet (I do have Desktop Search installed on Windows home Server and Scout is still indexing), but this looks interesting. If it goes wrong, Scout has the potential to get really irritating.

Here’s hoping it goes right….