You could argue that one shouldn’t complain about a product before it lands in your
hot little hands, but a common theme over the past few days among the pundits on the
web has been the newly-announced iPad and it’s apparent lack of openness. as
Alex Payne comments, “Apple has decided that openness is not a quality that’s
necessary in a personal computer. That’s disturbing.”
While I think the iPad is a cool device, and that it will be useful, and that I will
likely buy one… I have to agree with Alex. He’s right. That’s an interesting and complicated
place to be: I want to and probably will use an iPad to
do good things, and make valuable use of it. But there’s a big part of me that
won’t like it too much.
The risks of closed platforms have been debated for some time, in many venues and
over a variety of companies, platforms and systems. Lots of catchy terms like “walled
garden” and “black box” are used to describe essentially one thing: Vendor-provided
ecosystems that you can only interact with they way the vendor allows you to.
It’s why the iPhone “hacking” community has been so active, and so popular. Everywhere
I see teenagers and aducts with iPhones that have been “jailbroken” so they could
run third party apps and get around Apple-instituted limitations, or unlocked so they
could drop in a T-Mobile SIM card. The numbers are staggering when you look at how
many iPhones have been modified. And I think we all know that the same community will
step up and take the same approach with the iPad. After all, “it’s just a big iPod
touch,” as they say. Well, whether you look at it that way or not, the software is
a common denominator for sure.
Apple needs to step up and find a way to work their garden so the walls can at least
be lower. There must be a healthy balance between truly closed, which is what we have
today. Apps can’t be installed on the iPhone unless Apple sells and approves then
(unless you jailbreak your device). Allow multitasking and background application
activity, in the very least. Some restrictions are simply unacceptable.
The closed nature of the device – and I call it that purposefully – foretells the
possible future, one where consumer devices replace computing systems. The iPad may
have a computer chip in it, but so do my clock radio and televisions, and those are
devices – not computers. If I can’t have unfettered access to the computer, it’s a
device in my mind. When I was a kid we used to get into the guts of the computer,
physically and programming-wise. We were able to make them do whatever our little
hearts desired. That might be something good or bad, smart or stupid, broken or functional.
But we learned and we created, we discovered and we built.
The iPad is a design feat (with a fat bezel, but still a cool design). The OS is another
design usability marvel. The ecosystem built around the devices is popular, usable
and works. But it stifles creativity, choice, flexibility. Are we at another of these
inflection points, where things like common-person usability and “it just works” are
acceptable trade-offs for flexibility and capability?
My hope is that Apple will step up to the plate and make some hard choices that benefit
their customers’ bigger-picture needs. It’s the right thing to do, and would add some
traction to what otherwise appears to be a deceptively slippery slope. I can
envision a software switch (which would be set to the “safest” mode by default) that
a device user could manipulate to “lower the garden walls” electronically as a matter
of choice, with the potential consequences clearly spelled out (and I should
point out that this would be a useful enterprise capability as well, should they wish
to properly and securely enter that space someday).
Apple is taking
the covers off a new “tablet” style device today – called
the iPad (link to Apple’s new product site, with video) - in a much-hyped announcement.
I rely on my iPhone in so many different ways nowadays that I have a hard time thinking
what work and life would be like without it. I could manage just fine, but things
would change substantially.
One of the things I do a lot with my iPhone is pilot-related. I have a number of apps
on the iPhone that I use to help me look at aviation weather, airport information
and diagrams, radar images, current wind and weather conditions, electronic charts,
and a whole lot more.
But
the iPhone is a small screen for a lot of the information. Much like small GPS devices
in the cockpit are convenient yet too small to offer the best experience, the iPhone
doesn’t provide the best format for some content.
Here are the iPhone aviation and pilot apps I use most often:
ForeFlight Mobile –
worth every penny and more, this is an amazing app for planning flight, filing your
flight plan, lot of maps (VFR/IFR/street/weather/clouds), electronic airport information,
weather info to the max (including closest station winds aloft) and much much much
more.
CoPilot –
I use it mostly for the terrific weight and balance calculator and graphing portion
of the app. Also for some speed/distance/fuel/etc. calculations (all of which I always
verify manually). If ForeFlight had all this included, it would be terrific.
AeroWeather –
Probably the app I run most often. One tap on the screen and I have an instant one-screen
view (very well laid-out) of the weather situation at each airport I care about, arranged
the way I want.
TWC (The Weather Channel) – Not an aviation app, but it has a good 10-day view of
the weather that tends to show the most pessimistic look at what’s forecasted, which
is nice for pilots. We need an aviation-specific app with a long-term view like this
one has (within reasonable predication limits).
Enter the Apple iPad. Half and inch thick, 1.5 pounds and a 9.7-inch display. And
it can run ALL iPhone apps out of the box, pixel for pixel with a border, or via pixel
doubling in full-screen mode. A new SDK lets app developers take full advantage of
the screen real estate and resolution.
And, there’s 3G service for $14.99/month for 250MB of data, or $29.99 for unlimited
data - from AT&T. Free AT&T WiFi hotspot use with those accounts, too. But,
the iPad 3G models are unlocked, so choose your GSM carrier. Prices for iPads start
at $499 for a 16GB WiFi only model (with options of 32GB and 64GB storage), and 3G
models for $629, $729 and $829. WiFi models available in 60 days, and 3G versions
in 90 days.
Now, granted I am predicting the future a bit here, but hopefully ForeFlight and a
few other iPhone apps on the new tablet will – assuming they all take advantage of
the new display capabilities in updates – be the most perfect in-between device option
for the private pilot.
Grab a copy of the latest AFD as an eBook? There’s an app for that.
I can even imagine Garmin or some other aviation GPS software/hardware maker offering
a iPad app for sale, rather than selling a device with the software. The possibilities
for flying – after accounting for very necessary safety and quality requirements -
are great.
Anyone else think they might want an iPad for their aircraft cockpit?
I spent the afternoon and the better part of the evening with my friend Dave the other
day. We're close friends of ten years, both pilots and generally good buddies. We
spent the day keeping each other company and - although we only briefly spoke about
it - supporting each other through the anniversary of a difficult, life-changing day.
It's so hard to believe it's actually been ten years - Both an eternity and a blink
of the eye, all rolled into one. So much has changed in that time, yet so much seems
the same.
Life can make remembering the good stuff difficult, if we let it. My son died suddenly
the day before Thanksgiving so many years ago. He was 15 years old, and Dave was his
good friend in high school. While much has happened and changed in both our lives
in the intervening time, there's a slice of us that was sort of put on hold back then
- almost as if one dimension of time simply stopped still while others kept on moving
along. We both miss Brian, but we're also thankful for the times we had together.
So, the Thanksgiving holiday is always a bit of a rough time for me - one with mixed
and conflicting feelings. Every year, however, I purposefully try my best to remember
what this holiday is all about and to reflect on all the things in life for which
I am truly grateful, and there are many. One of the ways I accomplish that is by writing
and re-writing these words annually, adding to them and making them paint a picture
of life at the time. I do this partly for me, and in no small part for others who
might be feeling much the same way and just happen to run across this. So in some
ways I'm repeating myself here, but that's what it's all about really - to keep looking
back, reflecting on progress, changing and growing as we move forward.
Life's not perfect, and from the depths of the desperate situations and experiences
that substantially change us - often things that we would never wish to have happen
again, to anyone - we are destined to learn and grow, and hopefully to become better
people in the end. I know I have experienced that over the years, and my life is quite
different as a result.
Not too long ago some friends of mine impressed upon me the importance of adopting
an "attitude of gratitude" in life. What they meant - at least in part - was that
the place where you focus your thoughts is pretty much where you'll end up, and that
being grateful for what you have - rather than obsessed or angry about what you don't
have - is a good thing. For the most part I think they're right. This time of year
I tend to think about a lot of different things, some difficult and some pleasant.
But every year I try to take some Thanksgiving time to remember that even though life
is crazy and our time is often too-short, there are so many things in life for which
I am grateful and give thanks.
So, ultimately this message is supposed to be about what I am thankful for. About
gratitude. So let's get to that.
This has been an amazing year for me. So much has changed in my life. I am thankful
for Laura, my new and amazing wife who somehow understands me and has truly changed
my world for the better. And for Megan, Nick and Sam, three of the greatest kids one
could possibly hope for. I only hope I can be what they need me to be. They mean so
much to me and I love them all very much.
I am also grateful for our many terrific friends, my (now much larger) extended family,
my job, our home, my goofy dog, and now another goofy dog. I'm thankful for flying
and wakeboarding and skiing and concerts and so many special things we get to experience.
I'm grateful for doctors who fixed my damaged body a few years ago and for people
who cared enough to put their lives on hold and help me when I needed it. I often
wish I was better toward those who have been so good to me, and I strive to find ways
to both give back and pay forward. I truly appreciate them, and am thankful they are
a part of my life.
There are many, many people in this world much better than me, and a few of those
good people I've had the privilege to know personally. I am thankful for them, even
if I don't or can't always show it when it counts. I only hope in the future I can
be more more worthy of their qualities.
Thanksgiving doesn't have to happen just one day a year. We can - and should - remember
these things every day. But in a busy world of hurrying to get from here to there
every day it can be easy to forget, so a little reminder never hurt anyone.
I'm grateful for my life - all of it. The people in it, the good and the bad, the
happy and the sad, and for all the possibilities of the future - whatever those may
be. I've been lost and found again. Even though I'm not sure how or why, I think I've
come out of it all at least a little bit better of a person. At least I hope so. Our
experiences and what we do with them when he times get tough make us who we are. I've
been very fortunate in so many ways, and am truly thankful for that.
As they say, "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful
world."
The other day I went flying in the plane with my friend Dave. We went a few places,
including the avionics shop at Aurora and an early dinner at the Mulino Hangar cafe.
Then we flew around Mt. Hood as the sun was going down. It was a calm, clear and beautiful
day, much improved over the recent rains. You could see all the mountains clearly,
from Sisters and Jefferson to the south, to Adams and St. Helens to the north, and
even all the way up to Mt. Rainier, clear as a bell. We climbed up to about 10,000
feet and I steered the aircraft while Dave took a few pictures.
Lots of topics around security, legal issues and compliance in the context of cloud
computing. Good stuff. Recently on RunAs Radio we have have had a couple discussions
where cloud computing came up, too.
For a single mom with three kids, two of them teens, keeping a schedule is complicated
enough. Add someone like me to the mix and things get out of hand pretty quick. Because
that's the situation my soon-to-be-wife Laura and I have created, I've been asked/directed
to figure out a good, friendly, reliable and especially non-geek-usable way to do
shared calendars where everything just works. I think the term Wife Acceptance Factor
is about to have very real, personal meaning in my life.
At any rate if you have any bright ideas let me know. Here is what I have come up
with and am thinking about so far:
Google Calendars on a new Google Apps domain - I have already acquired and set up
a custom domain (ourfamily.cc) so we can have individual and shared calendars, docs,
email, chat etc. in that environment. We want to share calendar details with each
other, not the whole world.
My other calendars at greghughes.net - I have this hodge-podge of Hosted Exchange
and Google Apps Calendars on this domain. I will need to find a good way to sync and
share the info without sharing it to everyone.
Work calendar(s) - Typically on Exchange and accessed via Outlook, and I need to share
only the free/busy data, and only for certain item categories to be appropriately
security-conscious.
TripIt calendar(s) - for travel arrangements, keeps things automagical and simple.
Want to incorporate those.
Access via Mac (iCal or Entourage), PC (Outlook), mobile phone (Android and iPhone)
and via the web (Google Apps), with all the info always synced and up-to-date.
Tall order? Might be, but it seems to me this is they way it should be, so it's what
I expect: Any device, anywhere, any calendar, always in sync, full authorization control
over sharing and updating, no worries, no hassle, and easy for non-IT folks.>
I've read over my friend Scott
Hanselman's notes about how he has set up his system for similar needs, but that
post is about a year old and he refers to some unnamed, secret-sounding plugins so
I will need to touch base with him and see what he knows and thinks. In the podcast
he and Carl Franklin recorded on the subject back in 2007, Scott noted "the fact
that it's no trivial task and I struggled with it speaks to the state of Internet
calendars in general." Surely things must have improved since then.
Someone really should write a tool that does all this or all of us, cross-platform,
and make it all Automagical (tm). Anyone want to partner on a project?
I’m an Exchange 2007 user. It’s terrific, works great and is truly the standard by
which others are judged when it comes to business email, calendaring, contacts and
other key business productivity features.
Being both a Mac and a PC guy, I’ve been the tester, owner and user of a variety of
different applications to interface to Exchange. Outlook 2007 on the PC is a pretty
obvious choice, and again it’s a standard by which others are often judged. But on
the Mac I have been using Entourage for some time, with mixed opinion and results.
It’s a good attempt at filling the gap left by the fact that there is no Outlook for
the Mac, but it lacks in both features and stability.
However, on this fin gray Saturday morning I find myself once again examining the
world of Exchange and the Mac. As I type this my Mac is going through the upgrade
process and transforming itself into a Snow Leopard (OSX v10.6) machine. I’ve also
downloaded the Entourage
Web Services Edition upgrade from Microsoft, which is waiting on the Mac hard
drive to install after the OS upgrade is completed.
I should also note that earlier this month, Microsoft announced it will be releasing
(finally!) a new
Outlook client for the Mac in 2010. The expected “too late” crowd has been chiming
in with their opinions, but in The Real World, where people older than 13 years actually
make decisions about buying software for business use, this may be a big deal. It’s
at least somewhat inevitable that Macs will become more common in the workplace, and
the need for a consistent collaboration and productivity platform will full-fidelity,
complete feature sets across OS platforms is critical to making business work.
I’ll post more details and thoughts once I get some of the setup and comparisons done
over the next couple days. Meanwhile, I need to get packing some more cardboard boxes
here at home so I can load them up… For anyone who might have noticed I have been
absent from writing here, I am in the process of selling my house and will be getting
married in October, so my world is a bit busy these days. But I am not gone. :)
Here’s a video of the fireworks
show we operated for the people of Des Moines, Washington this past weekend. It
was both Independence Day and the celebration of the city’s 50th anniversary. It took
an afternoon plus the better part of a full day to set up, and we shot it off in about
17-18 minutes.
Thanks to everyone who helped out on the crew this year - It was a great team!
The camera angle is a bit of an unusual one. In this video you are looking straight
up at the sky, and the camera is fastened to a bench on the pier where we fired the
show. The three-inch mortars are just to the left of the camera, so you’ll see smoke
and sparks sometimes, as well as glowing materials falling back toward the camera.
Enjoy.
I’m going to file this one here for my own use, and hopefully someone else will benefit
in the process. I bought two new batteries for my late-90’s Yamaha WaveRunners because
the old ones were dead. I got the batteries all prepped, charged them per the instructions,
and went to install them in the watercraft.
I hooked them up and tried to get the Wave Runners to start, but both were dead as
a doornail. I checked fuses and electrical connections and all was good. Hmmm. But
something seemed familiar about this, like I’d dealt with this problem once before.
It really struck me that was the case about the time I pulled one of the fuses out.
Hadn’t I done something like that before and didn’t it require me to do some freaky
WaveRunner mojo in order to get things started again?
As usual, the Internet was my friend. I did some searching and discovered the same
thing my dealer had told me some times ago: When you disconnect power, the WaveRunner
goes into an anti-theft mode and won’t run until you do a few things.
Here are the steps that I followed in order to get them to turn on:
Install the battery
Hold down the MODE button on the console until the display flashes the word CODE
Enter A A A A
Now you can start the watercraft
And that’s it. As I recall, you can set your own code, too – But I’m not doing that
in my case. I’d just forget it anyhow!
Google Voice is awesome.
It's the greatest
service you can't get yet today. One number for all my phones, for life, replete
with text messaging capabilities and a whole slew of cool features.
But, as much as I love Google Voice, I will stand on my soapbox here for a few moments
to yell into the ether about a couple of glaring omissions in the current release
that I think Google should address sooner rather than later: MMS message support,
and support for sending a mobile message (whether SMS or MMS) to multiple recipients
at the same time.
MMS messages are multimedia messages and are sent much like a text message. They're
different than SMS message sin that they might include a video or a picture. Right
now, if I want to receive a MMS message, I have to tell people to send them to my
actual cell number, not my google voice number. Why? Because Google Voice
quietly and calmly eats MMS messages, never to be seen again. This completely defeats
the purpose behind the "one-number-for-them-all" story. So, it needs to change. When
the iPhone on AT&T gets MMS service, which is likely to happen in July sometime, this
need will become even more apparent and important.
MMS support could probably be delivered in two phases. Right now if you send a MMS
message to the Google Voice number, it just disappears into the ether, and is never
delivered anywhere. You don't even know someone tried and the sender assumes it was
delivered. To rectify this, Google could do a first phase change where MMS messages
would simply be forwarded in original form to the mobile phone(s) configured in the
system, without worrying about displaying them in the Google Voice web interface.
In a second phase they could then enable web-based viewing.
Second on my list is adding the ability to send an SMS (and MMS as a bonus) message
to a group of recipients. We already have contact groups, and we can select more than
one contact at a time in the web interface, but the option to send a SMS message disappears
from the user interface as soon as you select more than one recipient. I regularly
use SMS messages to notify members of a church youth group about meetings and other
announcements as a group, so enabling a group-send as well as select-multiple to send
SMS would be huge for me. As a bonus, provide me with a phone number that is virtually
tied to that group so I can send one txt to my group number on my mobile phone.
What features would you like to see added to Google Voice?
The
latest news via Unstrung's Michelle Donegan is that AT&T's 3G Microcell, which
has been in a limited and private beta in the United States for a few months now,
will be available in a sort of public beta in the coming weeks, in select (and as-yet
unnamed) cities. The 3G Microcell is a device that you plus into your broadband connection
at home. It has a 3G transceiver built in, and allows you to create a small cell area
of coverage (hence the name "microcell" of course). I've written about it before, here and here.
According to AT&T's executive director for radio access network delivery, Gordon Mansfield,
who was speaking at the Femtocells World Summit in London today, about 200 users are
testing the femto service in targeted customer trials.
In the coming weeks, he added, "we will expand that into a marketing trial of the
AT&T-branded 3G Microcell, which will be open to customers through our AT&T stores…
in a handful of cities.
"We're on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009."
The equipment comes from network infrastructure equipment giant Cisco.
I'm hoping that Portland is one of the metro areas they include in the text phase,
since my home has pretty much zero coverage. But I do have broadband and would truly
benefit from the product.
AT&T
plans to add a whole bunch of 850 Mhz spectrum to it's 3G service infrastructure,
which should improve it's network performance and capacity substantially. Many have
experienced the dropped call and unavailable network performance issues on AT&T's
network, so this is a welcome change. But for those of us who simply live just outside
the workable coverage area, the 3G Microcell will open even more doors for its customers.
Today Apple
announced the next rev of the iPhone, the "iPhone
3GS." It has beefed up processing power and some cool new features like a better
camera, more storage, etc.
Normally I'd be ultra excited about getting one as soon as its available. But this
time around, I'm having a hard time getting inspired.
It has nothing to do with Apple's hardware and software. In fact, the processing power
boosts and other changes are very, very tempting, and in a world where all else was
equal it would be a no-brainer for me to drop the early upgrade cash on the table
and move on up.
But the fact of the matter is, with AT&T's
ultra-poor network performance on my current iPhone 3G, I think I'm better off
waiting until Apple adds another U.S. carrier. I consistently have to turn off the
3G capabilities on iPhone 3G in order to avoid dropped calls and to successfully get
network connections. That was the case with the first iPhone 3G I had, too. To top
it all off, the service has gotten worse recently in my experience. I just can't see
dropping that much cash for a new phone to operate on a network that already sucks.
I've been sorely disappointed by AT&T, almost to the point where I want to call them
and tell them they've consistently failed to perform to the level of service they
claim (which is 100% the case).
It's time for Apple to drop that bomb on AT&T. Failure to perform in this case is
going to cost Apple market share. It's got to be embarrassing to the company. During
the announcements made today at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference, every time
AT&T was mentioned the crowd just laughed. Seriously laughed, and not because there
was a funny joke. It was because AT&T's quality is so lacking one just can' t help
but either laugh or cry. They even laughed when AT&T was not mentioned -
most notably with regard the fact that the carrier's logo was missing from some key
slides in the presentation, pointing out AT&T's lack
of launch time support for MMS and tethering, two of the key selling points for
the new phone model.
AT&T has turned into that partner that Apple doesn't need, and shouldn't want. It's
time to make a change. AT&T has simply failed to perform. When you can't reliably
make and maintain calls and the data network won't keep a connection between towers,
something's just not good enough. I hope Apple will step up - sooner rather than later
- and add another carrier or two even before AT&T's exclusive agreement expires. It
takes two to be successful in any partnership, and in this one AT&T's turned into
a bit of a boat anchor.
What would change my mind on this one? Simple: When my current 3G phones work like
they should on AT&Ts network, I'll be the first one to say so right here. Out loud
and with conviction. But, I'm not holding my breath quite yet.Tmobile
Maybe a good jailbreaking and switch to Tmobile will work on the new OS and device.
I'm sure someone will figure out out. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
We shall see.
After a year and a half of doing some fun security and IT consulting (along with taking
some valuable personal time off), last week I returned as a contractor to work full-time
at the "parent" of the company I used to work for. Fiserv acquired CheckFree last
year, shortly after CheckFree acquired Corillian - which was the company I at worked
for about eight years.
My new responsibilities involve working on enterprise security strategy for the company
as a whole. I'm excited to be back working with a bunch of people I respect and admire.
Completing the full-circle path this transition represents, I'm even sitting back
at very the same desk I occupied when I managed Corillian's IT department several
years ago. Funny how these things happen! It's been fun to catch up with my old coworkers
and to get back in the seat.
Who knows... I might even be inspired to write more here in the future, now that I'm
getting my brain back into technology again full-time. :)
Here's a non-technical post. I shot a few pictures in my yard this morning as the
sun was coming up. We've certainly been blessed with some incredibly nice weather
recently, after a whole bunch of rain. There are a zillion wild irises blooming across
my property. Click each image for the full-size version, if you like.
Shorthand used to be reserved for stenographers and people who
took dictation or a lot of notes. But for the vast majority of us it was
never fun. Remember those days? Now shorthand is cool again, but in text messages
sent and received on cell phones. And it seems as if everyone under 25 is
doing it (as well as some of us old people).
Parents, if you're lost in the world of texting because the abbreviated vocabulary
is confusing, no worries. Mobile phone manufacturer LG has released a new web site
that allows you to decode txt message slang, and you can use it at http://www.lgdtxtr.com/.
So now you can get a better handle on what your kids are up to. Enjoy.
Exchange Server 2010 is just around the corner, and Microsoft is gearing up to present
a month of webcasts starting June 1st to introduce the new version to us. The webcast
schedule is below. You can get
the beta of Exchange Server 2010 here.
6/1/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 High Availability
Welcome to the future! The future of Exchange high availability, that is. In this
webcast, we reveal the changes and improvements to the built-in high availability
platform in Exchange Server 2010. Exchange 2010 includes a unified framework for high
availability and disaster recovery that is quick to deploy and easy to manage. Learn
about all of the new features in Exchange 2010 that make it the most resilient, highly
available version of Exchange ever.
6/3/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Overview
This webcast will introduce you to Exchange Server 2010, reviewing the major areas
of investment for this release and highlighting marquee features.
6/8/09 - 1:00pm PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Management Tools
Exchange 2010 includes new capabilities that make the operation of your Exchange environment
more efficient. Learn how we've made the Exchange Management Console more powerful,
extended the reach of PowerShell, and made it easier to delegate management tasks.
6/15/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Outlook Web Access
Exchange 2010 brings new features and functionality to Outlook Web Access. See product
demonstrations of the latest capabilities and understand how browser-based communication
and collaboration gets better than ever in Exchange 2010.
6/17/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Architecture
This webcast describes the overall architecture of Exchange 2010 and key considerations
for the scalability and performance of each server role. This webcast will provide
the background and framework for the other Exchange 2010 webcasts, serving as a bridge
between the overview session and drill-downs in each product area. This webcast is
a recommended pre-requisite for the Exchange 2010 transition and deployment webcast.
6/22/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Federation in Exchange 2010
Federation is a key part of the architecture of Exchange 2010, powering new organization-to-organization
sharing scenarios. Learn how federation enhances the capabilities of Exchange 2010
and enables advanced coexistence between Exchange Server and Exchange Online.
6/24/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Voice Mail enabled by Unified Messaging
Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging is Microsoft's second generation unified messaging
and voice mail solution. In this webcast, learn about the features, benefits, and
architecture of Unified Messaging in Exchange 2010.
6/24/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Information Protection and Control
This webcast will introduce you to new ways to address information protection and
control with Exchange Server 2010. A discussion of the use of encryption and rights
management in parallel with Exchange will be included as well as an introduction to
new functionality in Exchange that supports information protection scenarios.
7/1/09 - 9:00am PT: TechNet
Webcast: Exchange 2010 Transition and Deployment
In this session we will cover the migration planning and deployment path to move an
organization from Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010.
Many people already know that I hold fireworks display operator/pyrotechnician licenses
in both Oregon and Washington. So, every year I "shoot" a few (or more) large public
display shows. In other words, the professional shows that cost quite a bit of money
and make big noises and splashes of light.
Every year I invite people to come help me with the operation of the show on July
4th. It's a fun and exciting way to spend Independence Day, and it's not often that
people get a chance to set up, load and shoot a big fireworks show.
But, here's your chance. If you're interested in joining me for July 4th in Des Moines,
Washington (which is just south of SeaTac airport and north of Federal Way) to set
up, fire and clean up a big show for the city, let me know by sending me an email
or giving me a call! My contact info is in the sidebar of this site. We shoot this
particular show off the end of a pier over the water. We'll start in the morning and
load all the equipment down to the end of the pier, shoot the show and then remove
the equipment and clean things up.
It's a bit of work, but it's also a truly unique experience and a whole lot of fun.
Heck, how often do you get to blow up thousands of dollars of someone else's stuff?
You'll handle the shells, set up and load the mortars, help wire them all up to the
firing equipment, learn all about how they work, participate in a full set of safety
lessons, and - most importantly - you'll be a key part of bringing an awesome July
4th celebration to the people of the city of Des Moines.
Feel free to let me know if you might like to participate. Safety always comes first
and you will be trained in everything you need to know to safely be a crew member.
Don't be bashful, there are a few crew slots open and I welcome your help and participation!
The requirements for crew participation (per the U.S. government) are: United States
citizen or legal resident, at least 18 years old, no felony convictions, and a few
other details that I can explain to anyone who wants to participate.
Thanks, and hope to have you on the crew! Get in touch! To pique your interest, here's
a sample video of a show we operated a couple years ago in Walla Walla:
If
you're in or anywhere close to Portland, Oregon and you care about software development
from a coder's perspective, there's a terrific (and FREE) event coming up on May 30th
that you should definitely attend: Portland
Code Camp 2009.
If you're interested in learning from cool, smart people or if you have some area
of code passion you'd like to share with others (no experience necessary - seriously!),
then go check it out and sign up now.
The 2009 Portland Code Camp is a free mini-conference that is a community-driven event
by, and for people who write software. The event features sessions on all kinds of
software and technologies, regardless of language, vendor, or platform. Code camp
brings the software development community together, focusing on the common act of
creating software. It is designed for all interest, all levels, and all ages.
Be a Presenter! The 2009 Portland Code Camp is a great opportunity to present a session
on a piece of code, a technology, or a project that excites you. Share your knowledge
and experience with others. If you've never presented in public before, code camp
gives you a opportunity in a warm, friendly setting.
About this FREE Community Event in Portland
A. Concept. Portland Code Camp is a community event focused on the needs and interests
of the developer community, and where we can learn from each other. Anyone is welcome
to attend and anyone can propose a session on any development related topic. Final
session selection is based on the interest expressed by those planning to attend.
If the developer community is not interested in a topic, it just doesn’t make the
‘cut’.
B. Community. Portland Code Camp is about the developer community. ‘Real’ developers,
not business interests guide all stages of planning for the event. And ‘real’ developers
(those planning to attend) express their interest in session topics.
C. Cost. Portland Code Camp will always be ‘FREE’ to the developer community. There
are no charges to attend any of the Portland Code Camp activities. We do raise funds
from Sponsors, but Sponsors have no control over the sessions selected.
D. Sessions. Sessions may range from ‘white board’ discussions to down in the trenches
coding. Session presenters should present materials that is their own original or
derivative work, free of copyright encumbrances. All session materials, code samples,
scripts, even slides, will be made available to attendees. Session presenters should
only offer material, including code, that is available to re-use, adapt, and alter
for the attendee’s own education, projects and even work.
E. Presenters. Anyone is encouraged to offer a presentation. Portland Code Camp provides
a ‘low-key’ opportunity for inexperienced folks to make their first public presentation
efforts. Some presenters will be experienced and some will be making their first public
presentation. The Portland Code Camp audience is quite supportive of first time presenters.
Most presenters will be from the Portland area, while a few may be from outside the
area.
F. Code. Portland Code Camp sessions will focus on coding –with few exceptions. We
encourage presenters to keep their presentations with the realm of ‘code’; a few sessions
may have such informative value that they will be permitted without code. But such
sessions will only occur if they garner sufficient interest (see paragraph ‘A’ above).
G. Schedule. Portland Code Camp occurs on evenings and weekends in order to reduce
work related scheduling conflicts.
I recently took advantage of an in-store offer to replace my water-damaged 16GB iPhone
3G with a 8GB version for $199 with no contract extensions, just paid the money and
walked out with it. And in my case I got to keep the old one, which makes a great
WiFi-enabled MP3 player.
Apparently (according to reports) it's now official policy/program now for Apple stores
to allow problematic iPhones where the water damage sensors (there are four of them)
have been "tripped" (discolored do to extended water exposure) to
be replaced with the same size and model for $199. That's a great move for people
like me who do things like ski, boat and oh, I dunno... Live in the freakin' rain.
So, if you have a problematic iPhone that you have been told is not covered under
warranty, you might be able to take advantage of this policy.
When the now-long-forgotten HD disc format wars were just barely getting started,
I jumped on the bandwagon early and bought the HD-DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360
(at the original higher price, even). I also purchased a number of HD movies in the
"Red" (HD-DVD) format and soon discovered the wonders of 1080p movies at home on the
Xbox 360.
Ultimately, Blu-ray won the battle to determine which of the two competing formats
would survive to become the industry standard. Today I rent Netflix movies in Blu-ray
format whenever they are available, and there's nothing like the experience of great
movies in high-definition in the home theater room with a 120-inch 1080p projected
image and the sound cranked up.
I'm one of those people that buys movies I especially like or one that I'll want to
watch again in the future. Unless it's really a favorite I'm more likely to rent from
Netflix. Ever since the death of the red disc and the day I bought a PS3 (essentially
to use as a Blu-ray player), I've wished I could play all my HD movies on the one
device, just for simplicity's sake. But it doesn't work that way. I still hope for
the day when a Blu-ray drive comes available for the Xbox 360, but I'm not holding
my breath or anything.
Today I was reading blog posts from the past couple weeks and I saw that my friend Travis
Illig recently mentioned a service
from Warner Brothers called Red2Blu that allows you to take your HD-DVD's from
that label and trade them in for the Blu-Ray version for a small fee per disc ($4.95).
After creating a list of the Warner Brothers HD-DVDs you have at home on their web
site and paying the upgrade fee with a credit card, you'll print out the PDF shipping
label they provide, and then mail WB the cover art sleeves from the HD-DVDs you're
converting to Blu-Ray. A FAQ
covering common topics can be found here.
I just printed my shipping label and pulled all my cover art out of the HD-DVD cases.
I'll ship it all off to WB tomorrow. It'll be nice to make the movie library a bit
more consistent. I'll need to look to see if any of the other publishing companies
have a similar program, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that all but three
of my HD-DVDs were from the WB label, so I'm pretty well covered. Here are the discs
I'm able to convert:
Tech Crunch posted a
list of Easter eggs - little hidden
software treasures you have to search for inside a program to find. It's a good
list, and has a few that I had forgotten about. Among those is what some say is the
original software Easter egg (I beg to differ, it might be the first video
game Easter egg - but we can save that for another day), from way back in 1979
in the Atari Adventure game (wow, I remember playing that one when it was new!).
Of course, Easter eggs aren't limited to software. DVDs have become a popular place
to hide fun little things, too. The Lost DVDs are a good example of discs that have
extra stuff you have to poke around to find. Web sites are also often sources of Easter
egg fun, and http://www.eeggs.com/ is
a good site to find out how to find the in a wide variety of places.
There are nine others in the TechCrunch list, plus a couple more scattered around
in the (off-topic) comments. Check
it out over at TechCrunch.com.
I had breakfast with a friend the other day. He's been writing some really cool iPhone
apps and mentioned that he's wanting to focus for the future on apps that can be written
and maintained cross-platform. He'll prefer to leave out the platform-specific "extra"
functionality, he said, in order to be able to do the bulk of the work once and maximize
the deployable surface area.
I got to thinking about this the rest of the day and came up with a whole list of
questions for my friend. It's an interesting and logical approach, and certainly not wrong by
any stretch of the means. Contrasted against the common move by devs to focus only
on the iPhone platform for example, my friend's approach really makes me think. Now,
to be clear, I have no idea what it takes to actually deploy an app to the
iPhone and also have a version to deploy on Android or RIM devices, or on
the upcoming Palm Pre (which looks really cool, by the way), or whatever. At least
not without writing each one from scratch. My friend does, though. What I took from
our conversation (as a business guy) was that it can be done at least to
some extent, but that doing it in a cost-effective way means limiting functionality
on any given platform. I may be oversimplifying, and in fact I probably am.
Then today I noticed that Mike Rowehl, who writes "This is Mobility," just posted
an interesting article entitled "Please
don't mistake my apathy for a lack of understanding," in which he takes on the recent
meme suggesting that mobile developers are blindly leaving platforms other than
Apple's behind, suck os Nokia's Ovi Store.
Which leads me to ask the obvious question: "What the heck is Nokia's Ovi Store?"
Granted, I'm not buying tons of mobile devices and deploying them like I used to,
and certainly I'm not a mobile developer, but I'm still pretty well plugged-in (irony
intended).
My past involvement in cross-platform development and porting of apps taught me that
it's almost always a complicated and expensive endeavor. But it's not just building
the app for the first time that one has to consider. Maintaining multiple platforms
of the same app is can also be prohibitively expensive, unless there's a relatively
simple and effective way to build once and deploy in many places/platforms. In the
mobile world, it just isn't simple, cost effective and reliable enough (from what
I can see).
And honestly, I want to choose the best devices and buy apps that take advantage of
all the cool features those devices offer. I don't often want apps that leave out
the latest hardware features and software enhancements.
Who's doing cross-platform mobile development and truly making it work? How are you
doing it? If you've found the way, drop me a line - I'd like to hear about it.
For anyone who follows the "I always wait for the first service pack" method of deploying
products, your excuse for waiting on SQL Server 2008 disappeared this past week, because SP1
for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is now available.
Among the features, I like the slipstream install capability (install SQL server and
the service pack in the same installation process), and the ability to uninstall the
service pack separately.
Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 is now available to customers. The Service
pack is available via download at Download Center and is primarily a roll-up of Cumulative
Updates 1 to 3 and minor fixes made in response to requests reported through the SQL
Server community. While there are no new features in this service pack, customers
running SQL Server 2008 should download and install SP1 to take advantage of the fixes
which increase supportability and stability of SQL Server 2008.
UPDATE: We've had a great response and have assigned all of our beta invitations
for the first round of testing, but please check the details below and let me know
if you think you'd be able to help in a future phase!
I'm working with a software company to test some cool software that's currently in
the early beta stage of development. The software is of a security nature and will
be of interest to IT and security folks as well as individual computer users. We're
looking for people with netbooks and notebook computers,
especially ones with webcams built in, to test the software and provide
feedback.
You'll be provided a test key and the beta software, and will need to honor the confidentiality
provisions of the test program. It's nothing too complicated and the test risks are
very small. You'll install the software, run through a few operational tests and let
us know the results. We will ask first for technical results ("Did this work?") as
well as your opinions and thoughts, should you wish to provide them.
What you'll need to provide and have available for the test:
One or more notebook or netbook computers
Computer(s) must be running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
If it has a webcam built in, all the better (but not required)
A Flickr account (basic account is fine)
An email account and server information (for application configuration to allow sending
of email alerts)
What you'll get as a result of testing and providing feedback:
A free copy of the release version of the software when it's released (and you'll
be glad you have it installed if your computer is ever lost or stolen, hint hint)
Satisfaction and a sincere thank-you from me and the developers of the software
This software is quite interesting and has a lot of promise to provide real security
value when it hits the streets, so we want to find as many complete test cases as
we can. If you're interested, please email me at greg@greghughes.net and provide the
details about your system, OS, etc - or call me at 503-766-2258. We are testing now,
so let me know!
Since my last
post, in which I predicted the newly-minted Google
Voice service would be a real positive impact in my world, my Grand Central account
was enabled for the upgrade to the new application and I have migrated to the service.
But you probably want a little more detail than that, so here we go…
First of all, I should explain that I’ve used Grand Central for the past couple years.
Grand Central was the centralized phone service that Google acquired some time back,
and it allowed one number to ring multiple phones, with centralized voice mail, call
screening and recording, etc.
Google Voice builds upon Grand Central by adding
a number of new features, including a couple killer apps in my book: Text/SMS
messaging and conference calling. Other enhancements include automated transcription
of voice messages and a unified inbox for all your text messages and voice mails.
I live in a very rural area, far from the nearest cell phone tower. Mobile service
on my iPhone is – for all intents and purposes – nonexistent at my house. If I put
the phone up on a certain window sill and avoid moving it or touching it, I can get
marginal service and might be able to receive text messages. But sending messages
and making/receiving phone calls is next to impossible.
By giving people my Google Voice number (which is 503-766-2258 by the way), my friends
and colleagues can send me text message and call me at one number, regardless of where
I am and what services are available at my location. When someone calls the number,
Google Voice rings my cell and home phones at the same time. I can add other phone
numbers to the ring list, as well – on the fly. So, if I’m working from an office
number I can add it to the list, no problem. I can define time periods to each phone,
so individual phones ring only when I want them to.
I
rely on text messaging for a lot of things, and many of my friends, family members
and colleagues also rely on it to reach me. Needless to say, with poor wireless phone
service at home, there are times when I don’t receive and cannot send text messages.
That pretty much defeats the purpose of using text messaging to reach people in real
time. With Google Voice, text messages send to my number are delivered to my phone
and to my Google Voice Inbox, meaning even if the phone service prevents delivery,
I get the text messages in my web browser and can reply to them there. That’s huge
for me – and I have already taken advantage of the ability to send and receive text
messages from my computer.
There are a few things I hoped I’d find in Google Voice that aren’t there, at least
not there yet. I’m hopeful they’ll be added in the future:
No support for sending text messages to groups – While you can create groups of contacts
in the unified Google Voice inbox, you can only send messages to individual contacts.
Since I lead a youth group at church, and we rely on text messaging to send out regular
communications, I’d especially like to be able to send a single message to a group.
As it is today, I can send a message to multiple contacts at once from my iPhone and
just save the thread and keep replying to it, but when the group membership changes
I have to start from scratch. It would be much easier and more reasonable to send
to a single group managed in Google Voice.
I’m a Google Apps user and have an Apps email account under the same Google account
as the one I am using for Google Voice. I’m not sure why, but behavior is not as expected
when I click on the Mail link at the top of the page from Google Voice. Rather than
taking me to my Google Apps email inbox, it takes me to a page where it asks me to
sign up for a GMail account. All other Google applications seem to understand where
to go when that link is clicked, but this one doesn’t yet. I’m sure this is just early/beta
stuff that needs to be worked out, but it also means my contacts are not synchronized
across my Mail and Voice inboxes, which is unfortunate (they’ve already enabled unified
contacts sync with GMail account inboxes).
Support for syncing external contacts on the server side – While I was able to export
my Outlook contacts, which are maintained on an Exchange server, as a CSV file and
then import them without any issues into Google Voice, even better would be the ability
to keep them up to date and in sync via the Google Voice service on the back end,
maybe using ActiveSync or something similar. I’ll have to look for contact syncing
software instead, since managing the sync effort by hand won’t really work for me.
All in all, Google Voice is a great app that’s already changing my ability to communicate.
People in rural areas with marginal mobile service could really benefit from Google’s
new offering. I’m looking forward to seeing what they deliver next!
I live in a remote location where you can barely get wireless service. I have to place
my mobile phone on a window sill in just the right spot, and if I do that I will often
get marginal service – enough to receive text messages most of the time, at least.
Depending on the weather and atmospheric conditions, I sometimes get no signal at
all.
There are two pieces of forthcoming technology that I plan to use to improve my situation
as soon as they are available: Google Voice and the at&t 3G Microcell.
Google
Voice was just announced late last week, and is an upgraded version of the services
I already use via Grand Central, which Google acquired about a year and a half ago.
Grand Central gives you one number and voicemail box for calls, and Google Voice expands
in that by enabling SMS messages to the common number, with web and email access to
the txt messages. I should note the service is free. The new features will be huge
for me, since my ability to send and receive txt messages from home is limited at
best, and often unreliable. I already have Grand Central routing voice calls to my
home-office and cell phones at the same time, so the SMS addition will be welcome.
Google is also adding voice mail transcription (machine transcribed) and some other
nice features like built-in conference calling. They started upgrading people who
already have Grand Central accounts a couple days ago, but mine has yet to be enabled
for an upgrade. So, I am impatiently waiting. they say new users will be able to sign
up in the coming weeks. More information about features available on Google Voice can
be found here.
On
another front, month or so ago, the tech news/rumor world was all excited about the
pending at&t
wireless 3G Microcell, which is a device that a user can plug into their broadband
connection at home or in an office to create what amounts to a short-range personal
wireless tower. I am luck enough to have terrific fast broadband service via a rural
wireless transport provider called Cascade Networks, so I’ll be able to take advantage
of the new at&t hardware when it’s available. Unfortunately, there’s been no news
recently about availability of the 3G Microcell, but I’m hopeful it will be available
soon. Having that available would enable me to consider shutting off my home phone
service and possibly saving that monthly cost. The 3G Microcell is rumored to support
data and voice for a few devices at a time, and who-knows in the cost department.
All I know is it would improve my ability to communicate, which would be a welcome
change.
More than once someone has asked me if there is a way to get Google to change their
search results to exclude mean, inaccurate, defamatory, rude, or otherwise hard-to-swallow
web pages. Often the desire motivating the question is legitimate, as someone has
been smeared unfairly or - even worse - in a completely fabricated and malicious fashion,
sometimes by anonymous online personalities.
The short answer is, "Probably not."
Now, before you think the proper solution is to have Google block the pages from their
search results, it's important to understand that Google is not the Internet, and
that it's not really making recommendations to you when it lists web pages that match
what you're looking for. Rather, it's showing you an extensive list of links to content out
there on the Internet that seems to match what you're looking for.
And that's what Google's search engine is: A way to find information created by other
people and displayed on the Internet. It's not a filter that's meant to decide good
from bad, who's right and who's wrong, who's lying or telling the truth, etc.
That said, there are things that Google works hard to avoid showing you. Spammy pages
(especially ones that try to game Google's own advertising systems) are filtered out,
and there are a couple topics that won't return results in their adsense and adwords
advertising systems (just try to set up adsense on a site that sells or promoted firearms,
for example). So they're not completely hands off, but for the most part they don't
discriminate.
When you want to have a web page removed from the search listings at Google, the most
effective (and almost the only) way to do so is to convince the person controlling
the web page to change the information or remove it. If you can't get them to
do that, it might be time to go to a court - assuming you have convincing proof that
the page is inaccurate and/or malicious, etc.
Granted, if a judge sends Google a legal notice requiring them to take action, they'll
probably do so. But good luck getting a judge to agree to do that.
Always go after the source of the problem. It's not Google's fault that some
mean person posted a page that says you're a jerk and thief (even though you're not).
But you might be able to convince a judge that the person you claim is defaming you
should change or remove the page. If that happens, Google's indexing bots will automatically
update the search results the net time they crawl the offending pages and see the
content has changed.
Matt Cutts has a
good article (with a great graphic) discussing this. Here's a brief excerpt of
what Matt tells people when they ask him the same question:
We really don’t want to be taking sides in a he-said/she-said dispute, so that’s why
we typically say “Get the page fixed, changed, or removed on the web and then Google
will update our index with those changes the next time that we crawl that page.”
His post prompted me to think about this again since I get this type of question several
times a year. Just keep in mind that while it's an emotionally difficult thing to
have someone write mean things and lies about you for all to see, it's a relatively
clinical process to try to get that information changed or removed. Just make sure
you stay calm and look to the right people to help with driving those changes.
Google's official page that addresses how to remove content from the company's search
results is located at:
As of this evening, I am among the ranks of those who call themselves licensed pilots.
"Wow, what a day! I woke up this morning and started in on some non-flying related
stuff that I had on my list, and at about 8:45 this morning my instructor, Kelly called
me. Turns out one of the local FAA examiners that conducts check rides for private
pilot candidates had today open and so he wanted to see if I could be at the airport
for my FAA check ride at 1pm today. It wasn't quite where my mind was focused at the
time the call came, but I quickly started shifting gears in my brain and agreed to
be at Twin Oaks
Airpark to meet Kelly at noon so we could make sure all the paperwork was in order."
I dropped into a Starbucks this afternoon, all prepared to get some emails written
and to get some work done between my Sunday afternoon and evening commitments. Everything
was fresh in my mind and ready to go via the keyboard and onto the screen. I fetched
my grande two-pump sugar-free vanilla skinny latte and sat down in the chair, opened
the laptop and watched it wake up and connect to the AT&T wireless access point.
But much to my dismay nothing would load over the network. The AirPort icon in the
status bar showed the name of the network and indicated that I was connected to the
access point, but I had no connection to the Internet.
After a brief bit of trying over and over to load a web page, I checked the network
preferences in the apple system preferences panel and found that I was not getting
an IP address. The Mac was self-assigning a 169.* address, which is a non-routable
local-only address. I tried restarting the AirPort card in the Mac, but that didn't
help. I then found I was able to connect normally with my iPhone to the AT&T WiFi
network and get a "real" IP address (192.x), so I quickly deduced that something was
wrong with my Mac.
I had to give up on troubleshooting and head back out into the world, but I spent
the rest of the day wondering if maybe there was something about the MAC address for
my wireless card that AT&T had chosen to hate. After finishing my day of activities,
I drove home this evening and fired my laptop back up. It connected to my home wireless
network. But again, no IP address assigned. Hmm, definitely the laptop.
I started thinking now. What could be happening? Powering the AirPort on and off,
shutting down the Mac and powering it back up, manually telling the network stack
to renew it's DHCP lease - all these things did no good.
I finally decided to take a look at the Mac firewall logs. You'd think that would
be the first place I'd look, being a security guy. They're kind of hidden in plain
sight, a few layers deep in the Mac's preferences dialogs. You go to the System Preferences
panel, in the Security section, then the Firewall tab, then click the Advanced button,
and finally click the Open Log button. If logging isn't already turned on, you can
enable it there, as well.
Sure enough, I looked in the log and found several examples of this (emphasis mine):
Feb 8 23:02:04 greg-hughess-macbook-air Firewall[39]: Deny configd data
in from 192.168.0.1:67 uid = 0 proto=17
Feb 8 23:02:26: --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Ah hah... Apparently the firewall was refusing inbound connections initiated by the
router as it tried to set up the DHCP address being requested by the laptop. The configd
daemon is a service that handles configuration changes for various pieces of the
system, mostly all network-related. Great, I had something to fix!
I first confirmed configd was in fact running, then deleted the firewall configuration
file (located at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist) and configured the firewall
to temporarily allow all connections, and then back to allowing essential services.
Sure enough, as soon as I made the changes the Mac was able to get a DHCP address
from the router, and the network was back up and working.
I have no real idea how the firewall got messed up. At one point I had it set to configure
access for specific services and apps, so that might have had something to do with
it. But it's strange that this problem only started today. It's possible the configd
process was denied by a rule, I suppose. Perhaps I hit a key on a pop-up dialog to
deny firewall access to the daemon without even realizing it while typing?
At any rate, it seems to be working now (as evidenced by the fact that I am able to
post this blog entry, of course) and hopefully it will continue to work as expected.
Maybe this will help someone else troubleshoot a similar issue.
If
you're in or anywhere close to Portland, Oregon and you care about software development
from a coder's perspective, there's a terrific (and FREE) event coming up on May 30th
that you should definitely attend: 
