Real Cool Stuff

What is Mobile 2.0? Coming now to a mobile near you!

Dave Caddick — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:57:02 GMT

So from a note on Jason Langridge's blog about Mobile 2.0 I started looking deeper at some of the recent developments in the mobile world.

Of particular note is the presentation embedded below from Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org and I would encourage anyone who is remotely interested in where things are heading with regards to mobile usage, Internet and information services to review this.

| View | Upload your own

Rudy definitely appears to have a finger on the pulse of what's going on in the rapidly changing landscape of mobile technology?

Understanding Mobile 2.0

On the eve of Le Web 3 in Paris - and one month after the Web 2.0 Summit concluded - it seems like an appropriate time to explore the world of the mobile Web, a.k.a. mobile 2.0. There has been a lot of discussion lately on this topic, a good deal of it inspired by the mobile 2.0 event - a one-day event held on 6 November 2006, organized by Daniel Appelquist and Mike Rowehl.

Carriers and Mobile Operators are taking notice...

In the closing session about carriers and operators at the Under The Radar: Mobility Conference on 16 November 2006, I heard an Executive Director from Verizon Wireless using the term "Mobile 2.0". Also Orange (France Telecom) is sponsoring one of the biggest web 2.0 related conferences in Europe, Le Web 3 in Paris. The fact that carriers/operators are now linking their brand name to web 2.0/mobile 2.0 related content and conferences, shows that progress is being made. Web 2.0 inspired projects going mobile and/or mobile 2.0 projects have been considered as things to avoid for carriers/operators up till now, since they are disruptive to their current business models.

So does this mean, with the carriers/operators entering the space now, that mobile 2.0 is finally taking off?

.....

What is Mobile 2.0?

It's absolutely necessary that more connections are made between the players in the web 2.0 sphere (a.k.a. next generation web apps & services) and what some Mobilists are calling mobile 2.0. What we mean by 'mobile 2.0' is another (r)evolution, already started, that will dramatically change the web and the mobility landscape that we currently know. The idea is that the mobile web will become the dominant access method in many countries of the world, with devices that become more hybrid and networks that become more powerful - everywhere in the next decade to come.

.......

Well Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, put it very well in a Financial Times article in May this year (subscription only):

"Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have Internet access. What is more, the World Bank estimates that more than two-thirds of the world's population lives within range of a mobile phone network. Mobile is going to be the next big Internet phenomenon. It holds the key to greater access for everyone - with all the benefits that entails."

.....

Mobilist blogger Enrique C. Ortiz sees another hindrance (and I think he's right): the lack of open standards and tools to build your own mobile 2.0 applications. He says:

"Web 2.0 is based on user intelligence instead of technologies, i.e. by giving users smart tools that enable them to apply human semantics to information provided, you get a more intelligent web. This can only be done in a massive (thus useful) way with open standards and protocols that are inclusive and inviting to everyone. Now, as I see it, this 'open-source' story is an aspect seriously lacking from mobile platforms."

Carriers/operators need to cover their investments and so they want to be compensated by any 3rd party using their network. This is fair enough, but the fact is that operators are losing more and more control over mobile devices - because these devices can communicate with other devices over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wimax, NFC, etc. That is, more options are becoming available for mobile users to access the web over networks other than the closed networks of the operators.

.....

Mobile Startups

There's definitely a lot of movement around on the mobile start-up front. Besides Yahoo with Flickr and Google with YouTube going mobile, there are some very interesting start-up companies resolutely going mobile. Many of them are building easy-to-use mobile web apps and services. Here's a starter for ten to check out (too many to link to, but just google them!):

BluePulse

ComVu

Funambol

Gizmo

Loopt

JuiceCaster

Mobo

Mystrands

Plazes

Plusmo

Sharpcast

SlingMedia

Shozu

SoonR

TalkPlus

Widsets

Winksite

... and many others.

In fact please add your name/project to the list here in the comments, so someone can start categorizing them ;-)

.....

Conclusion

To conclude, check this nice mobile 2.0 definition from Daniel Appelquist:

"Mobile 2.0 is not "the Future." it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry."

It took the internet a couple of years after 1994 to reach its maturity on the technology side, not to forget the business side of things. I believe the time has come for another exciting period, the Mobile Web. Some carriers/operators are finally starting to act - how about you?

Written for Read/WriteWeb by Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org.

Understanding Mobile 2.0 - ReadWriteWeb

Future vision of VDI? What if the Hypervisor was cheaper and flexible enough to run on BladePC's/BladeWS's - could vMotion/XenMotion then switch on demand?

Dave Caddick — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:58:13 GMT

I am sure this is not really what VMware had in mind when they were touting VMware OnDemand? I'm guessing they had more of an idea that it would combine some of the benefits of ACE with ESX? ;-)

I have just got back from some training in Houston and while listening to a question from a colleague from the UK where he asked if "VDI was going to be able to use the full suite of Hypervisor functionality like vMotion..." and that got me thinking...

Some of the Conventional Wisdom around the place holds that VDI by itself will likely not be able to cover all of any one customers needs and most will more than likely need to look at quite possibly a number of different approaches to cover ALL employees and ALL Applications.

So with this in mind I'd be interested in your thoughts on the following idea?

Just a few thoughts around VDI??

Let's say that we stock a couple of decent servers with loads of resources and allows us to run quite a few VDI instances? OK? So one of the possible issues with the classic VDI so far is that if a user places a bit too much pressure on the resources then it has the potential to impact on all other users, being as it is a shared resource? (This is still one of the classic gotcha's in Terminal Server and Citrix PS - the session is sticky and it stays with the same server unless a logout/login occurs)

So one idea I'm kicking around is the possibility that if a user started something like a 120Mb Excel spreadsheet that might consume quite a bit of CPU then would it be possible to use the vMotion to transfer him to a BladePC, if they started 3 or 4 of them (or they needed more resources?) then transfer them to a BladeWS.....?

Seamlessly!! with the user completely unaware that this has happened!!

Now the fundamentals of vMotion (or XenMotion for that matter?) requires shared boot storage - BUT I don't think it needs to be NFS or iSCSI, etc. - the Citrix Provisioning Server or OS Streaming method like Neoware IM would probably work just as well in this scenario? As this then leaves the Virtual HardDisk/Storage in a common area accessible by the Vitrual Desktops regardless of whether they are running on VDI's, the BladePC's or the BladeWS's.

The other point is the similarity of CPU would possibly cause an issue, and this probably extends beyond just Intel/AMD? This appears to be a fundamental of vMotion/XenMotion? So this might not fly today, but it is possible that with improvements in the Hypervisors this issue might be overcome at some stage soon?

Anyway, what do you think of the *idea/concept*? As a user requires more CPU and resources they might be able to be transferred from shared resources (VDI on ESX) to individual resources (BladePC) and then high powered resources (BladeWS) - once the high intensity workload has finished then the user would be transferred seamlessly back through the stack to a VDI instance on the ESX server.

Please bear in mind that this is only a concept at the moment and there are clearly problems and issues to be overcome - but the main reason for this post is to ask if you think it has legs? What do you think?

Clearly the ESX/Hypervisor would need to be able to run on hardware outside of it’s current Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) but with Xen this might not be such an issue?

Is wonder if this is where XenDesktop is headed? ;-)

SkyDive the beach - freefall from 12,000feet over the surf in Wollongong!

Dave Caddick — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:52:41 GMT

Well if you've ever had the thought that you might want to actually jump out of a serviceable aircraft for kicks then this is a great location to do it?

This was the Xmas present from my wife Natalie and we finally got around to doing this on Saturday 16th Feb. What a blast!!!

Nat also came along and did the jump but unfortunately had what they term a "Reserve Ride" meaning that here Pilot didn't like the look of the chute in that it was twisted up a little at the back left hand side - so he jettisoned that and went for the reserve. Needless to say this made it a bit hairier for Nat, but she was happy with the gentle touch down on the beach.

More info at www.skydivethebeach.com

My pilot Glenn and I were last out so we had a clear view of what was going on and we ended up being the spotters for where the first gear floated down in behind a couple of houses near the Train Station.

So while I'm admiring the view, Glenn's keeping an eye on proceedings?

Live Demos of VDM2 from VMware and XenDesktop from Citrix

Dave Caddick — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 03:41:02 GMT

In some cases the regular methods of "Going to Market" with a new product is fraught with pitfalls as it is conceived by Marketing and/or Product managers who then seem to loose sight of what the Customer is actually after - I've always thought it better to get the product and solution in front of the customer as quickly as possible and let them make up their mind and give feedback?

In all fairness, with some of the larger Vendor's there is so much red tape and bureaucracy this makes it nigh on impossible to actually create demo sites like this that Gareth has created - so kudos to him for getting this created.

What Gareth has alluded to but possibly failed to qualify was, if you don't have a Citrix ICA client installed then you might also want to think about downloading that elsewhere than from his hosted servers as that will also be quite quicker at over 17Mb for the web client?

Xendesktop or VDM2? Compare them for yourself

When the beta code for VDM2 was first released I wanted to push them both out over the Internet, however there was a red tape / NDA issue.

Now that VDM2 is released I can put both of them out together. All of the components are running as virtual machines on one ESX host. The XP clients are identical in terms of their configuration and resources.

The two URLs are https://oasxendesktop.oas.co.za for the Citrix XenDesktop and https://VDM2.oas.co.za for the VMware VDM2.

username is demo
password is also demo.

The latency is likely to be pretty awful for those abroad. It is slow but usable in South Africa but I am interested in seeing how the performance is from Europe, I think our under-sea cable terminates in Europe so it will probably be even worse in North America.

We have unfortunately also been having to contend with an inordinate number of power cuts, so please bear with our Third World infrastructure. Crises notwithstanding, I will try to give you some more details on the configuration some comparisons on the two different mechanisms tomorrow.

Stop Press:
Whoa, the reason that the Xendesktop demo worked was that most people already had a Citrix client. The VMware VDI agent is 6MB in size and getting that over our slow link will be hopeless.
Try to download and install it from http://garethcharlotte.googlepages.com/VMware-vdmclient-2.0.0-403.exe , this is hosted by google and should come down fairly quickly worldwide.

VMware and CITRIX for South Africa

Considering a MacBook Air? but put off by not being able to replace the battery? Don't worry, here's a DIY guide with pictures

Dave Caddick — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:05:18 GMT

So it would appear that Kyle at iFixit is something of a closet Mac Service guy? ;-) Really this is very nice to see exactly what is under the hood of this well hyped Laptop, this way you really get to see what's under the hood and know what you are actually paying for.

It is nice to see that it is not that hard to get in to possibly replace the battery if needed?

Look! We found the battery.

Unfortunately, it's no longer considered a user-installable part by Apple and is attached to the case by 9 screws:

Four 3mm #00 Phillips.

Four 3.8mm #00 Phillips.

One 7.3mm #00 Phillips.

The RF module, in all its blue glory.

The Broadcom 802.11 chip had the markings BCM4321KFBG.

Two other chips were enclosed in metal housings.

And the backside had another chip marked with BCM94321COEX2.

We found Intel's new Core 2 Duo chip right beneath the heat sink (no surprises there). A temperature sensor sits on an external board glued between the CPU and graphics chips. A high-resolution image (632K) is available here.

There are 16 RAM chips (eight one-gigabit chips on each side of the logic board) for a total of 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

The large microchip in the center of the picture is a low power Intel North Bridge GS965 integrated graphics chip with the markings LE82GS965.

Three chips adjacent to the North Bridge/graphics controller have a semi-transparent blue epoxy covering them, as part of the HDCP hardware requirement for digital video signals.

The reverse side of the logic board. Many of these chips are for power management. A high-resolution image (708K) is available here.

You can see the second half of the Micron RAM chips.

We identified the Silicon Image SIL1392CNU HDMI video chip and Texas Instruments TPS51120 dual current mode synchronous step-down controller (power management).

iFixit — MacBook Air

HOWTO - Free Download of TV Shows and Movies from the Internet + screenshots

Dave Caddick — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:18:08 GMT

Now this may seem a bit hypocritical, but first let me state that I don't condone this, but in quite a number of ways the TV Stations and the Cable Operators are responsible for setting our (and our Spouses? ;-) expectations quite high in the first place and then clearly not delivering.

Why the present system is not working

Example 1:

Here in Australia Foxtel would like you to sign up for their premium service and use the IQ (similar to UK's Sky+ Service) however here in Australia there is a wealth of content still delivered by the main Free to Air (FTA) Stations and yet this is only available **IF** you have the service delivered by Cable - NOT if it's delivered by Satellite.

Apparently that would require a retransmission fee that the TV Channels are not prepared to pay for - so although you see the lovely shiny adverts for Foxtel's IQ Service... come to think of it there haven't been that many lately, then it won't work for the majority of Australians who would expect to pause and timeshift TV Shows from the main Stations.

Example 2:

Related to above, my Wife starts getting interested in the TV mini-series Damages on Channel 9 at 9.30, only to find that 5 or 6 episodes in they decide to switch it to a 10.30 slot that is too late for her.

Example 3:

Channel 9 advertises "New Series" of CSI - as soon as it starts I can see it's essentially a rerun of Series 7. But now that my interest has been piqued I check the details for CSI on www.tvrage.com and find that yes CSI is now in Series 8 and it first started airing back in Sept. 2007.... sheesh!!

Example 4:

My wife is a very big fan of X-Factor in the UK and yet this show never makes it to the Foxtel supplied UK channels, so we step outside this and download them from the Internet and generally watch them a week after they have aired in the UK.

Can anyone else see the similarity with the Music Industry?

The main point here is that the RIAA have spent the best part of the 5 years or so trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle with regard to MP3 downloads and they are clearly fighting a loosing battle. It would be far better for them to approach this from the point of view that it is extremely hard to stop and or eradicate, so how can we make this experience much simpler, easier for the Customers/Public to the point that they will all flock to RIAA approved web sites for their content? Or even take on board some of the suggestions that they organise a royalty payment mechanism with the ISP's?

At the moment the Video content is still quite questionable in a number of cases and you never really know what it will be like until you view the file after it's downloaded - so there is still a lot of potential for the TV Stations/TV Studios/Film Studios to learn from the RIAA's experience and start building a consensus and/or business case of how the future might look? There will be plenty of people who will argue that it can't be done because of the myriad number of vested interests - but my point is - look at where the RIAA is now, technology will advance, ADSL is getting faster and more ubiquitous....

And don't forget from my example above, even though it might be a complex and time consuming exercise, every time I get stiffed by one of the "vested interests" above when they change scheduled times, or do reruns as "new series" etc. I revert to form

It would be great to think what it might be like in another 3 - 5 years from now when you sign up on a TV Channel's web site and get updates via email that your new show/episode is ready for download? And would you possibly interested in these other similar shows in the Archive? And don't forget we will be debuting a new show that you might be interested in next month... Would you like to schedule these downloads automatically?

If you make it simple and easy people will flock to it - then just add advertising to make it pay?

Anyway, that's my 2 cents for what it's worth, and below I have outlined how it is possible to make it reasonably simple enough that my wife is now able to get things without involving me

Downloading TV Shows and Movies from the Internet

Great places to search for these downloads are:
Pirate Bay - www.piratebay.org
Mininova – www.mininova.org
Newzbin – www.newzbin.com

Both of these are structured somewhat differently:

Mininova uses bittorrents that requires a bittorrent client like utorrent to facilitate the download, where as Newzbin simply searches parts of Usenet to locate the groups of smaller files that have been posted that make up the larger TV show or movie.

Mininova:

For example search mininova for “CSI series 8” and you will get a result like this

This brings the result like…..

Click on the link at the top of the seeds column, and this will rearrange the list so that those torrents with the most seeds is at the top (more seeds means that more people have the complete file being offered up to others)

Now look for the particular episode that you are looking for – these are typically named in the format like s08e04, s802 or 808 – what this is referring to series 8, episode x.

BTW (By the way) it’s worth mentioning now that a typical 1 hour TV show is actually only 40 mins in length once you have removed the ads – this is then typically compressed down to an *.AVI file of only 400Mb – so be aware of this when checking the size of the download, too little or to large could be a cause of concern. If it is a DVD then it would be appropriate to be of 4.5Gb in size

If you are in any doubt it’s always worth checking TVRage.com for the actual title of the episode – Films can be checked at IMDB.com (The Internet Movie Database) – these are both very good resources to check any details regarding TV shows or Movies

Click on the link you need – here I am looking for s08e01

So here is the link details

So in the above example you can see the mouse is just hovering above the link to download the utorrent client – if you haven’t installed a bittorrent client yet then I’d suggest you download and install this now

So just run this, no need to save it anywhere as it’s quite small, and we’ll install it straight away

So here Windows is asking you to confirm that you actually want to install this – just click on “Run”

Just accept the defaults and click on Yes

Change the “Connection Type” to whatever is appropriate

So at this stage just click on OK

Newzbin:

Newzbin is a service that you have to pay for – more information can be found at:

· 1 Site Questions

o 1.1 What is the purpose of Newzbin?

o 1.2 What exactly can I do on Newzbin?

o 1.3 How do I download from Newzbin?

o 1.4 How do I use the site with my Usenet client?

o 1.5 How does the site work, and where can I download the code?

o 1.6 I can't login to Newzbin, whats wrong??

o 1.7 There's no XXX/porn/adult content. Where is it?

o 1.8 Why do I get more results on www.newzbin.com than I do on v3.newzbin.com?

· 2 Email Questions

o 2.1 I got spammed by you, what are you going to do about it?

o 2.2 None of your e-mails ever arrive in my Inbox. Why not?

o 2.3 Hotmail?

· 3 Premium Membership Questions

o 3.1 What features do I get for the Premium Membership?

o 3.2 How much do I have to pay for this service?

o 3.3 I sent a Payment, where is my premium credit?

· 4 Legal Questions

o 4.1 Are you sure that this site is legal?

o 4.2 What data do you store about me?

· 5 IRC Questions

o 5.1 Where's the IRC channel? I'm lonely!

o 5.2 What are the rules of the #Newzbin IRC channel?

How much does it cost? 50 US Cents a week – what do you get for your money?

http://docs.newzbin.com/index.php/Newzbin:Premium_Membership

So once you have paid, here’s how it works

Search for “CSI 8x” gets you the following:

It’s worth noting that the date matches closely the first screening date as described in tvrage.com as well as the title, although that there are a number of different file sizes – this will probably come back to the compression routines, alogrithims or config details used when compressing the original recording down to the *.AVI file

I would always tend to go for the 400Mb = 1 hour TV series type of relationship and treat anything else as potentially suspect – but that is only my personal opinion

Tweak Vista's warnings

Dave Caddick — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:44:22 GMT

I have been trying Vista on a corporate Laptop over the holidays in advance of getting hold of the "Approved" corporate image for my laptop and in some ways it's a clunker - so if you know what you're doing and want to "trim" some of those annoying messages and confirmations then this might be just the tool for you?

Vista4Experts

Current Version: 1.0.0.1

Download Vista4Experts

Vista4Experts is kind of a treat for computer experts who don't want security center notifications, User Account Control dialogs, automatic Windows Defender scannings, automatic update installations (which cause you to reboot your system if you don't react quickly enough). People who want MSDN (or google) set as default search engine in the Internet Explorer search bar, who want the start menu power button to shut down the system instead of hibernating it, etc. These and many more fixes are included in Vista4Experts. All of these changes can be discarded, enabled or reversed. Vista4Experts is the first expert utility of its kind and works on every platform.
This is a free software and so it is given without warranties, this means the use of this tool is at your own risk. I take no responsilbity for any damage that may unintentionally be caused through its use.

I realize, of course, that many fixes in Vista4Experts lower Windows Vista's default security, but that's the difference between users who feel enough confident to decide what's best for their system and users who don't. Many of Windows Vista's security features are extremely annoying to many developers and other IT experts.
I even think it's bad that Microsoft didn't provide a permanent way to disable the driver signature verification and making it possible only for signed drivers to run on x64 (that if the user isn't in the mood of pressing F8 on every boot). This is my system and I want to run any driver that I want to! I'm pretty sure I won't involuntarily execute a rootkit, don't worry about me Microsoft...

Download Vista4Experts

NTCore's Homepage

Production Servers now at 95% Virtualization

Dave Caddick — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:10:48 GMT

I found this article today at CIO via an Article at Doug Browns site www.dabcc.com and thought it too good to just post the quote. This is exactly why Virtualization is shaking up the IT market so much - it has the capacity to drastically change the way you think about "Flexibility" and "Agility".

Being able to provision on the fly in 30 minutes or so doesn't hurt either - and it's this very reason that makes concepts like VDI seem so very attractive.

Virtualization at Warp Speed: How One Company Made it Fly
Want to virtualize 95 percent of your production servers within a year? Vincent Biddlecombe did. Here's how the CTO of logistics company Transplace went from having no virtualization expertise in house to running the company's mission-critical app on a VM.
By Laurianne McLaughlin

December 12, 2007 — CIO — Many CIO's wonder how far and how fast they can run with virtualization right now. Once you get an initial taste of the cost savings, flexibility, and speed of provisioning that server virtualization enables, you want to make a fast break for a larger victory. Vincent Biddlecombe, CTO of Transplace, doesn't wonder anymore: He just completed an instructive sprint.

Since mid-2007, Biddlecombe has virtualized almost all the production servers at Transplace, a third-party transportation logistics provider. (The company helps customers such as retail chain stores maximize efficiency in their supply chain and shipping activities.) And he's been running his company's most critical application—a home-grown transportation system—on a VMware ESX environment for a month now, with no major hiccups.

By the way, Biddlecombe didn't have any virtualization or VMware expertise in house among his 100 IT staffers when he started this project: "We were a Sun group," he says. To address this issue, he hired a consulting partner, Catapult Systems, to bring VMware knowledge to his group.

Timing is Everything

For Transplace, the 2007 sprint toward virtualization made sense on both a business level and a technology level, Biddlecombe says. The business desire: Transplace works with its customers via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), so the company needs the best scalability, availability and manageability they can get for hosting customer data. Virtualization appealed for both disaster recovery and scalability reasons, Biddlecombe says. "We can simply add capability as we need it."

On the technology side, Transplace's internal systems were due for a facelift. In early 2007, Transplace decided to move its production data center from the corporate office in Plano, Texas, to an offsite co-location facility in nearby Dallas. (Transplace also has a test/development and disaster recovery facility in Lowell, Ark.) At about this time, the company was due to upgrade its server hardware, Biddlecombe says, so it made sense to roll out the virtualization effort with that server upgrade.

For Transplace's database applications, he switched from Sun servers (running Solaris) to IBM mid-range servers (p570 servers using the Power6 processor and running AIX). For Transplace's middle-tier servers, he switched from Sun servers to Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers, using VMware's ESX Server software for virtualization. (For storage, Transplace chose Network Appliance's FAS 3070 storage systems.)

"We wanted to provide an environment where we could have maximum availability between our production and disaster recovery data centers," Biddlecombe says. "By using a combination of VMware with the storage, we've effectively copied our servers out to the disaster recovery center."

Today, Transplace's production environment is almost completely virtualized, and Biddlecombe estimates it will be 95 percent virtualized by year's end. That's quite an achievement, says Burton Group research analyst Chris Wolf. "From my experience, organizations that are able to virtualize 40 percent of their servers in a year are doing really well," Wolf says.

In total, Biddlecombe's IT group now runs about 110 VMs. In fact, the only significant applications that he's not running on a VM right now are his Microsoft Exchange servers and SQL server databases—both known for being extremely I/O intensive. (They hog resources on physical servers to the point that it doesn't make sense to virtualize them in many cases).

The Mission-Critical App Goes Virtual

The thought of running mission-critical ERP applications on a virtual machine makes many CIO's nervous—too nervous to try it (even now that ERP giant SAP has announced support for its products running on VMware.) But not Biddlecombe. As for Transplace's mission-critical app, a transportation management system, the first month of its virtualized run, coming to a close now, has proven pretty uneventful, Biddlecombe says. He saw no major pitfalls or performance issues.

This transportation management system determines, for instance, which orders need to be shipped together for consolidation purposes, how the order should be best shipped (parcel, full truckload or other options), which shipping carrier is optimal, and so on. This system also handles freight audit and payment. Effectively serving as Transplace's ERP system, the transportation system handles 4 million shipments per year, or about $2.75 billion in transportation spending annually. Developed in-house using Java, it runs on BEA WebLogic application servers and Oracle for database work.

Biddlecombe has dedicated 50 VMs to support the components of the transportation system running on WebLogic, and 50 to 60 VMs for some other components and everything else.

To determine the right number of VMs and balance workloads on the servers running those crucial VMs, the IT team did extensive prototyping. But they had an advantage that not all companies have with their ERP systems: Since the transportation system software was developed in-house, Biddlecombe's team knew a lot of its performance quirks already. "We're intimately familiar with what our software needs," says Biddlecombe, who has been with Transplace for three years and served as CTO for fifteen months.

Interestingly, Biddlecombe has not found it necessary yet to invest in any new third-party management tools from any of the virtualization upstarts, though he is scoping out one emerging need. Favoring a layered monitoring approach, he currently uses HP's Business Availability Center tools at the top level, HP's SiteScope at the next level (measuring factors like memory utilization in every app in every VM) and then network and database monitoring tools. He's also using VMware's vMotion tool to move VMs around as needed.

"The one area we haven't addressed is, are all the VMs sized properly," Biddlecombe says. "I think we've given some VMs more memory than they need. Our emphasis to date has been application performance. The last layer will be reducing VM resources so they have just enough," he says. The IT team can get some of the memory data from the SiteScope tool, but they have to do one VM at a time, he notes. This is the need that's making him consider finding another management tool.

For securing the virtual environment, Transplace's IT team applies the same security tools (McAfee antivirus and others) and practices that they would with a physical server, Biddlecombe says.

Provisioning in 30 Minutes or Less

As for metrics to prove his success, Biddlecombe says he wasn't able to do many before and after comparisons because so many factors changed at once: a new data center location, new hardware and all those new VMs all got wrapped up into the same effort. What he can measure however, is how quickly he can provision a new server or new computing power to the business side. It used to take him a week to provision a server: Now it takes 30 minutes.

"We have gained a dramatically increased capacity to provision new servers, and more scalability," he says.

The ability to scale to add VMs right away helps Transplace deal with any spikes in data throughput from its customers: "Because we're SaaS, our customers benefited immediately," he says.

And when IT wants to create a test and development VM, or a business executive needs a new customer demonstration environment, IT can do it within the half hour, he notes.

In another benefit of the highly-virtualized environment, the servers at the disaster recovery site can serve double duty, Biddlecombe says. They can be test VMs one moment, and disaster recovery the next. "We don't have to have 100 servers just standing there waiting for disaster," he says.

What's next on Biddlecombe's to-do list with regards to virtualization? He'll continue to ensure that the backup strategy is solid, he says. "There's this concept that I'm putting a lot of eggs in one basket," he says. "We use VMware Consolidated Backup, but you also have to make sure all your OS patches are applied, backups done properly. You want to make sure you're doing the blocking and tackling."

Other stories by Laurianne McLaughlin

© 2007 CXO Media Inc.

Virtualization at Warp Speed: How One Company Made it Fly - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

So how small did you want your PC?

Dave Caddick — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:54:55 GMT

Well this certainly sounds good, but I seem to recall that a few years ago there was the Cappuccino PC and the AOpen, just to name a few and there is also a good web site at www.worldssmallestpc.com that has a whole range of devices that come under the small form factor banner.

The main change with this particular unit would appear to be the lack of an optical drive which frees up the design criteria allowing a much narrower profile from the front and consequently a reduction in volume for the overall unit, It's also getting less important to support an optical drive what with the growth in size of the USB storage capacity etc.

I did also note that there appears to be something looking like a TV input on the eBox-4300? but using one of these as a HTPC or Media Extender might be pushing the envelope a bit? ;-)

World's smallest Windows XP system?

DMP Electronics (aka Icop) has announced a tiny silent PC claimed to be the smallest system in the world capable of running Windows XP. The eBox-4300 measures 4.5 x 4.5 x 1.4 inches, has a 500MHz x86-compatible Via processor, and supports up to 1GB or RAM.
(Click here for a larger view of the eBox-4300)

If the eBox-4300 looks familiar, that's because it uses the same case as DMP Electronic's earlier eBox-2300SX, based on its own 300MHz Vortex86SX SoC. The eBox-2300SX, in turn, is an upgraded version of the eBox-2300 that Microsoft has for several years provided as a development system to competitors in the Embedded Development category of its Imagine Cup student competition.
Is it really the smallest?
For the eBox-4300 truly to be the "world's smallest system running Windows XP," CompactFlash would have to be used, either with Windows XP Embedded or with Windows XP Professional installed via a USB CD-ROM drive. Eight megabytes (8MB) is probably the smallest practical amount of storage for XP Pro; at the time of writing, 8GB CompactFlash cards sell for approximately $75, while 16GB cards approach $200.

PicoPC1
(Click for details)

With a volume of 28.35 cubic inches, though, the eBox-4300 faces a serious rival in the form of the Sharp and Tappin picoPC1 and picoPC2 (pictured at right) based on Via's Epia PX10000G pico-ITX main board. The picoPC1 is a flash-only system with a volume of just 25.5 cubic inches, and the picoPC2 packs a 2.5-inch hard drive into a 32.3-inch volume. Other contenders in the tiny XP-capable PC arena are CompuLab's recently shipped fit-PC and Manufactum's Manuscriptum.
These and other low-cost thick client systems have been shrinking steadily, but bragging rights for diminutive size will likely always go to devices specifically designed to be portable. OQO's Model 2, for instance, measures just 18.5 cubic inches, including a 5-inch display, the capability of running Windows XP or Vista from a 120GB hard drive, and EV-DO wireless WAN capabilities. Ranging from approximately $1,300 to $2,400 depending on options, the OQO likely costs as much as five eBox-4300 systems, however.

OQO Model O2 is smaller, but costs nearly $1,500
(Click for details)

The eBox 4300
While retaining the eBox-2300[SX]'s size and weight (18 ounces), the eBox-4300 shifts to a slightly higher gear, employing the 500MHz Eden ULV processor introduced by Via in August. The tiny box also uses Via's CX700M integrated northbridge/southbridge.
According to Via, this processor and companion chip consume a combined maximum of 4.5 watts. Understandably, then, the little eBox-4300 is able to operate without a fan. Its light weight also allows the system to be hung from the back of any monitor that sports VESA standard mounting holes, according to DMP.

eBox-4300 ports

The eBox-4300 comes with 512MB of DDR2 RAM onboard and is said to accept up to 1GB. The PC also features Via's UniChrome Pro II 3D/2D graphics core, offering acceleration for MPEG-2/-4 and WMV9 decoding, plus a VGA output that is said to support resolutions up to 1920 x 1440 pixels.
While the eBox-4300 apparently does not have room for a hard drive internally, it does offer an internally accessible EIDE (UltraDMA 133) connector that could be used to add one. Storage could also be added via the system's three USB ports (two on the front, one on the rear), or its Type II/III CompactFlash slot.
Features and specifications listed by DMP/Icop for the eBox-4300 include:

Processor -- Via Eden ULV processor clocked at 500MHz

Memory -- 512MB of DDR2 RAM, expandable to 1GB

Display -- Via UniChrome II, supporting resolutions up to 1920 x 1440 pixels

Networking -- 1 x 10/100 Ethernet port (Realtek RTL8100B chipset)

Other I/O:

2 x RS-232

VGA

1 x PS/2 (supports keyboard and mouse with Y-adapter)

1 x EIDE (UltraDMA 133)

Audio -- mic in, line out

Expansion:

1 x Type II/III CompactFlash slot

1 x miniPCI socket

Dimensions -- 4.5 x 4.5 x 1.4 inches

Weight -- 18 ounces

Operating temperature -- 0 to 60 deg. C (32 to 140 deg. F)

According to ICOP, the eBox-4300 will be available in January. Operating system support was cited as being for Windows XP Embedded and "XP-oriented platforms," although the device should also support XP Pro with a large enough CompactFlash card or external drive. Additionally, Linux support seems likely to arrive in due course, given that a variant of the earlier eBox-2300 was recently billed as the world's lowest cost Linux thin client by Bangkok-based Norhtec.

World's smallest Windows XP system?

If all resources and commodities are priced or measured in US Dollars then what happens to these prices if the US Dollar falls?

Dave Caddick — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 02:22:15 GMT

Question:
As the US Dollar starts to unwind and loose intrinsic value compared to all other currencies is it still reasonable to claim shock at "Record" high values of Gold and Oil if these prices are in US Dollars?

Even if the value of Gold or Oil didn't change over the last 12 months it would have appeared to have risen being based on US Dollar price? right?

Why the Euro is Garbage and Only Gold is Absolute

Posted by Dan Denning on Nov 16th, 2007

How about the gold market? Nature’s currency, gold, fell over US$27 in New York trading and is back under US$800 at US$787.30. Uh oh. What gives?

Another point we made last night is to underscore the fundamental structural change in the currency markets. The US dollar has fallen…and it cannot get up. There will be rallies. But even if the dollar rallies against the euro, so what?

The euro is also garbage, we pointed out. It’s simply another currency not backed by anything tangible. It’s risen by virtue of the fact that it is not the US dollar. But it too, is un-backed paper liability. And it’s not even backed by a real country! It’s backed by 12 member nations whose various economic fortunes may one day force them to abandon the common currency in order to set interest rates that are more appropriate than those set in Brussels. Europe has a North-South divide.

But back to gold. In a world of paper money relativity, gold is a physical absolute. That is why people have been treating it as money for thousands of years. That alone makes it compelling. But as we said, the bear market in the US dollar is a terminal bear market.

The US government will either have to greatly devalue the currency to pay off its debts, or default on those debts. Neither is good for confidence in the currency. In the meantime, things priced in dollars (commodities) will continue to go up as the supply of dollars increases faster than the supply of tangible goods.

Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia

Why the Euro is Garbage and Only Gold is Absolute