Category: Technology

Big Brother Live is Watching Me

Up to where?I’ve always found it fascinating zooming around Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth looking at the amazing detail on famous land-marks. It was also interesting to look at the slightly blurry, but relatively old images of my own house. The privacy issues never really occurred to me, until today.

Today Microsoft Virtual Earth has had a whole load of new images and the pictures of my house are no longer blurry or that old. In the old images my garden was still a patch of grass making it at least 5 years old. The new picture shows my garden with all of the landscaping and the trampoline which was present to the kids (honest) 18 months ago.

It all feels a bit too close to home now. It’s especially disconcerting to think that someone can look at the front, the back and the sides.

The picture below shows the construction of a set of houses near us into which some friends have just moved. That makes the images a few months old, max.

I didn’t dare show the images of my house, far too embarrassing. 

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PST Files + File Server = Dead File Server

Time to set off!!!I’ve had this discussion a few times recently myself. Storing a PST file on a file server is NOT a good idea.

Microsoft don’t really do anything to indicate to the end user that this might not be a good idea, but they certainly have made it known in the technical community for a long time. For some reason people haven’t picked up on this fact.

The Enterprise Platforms Windows Server Performance Team decided it was time to revisit it too.

At least once a week, someone on the Performance team will get a customer call concerning hangs or resource depletion on their file server.  The file server in question is used for user home folder storage and users are accessing Outlook Personal Storage (.pst) files stored on the server from their client.  The issue will manifest as either a server hang, or PagedPool depletion (Event ID 2020).  Oftentimes the issue will occur first thing in the morning – when users are logging on and launching Outlook.  In especially severe cases, the issue occurs several times daily.  Sometimes the server will hang for a few minutes and then continue operating for a few minutes – and then hang again.  Rinse & repeat.  The users are frustrated because of slow access to their data, the server administrators are frustrated because they are tasked with fixing the problem, and upper management is frustrated because everyone else is frustrated.

They have a load more technical information which explains why it isn’t a good idea.

In short, don’t do it.

The challenge I have for Microsoft, though, is this. Can you help System Administrators out here please? There is nothing in the Outlook UI to tell the end user that it’s a bad idea. Once they have been created there are no tools to help you move the PST somewhere else while maintaining an end-user’s access to the data. You don’t provide any tools to protect the server (by providing blocking of .pst files for instance). The policies for Outlook only allow you to stop people creating PST files altogether, but you might still want them to have PST’s just not on the file server.

Having a policy with no tools to support it is a bit lame. Remember people think that the machines are in control, if the machine doesn’t stop them, then it’s OK.

 

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Laptops finally overtake desktops – perhaps

Jimmy and Grandad take a trip to LondonIDC is predicting that:

“Portable PCs will represent more than 50% of all Client PCs worldwide in 2011”

It’s difficult to deduce from the report, but I assume that most of this transition will be driven by consumers rather than corporate purchasers. While enterprises are becoming more mobile, everyone I know is buying a portable device for their home. A portable device and a wireless LAN at home gives far more flexible access to the Internet which is the primary reason people seem to have a PC. The exception to this are the high-end gamers who still need a desktop for the graphics performance.

I’m sure I’ve heard these predictions before, though, and I’m not sure they are true this time either.

 

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Palm Takeover: Mobile Computing Consolidation Continues

Grandad has a relax on a bridge over the A590The news of yesterday seems to be that Palm is in takeover talks with a number of people including Nokia. Motorola is also looking on to see if a strategic bid, to keep Nokia out, is worthwhile.

This announcement follows on from a long list of consolidation purchases made by Nokia, Motorola and to a lesser extent Microsoft in the mobile arena. Consolidation is always a sign that a market is maturing and moving into the mainstream. So if you are struggling to keep up, here are some of the purchases:

  • Symbol goes to Motorola giving the a huge breadth of industrial strength mobile devices.
  • Good Technologies go to Motorola giving them reliable e-mail connectivity.
  • IntelliSync goes to Nokia giving them reliable e-mail connectivity.
  • Palm goes to…
  • RIM Blackberry continues to grow…

So what is driving this consolidation?

Is it because Nokia and Motorola are afraid of the rise of RIM? I don’t think so.

Is it because they Nokia and Motorola see an existing market that they want a portion of? No. It’s because the market is growing and broadening. And the growth in the market is being driven by two forces – network performance and device performance.

Network performance and availability is driving down the cost of data networks so that the always connected dream is becoming more of a reality.

Device performance and capacity has reached the point where the devices can actually do something useful.

This means that we are only just seeing the beginning of the explosion of connected mobile devices.

Cisco take on WebEx

Jimmy inspects a cave (Rabbit Hole)The big news of the day seems to be that Cisco is to purchase WebEx. There is a good deal of commentary already available (here, here, here) most of which focuses on the Cisco and Microsoft relationship.

Does this change the relationship between Cisco and Microsoft, I doubt it. The motivations are different. Microsoft is interested in web conferencing to sell Windows software, Cisco is interested in web conferencing to sell network equipment. Neither of them see these capabilities as core to who they are. If I were a WebEx employee I would be worried about that.

You could say that this is Cisco broadening its portfolio into services, but it’s not going to do that at the expense of it’s core business – network equipment. Cisco’s relationship with Microsoft also helps them to sell network equipment so they aren’t going to jeopardise that either.

The interesting thing for me is what this does to Cisco’s MeetingPlace software and all of the TelePresence work they have been doing. There are some significant technology overlaps here, though probably not too many market overlaps. Bringing these markets and capabilities into the existing WebEx customer base would make for a very compelling suite of capabilities.

 

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£17 billion wasted on unnecessary meetings

Mossy dry stone wallsWe waste £17 billion on unnecessary meetings according to a survey carried out for Polycom.

The thing you need to notice is that this survey is talking about face-to-face meetings. The premise here is that these face-to-face meeting would be more valuable if they were done over the phone, or some form of teleconferencing (because it was done for a video conferencing company).

I’ve written before about the different advantages and disadvantages with teleconferencing. I’m sure that there are a lot of unnecessary face-to-face meetings, but I don’t think that the real answer to this issue is to move the meetings from one medium to another. Far more value could be derived by meetings being well prepared and having a proper purpose.

The other major issue is that many people aren’t actually ‘present’ at most of the meetings I attend whether they are face-to-face or on the phone. People have so many interruptions that they allow to cut into their meetings that the meetings themselves have a significantly reduced value.

Moving from face-to-face meetings to teleconference or video conference meetings may save some CO2, but it isn’t going to make us any more productive, if anything it will make us less productive.

Matthew Stibbe has an interesting insight:

“I’m still wrestling with how I can change my working practices to become more efficient and focus more on productive work and less on meetings. I think the answer lies in making my communications outside meetings more effective.”

I am, of course, being a complete hypocrite here because I’m typing this while listening to someone presenting something on the phone .

 

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Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

Jimmy and Grandad take a trip to LondonIt seems to have been a long time coming, but Windows Server 2003 SP2 arrived yesterday.

I used to do a lot operationally, and seeing things like this filled me with two sets of feelings. First I’d be excited by seeing some of my problems resolved but then more powerfully would come the feeling of dread. The dread wasn’t because of the technology issues that I knew I would face, the dread came from the knowledge that getting everyone to agree to a change would takes a disproportionate amount of time.

So for all of you who haven’t even upgraded to SP1, here’s your chance to get back to a common platform .

One thing I was surprised by in this release though, the lack of inclusion of PowerShell.

(Apparently I recently used the same picture in two posts. Please accept my apologies )

Graham Chastney 2.0

Jimmy and Grandad have a problemIt seems to be really popular these days to create a 2.0 of everything, so I was wondering whether I ought to think about a Graham Chastney 2.0.

It’s proved to be an interesting question.

If I could move from a Version 1.0 me to a Version 2.0 me what would change.

As with the whole Web 2.0 thing, nothing would go away, it would just be added to. So Graham Chastney 2.0 would be Graham Chastney 1.0 with a load of additional services. I’d still have to do all of the old things that I used to do, but I’d have a whole load of new things to do each ending in ‘r’.

Graham Chastney 1.0 needs sleep – Graham Chastney 2.0 would have sleepr. Web 2.0 services are better than Web 1.0 services because they are more interactive and so sleepr would be better than sleep because I would still be awake, allowing people to interact. Because I would still need to support sleep, I would still do that during the night, sleepr would be an extra service that I would offer during other hours.

Graham Chastney 1.0 needs exercise – Graham Chastney 2.0 would have exerciser. Exerciser, being an interactive service would only be available as a team experience.

Graham Chastney 1.0 needs his family – Graham Chastney 2.0 would have familyr. Because family is already quite interactive, familyr would bring in a whole new set of capabilities aimed at creating social networks extending beyond family. This would simply be a closer integration of the friends service and the family service. Perhaps it’s tag line would be familyr = family + friends.

Graham Chastney 1.0 works in an online and offline manner currently. In order to deliver the extra capabilities required for Graham Chastney 2.0, these service would only be available online.

The information that is currently being processed by Graham Chastney 1.0 is not that easy to get to, particularly the personal reflections that are kept in the journal. In Graham Chastney 2.0 journal would be enhanced by a new service journalr. Journalr would be available via RSS to anyone who wants access. They would also be able to comment on journalr and see everyone else’s comments.

(Perhaps I’ll stick with Graham Chastney 1.0)

Where will my data be in 5 years time? (Part 3)

Jimmy and Grandad have a problemWhy bother thinking about the data?

Why not think about the applications you will be using?

The reason I want to consider the data is that the data is the important part, I’ll explain why.

An application is a representation of data. Different applications reflect different things about the data. Different applications also allow the data to be manipulated in different ways. This, of course, requires the data to be available to the applications, but also to be stored in a format that the application can understand.

My primary example of this is the humble JPG image file. I have a digital camera the creates JPG files. Once I’ve created the image on the camera I copy it to one of the PC’s in the house. having got it to a place where it is available to the applications I use a whole array of applications to do things with the data:

  • If I want to send it to someone I use Outlook, compose an e-mail, and attach the picture. At the point Outlook asks me if I want to send the image in any one of an array of sizes. I don’t have to use one application to resize it and another to send it. I can do it all in one.
  • If I want to view the images in a slideshow I seem to have lots of choices. My preference is to use the capabilities that are included within the software that Canon make available with the camera.
  • If I want to manipulate the picture I have another set of choices.
  • I can also add the picture to other documents.
  • I might also post it to flickr where they will present it in a number of sizes.

In other words, the data is not dependent upon the application for it’s existence, but the application is dependent upon the data.

What most of these applications have in common is that they are expecting the data to be available on a file service, and they are expecting it to be a specific format.

The one application that is different is flickr. Flickr doesn’t expect the data to be on a file service. It expects the data to be copied to it’s data store before it can be used by that application. Once available within the flickr data store the flickr platform does a reasonable job of making it available to other web applications, but these are all extension to the flickr application.

If I wanted to use a different application to flickr (that did a similar thing) I would need to reload the data. The new application might provide some form of migration or move capability, but I’ve not seen any examples of it yet.

So what’s the result? the result is that I keep a copy of all of my pictures on local hard disks so that if I wanted to shut of flickr I still have my data. I’m not yet in a position where I am happy having any of my data locked into an online service. It’s fine as an application which has its own copy of the data, but it’s not going to become the owner of my data.

And that is one of the problems with Web 2.0 applications.

 

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Where will my data be in 5 years time? (Part 2)

An interesting view of why it’s all changing:

Where will my data be in 5 years time? (Part 1)

Public FootpathI’ve written a few times about the future of the shared file server (here, here, here). This has got me thinking about the future of data. Where will it be in 5 years time? Where will it be in 10 years time?

I’ve been around long enough to remember discussions over the excesses of 20MB hard disks (and yes I do mean Mega Bytes). I’m currently sitting here with:

  • A smartphone which has a 2GB memory card in it.
  • A tablet PC with a 40GB hard disk.
  • A desktop PC with 360GB of disk storage.
  • Downstairs there is another desktop PC with 100GB of disk space
  • Jonathan carries around a laptop with a 60GB hard disk in it.

I also have a load of online data:

  • This blog is actually only about 20MB but that’s because:
  • My flickr site has 1200 photos stored.

I have hundreds of CD’s and DVD’s. I have hundreds of books and papers too.

And that’s just Graham Chastney the consumer, there’s another laptop with a 20GB hard disk in it on which I do my work.

There are some things about this configuration that I love, and some that worry me.

But will this still be the case in 5 or 10 years time?

What would make me change? Is there a compelling reason to change? Would I ever give all of this data over to Google, or Microsoft, or anyone else? What would they have to give me to make that happen? Would I be willing to pay for it?

Vodafone 1605 (HTC TyTN) Pocket PC Phone

I’ve been given a Vodafone 1605 to evaluate for the next month. This phone is the HTC TyTN rebadged.

So here’s my experience from the start, and some observations along the way.

My current normal phone is an i-mate SP5, so that’s what I’m comparing with as I go along. Both of these phones are Windows Mobile 5 phones.   

The packaging is the usual cardboard container filled with all manner of plastic wrapped cables and plugs. This packaging seems to have become the standard way that things get delivered. One of these days I will understand why we have replaced plastic containers with cardboard containers only to wrap everything in plastic bags instead. Is this really better for the environment..

The two devices are different to each other in the primary role that they are trying to accommodate. The blend between phone role and communications role is different. The i-Mate is primarily a phone, the 1605 (TyTN) is primarily a communication device. To make the 1605 (TyTN) better for communications HTC have provided a bigger screen which is also touch sensitive and given us a push-away keyboard. The i-Mate is quite limited in the number of “feature buttons” the 1605 (TyTN) has loads of them. Even things that you don’t expect to be buttons are buttons.

The 1605 (TyTN) is bigger than the SP5 in every dimension. It’s longer, it’s wider and it’s deeper, but only a few millimetres in each direction. It’s surprising though, how much difference a few millimetres make, this phone feels much bigger and much heavier. I normally carry the Sp5 in my trouser pocket, but I think the TyTN will have to be in its pouch on my waistband.

One of the things that is noticeably bigger is the battery. Considering all of the similarities between these devices, the main drain on the power has to be the larger screen. I’ll only know after a few days whether power is a problem or not.

One of the things that you notice as you unwrap all of the items in cardboard container is that they all use the USB interface; the charger is USB and the headphones are USB. The device itself only has a single USB interface. This leads to a practical problem – you can’t use the headphones while you are charging the device and the first thing you have to do is charge the device.

Having a touch screen the 1605 (TyTN) also comes with a stylus. The stylus is tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of the device. As a left-handed person who holds his phone in his right-hand this is probably the worst place for the stylus to be stored. This is the corner of the phone that is embedded into the palm of my right-hand. A few times already I have pressed “feature buttons” on the side of the phone while turning it around in my fingers trying to get to the stylus. While we are on the stylus, you have to give it a good tug to get it out. I don’t think there is much chance of it falling out.

My left-handedness means that the thumb wheel on the 1605 (TyTN), which the SP5 doesn’t have, is also on the wrong side, but I suppose I’ll get used to that.

The switching of orientation between landscape keyboard working and normal closed use is really slick. It even switches the orientation of the joystick which I wasn’t expecting, but is logical.

Having a keyboard for messages is fabulous and I’m already much faster (not surprisingly) that I ever was with predictive text on a numeric pad.

I’m not sure what the standard screen colour scheme is for the HTC TyTN when it ships, the Vodafone branded one I have is using grey and it’s really, well, grey.

The SP5 uses mini-SD, the TyTN uses micro-SD memory, so they’ve saved themselves some space there. The other advantage with the TyTN is that the memory is accessible on the outside so you can swap it without turning the phone off. On the SP5 you have to turn the phone off so you can take the back off it before you can change the memory. Unfortunately I don’t have a really large micro-SD card to I won’t be able to test out some of the media capabilities.

The verdict at the end of day – I’m not sure I’ve seen enough benefit yet to make me happy with the extra size and weight that comes with the TyTN. It’s early days (day actually) so I’m sure I’ll come across other things that will add to or detract from my impressions of the TyTN .

If you want a more detailed review there are a few:

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