On Novell and Tally

The Register has some nice coverage on Novell's purchase of Tally Systems.

Buffalo TeraStation

Lots of buzz about the Buffalo TeraStation this week. The Register has a story, and I've read about it in a couple of other places (that I forgot to bookmark).

With impressive specs like 1TB of storage, a 266MHz Freescale PowerPC processor, 512MB of SDRAM, a Realtek gigabit NIC, a RAID controller, and Linux-based firmware, I wonder how long it will be until this becomes a popular firmware hack like the Linksys NSLU2.

With a street price of $800-900 it's a nice deal as well.

Spectrum-starved US prepares to feast

Story on newly and soon to be available spectrum in the US

The Neat and public services

Working for a public school district, I found this article from the BBC interesting. I think they are right - in the end it's the quality of service, not the method of delivery that is the most important.

High School students' "Stinky" robot beats MIT in underwater bot championship

Wired has a great story about how four high school students built an underwater robot for $800 and beat the pants off of engineering students from the likes of MIT and their $11,000 robot. A great read - definitely worth reading through until the end!

Using USB Drive with ZENworks Imaging

Very simple clear instructions for using a USB Drive with ZENworks Imaging. Worked for me, although on some machines I had to replace "MOUNT /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbhd" with "MOUNT /dev/sda4 /mnt/usbhd" or sometimes /dev/sda3.

Power-hungry PCs cost users

The BBC reports on the cost of not shutting computers off when not in use - ""Most people could easily save £100 a year and a small-to-medium sized company should easily cut £5,000 off its bills just by following our advice," said Mr Ross." For those of us in the US, that's $9170. Our Middle School had a big lights off and computer off campaign a year or so ago, and saved over $10,000. Not bad for a few seconds of work each day.

Cell-phone complaints: A sorry picture for Cingular/AT&T

Consumer's Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) has released their annual report on complaints against cell carriers.

The data seems to match my experiences - with Cingular, we have had few billing issues, but have had a fair number of service issues. It's too bad, because I believe that most of the problems I encountered could have been prevented by their staff being better-educated about their products and services.

VNC via cell phone

KDDI and Hitachi Systems and Services have teamed up to bring "micro-VNC" to KDDI's au phones. I've played around with VNC on palm/pocket pc's and fount it barely useable. I'm not sure what benefit porting it to a cell phone brings, but it's still somehow impressive!

Novell Announces Enhancements for GroupWise

"Novell to deliver new product features, 10-year extended support commitment and pre-bundled Linux with upcoming version of leading collaboration product"

At this week's BrainShare conference, Novell made some nice announcements about GroupWise. Announced upcoming features are: enhanced client code for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and the Web, support for Microsoft Outlook, and new SOAP/XML interfaces to support integration.

They also will be kicking in a free copy of SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server starting with GroupWise "Sequoia", so it looks like they will keep focusing on making GroupWise work on Linux in addition to the Netware stack.

Finally, the extension of the support window for GroupWise through 2015 makes those of us who continue to run GroupWise able to breathe a little easier, knowing we're not sailing on an already sinking ship.

HP sues ink refillers

News.com reports on the HP lawsuits against Rhinotek and InkCycle. Looks like now HP is just using it's patent arsenal to force refillers to list their cartridges as "used" and "refilled" - which only seems fair, as it allows consumers to make an educated comparison. I just hope it's not foreshadowing of bigger and more sinister things to come, as HP holds 4,000 patents related consumable supplies such as ink and cartridges.

VoIP for the masses?

The Washing Post has a story on how Texas is suing Vonage because someone who failed to activate the 911 feature was unable to make 911 calls from their VoIP line. I thought it was interesting that this was one of the few articles that points out that: "Vonage notifies customers twice during the subscription process that they must register for 911 service, and subscribers are repeatedly notified that they must request emergency service whenever they log into their account" according to Vonage spokeswoman Brooke Schulz.

I found it spelled out clearly on their website the couple of times I've looked into Vonage. A google cache of the site (from March 14th when I looked) stated very clearly in bold orange print: "You Must Tell Us the Physical Location of Your Vonage Line for 911 Dialing to Function." Interestingly enough, about 50% of Vonage customers have not registers their 911 location.

The question is, which is the right system? Automatically registering customer's shipping location like AT&T's CallVantage, even if that's not where the system will be used? Or is it too much to ask of the masses to register the actual location of the service and keep it up to date, like Vonage? My opinion is that Vonage is doing it right - registering a wrong address is probably worse than not having a registration at all. Too often we expect some one else to take care of us, when we ought to be looking out for ourselves whenever possible.

Another nail in the coffin for traditional telecom?

Another interesting announcement at CTIA was Motorola's announcement of their Cellular Residential Gateway. Even though the sign next to it in the Wireless Home exhibit announced "Shipping Now", details on it are murky with no sign of it on Motorola's website. It appears to be similar to a cable modem/wireless router, but replacing the cable modem with a CDMA2000 1x EV-DO connection.

I see this as another nail in the coffin for telecom as we knew it. DSL has never seemed to have the popularity that cable modems have had for residential access. And with more consumers abandoning landlines for cell phones or VoIP connections, I predict we'll see more combined cable/voice and cell/data devices in the near future. I wonder if Vonage will find it as easy to partner with Motorola and Verizon as they have with the likes of Linksys and the cable companies as they will be competing for the voice market.

Combo EDGE/GPRS/GSM/802.11 card from Sony Ericsson

At the recent CTIA show Sony Ericsson announced a new multimode PC card that supports EDGE/GPRS/GSM/ and 802.11b/g. In my opinion, this would have been great news 6-12 months ago. Now most laptops are coming with 802.11 support built in, and this doesn't give a traveler much of an edge unless they have an older laptop. What I would find exciting, would be the same features in a SDIO or CF card - bringing these combined features to PDAs who usually have limited expansion slots. And while I'm dreaming - go ahead and add a couple of hundred MB of storage to it as well... Seriously, I could also see a EDGE/GPRS/GSM and EV-DO combo card vary sensational as well - it would be nice to have Verizon's faster speeds when available, but be able to fall back on the slower, but more widely available, EDGE as a backup.

Why does everyone fear nonexistent wireless VoIP?

Why does everyone fear nonexistent wireless VoIP? Is the question Mike Masnick asks on The Feature this week. From the article: "You can't really go a month in the wireless world without hearing of the next big "threat" to some wireless technology. This month it's wireless VoIP that's going to take down just about everything else in the wireless space. That might be a tad optimistic."

He's got some good insight on the vaporware mentality and what is really involved in de-seating an existing technology. And his whole Bluetooth-Kenny from SouthPark analogy is worth the read alone.

Script to ensure renaming of imaged Mac

I ran across this interesting script that checks to make sure that a Mac has been re-named after imaging, and queries for a new name if it hasn't. Neat little tool, and I think it supplements my vb script that renames our PCs after imaging to their Dell service tag #.

Cell/WiFI combo devices on the horizon

I'm glad to see that the cell providers and handset/PDA companies are finally starting to 'get it'. Some heartening news this week that brings me to this conclusion. eWeek has a story about the cell providers testing IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) in their phones in addition or in replacement to their current UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) protocols currently in use. The big difference here is that IMS supports SIP, while UMA does not. Apparently Cingular in trials with a Fortune 500 company, testing a device that uses GSM outside the company's offices, and uses WiFi to connect to the company's VoIP PBX in-house.

I also read about RIM's upcoming Blackberry 7270 in Keith Shaw's column this week (at the bottom of the page). I'm not sure what rock I've been living under since it's unveiling at VoiceCon 2005, but the advent of a WiFi only BlackBerry has to mean a GSM/GPRS/WiFi combo device can't be far behind.

I've been looking into either a BlackBerry 7290 and a Treo 650 to replace my PDA and cell. I've been wondering if I really want to go this route - especially with the reports of Cingular being totally clueless with mobile data, this news makes me thing it's not quite time to pull the trigger. I can see the Blackberry 7270 being a nice gateway to get me started with mobile data, switching to a cell/WiFi combo once the cell carriers stop thinking that unlimited wireless at 75-135 Kbps should cost twice as much as unlimited DSL/Cable at 768 kbps to 1.5 Mbps.

self-replicating rapid prototyper with a twist

Interesting story about a refrigerator-sized machine that would make "household items and gadgets, including kitchenware, cameras and even small musical instruments" out of metal or plastic. The cool thing, is that it would be able to make copies of itself - making it self replicating, and enable to original purchasers to defray the cost of thier machine by selling copies of it. This would be possible, because the RepRap project leader Dr Adrian Bowyer is not taking out a patent and will not charge a licence fee. “The most interesting part of this is that we’re going to give it away,” he said. It could be an interesting and revolutionary change in the way we manufacture things.

More SIP phones from Zultys

The article: ZIP 2: another entrant in the VoIP phone marketplace by ZDNet's Russell Shaw talks about the new ZIP2 line of phones from Zultys. Their website lists the following specs for the phones:

	ZIP 2+	ZIP 2P	ZIP 2x2L	ZIP 2x1	ZIP 2x2
Ethernet ports	1	1	2	1	2
PoE	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
LCD	Segment	Segment	Segment	Graphical	Graphical
Encryption	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Menu	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Speaker phone	No	No	No	Yes	Yes

Shaw's article claims they are all under $200, and that's a very interesting price for me - especially with the graphical LCD. I'm waiting for an email back from Zultys to find a reseller, and I'll see what the actual price is for me. I looked into pricing of their MX250 server in an earlier post, and found that needed licensing costs added up quickly - I wonder if their phones suffer from the same problem.

Road Cell Phone

Came across an interesting phone - the ROAD S101. Another phone that combinde cell and wi-fi access, instead of blocking it like the Treo 650. It'll be interesting to see if it ever makes it to the US.

Download details for Novell's Open Enterprise Server

Novell is providing instructions on how to download just the needed iso files to install OES, as well as receive 30 days of free updates. Was a nice surprise to me, as I realized I wouldn't need to re-download the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 isos again.

Sci/Tech High School with a cool name

Network World features an interesting sounding high school - Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The "cool name" part comes from it being referred to as the "TJ". The "interesting" part was the description of how students are involved in the ID department, with some volunteering up to 20 hours per week, working on production systems was intriguing. Our high school just had to drop our Cisco Academy program due to lack of enrollment (mainly because we were asking the kids to do AP level work without the AP credit) and I would love top see this level of involvement. We do have a web class where the students are responsible for the HS website, and use a handful of students as technology assistants - but mainly with lower level tasks, like basic troubleshooting, replacing parts, or re-imaging machines.

Blackberry adds IM to devices

RIM has just announced it will be adding AOL and Yahoo IM capability to their Blackberry products.

I've been looking at replacing my cell phone & PDA with a combo device, and have been intrigued by RIM's Blackberries. We run GroupWise at work, and I was impressed by the BlackBerry/Groupwise webinar I recently saw. I demoed

a BlackBerry 7290 from Cingular and was fairly impressed. If only the Blackberry had bluetooth/infared DUN and EDGE compatibility (for emergency laptop access) I'd be buying them for quite a few of my staff - especially since you can get them for ~$200/ea! But with unlimited data running $49.99/mo and no bluetooth data (or speakerphone), I'll stick with a cell phone (MediaNet unlimited $24.99) and PDA combo for now.

Mac OS X and Novell eDirectory Integration

Following right on the heals of their article on Linux/eDirectory integration, this week's CoolSolutions has a great story on Mac OS X and eDirectory integration. I've been wanting to give this a try for a while, since we're still about 1/5 Mac.

It's a very in-depth read, and doesn't look like the process has become any simpler since I last looked into it. I've also heard of people hosing their Active Directory setups trying to do the same thing, so it'll have to be done in a test environment first. I think this is a great example of something Novell should include 'out of the box' to really make its software shine. It would be a good reason (at least for me) to stick with eDirectory rather than migrate to AD or a pure Linux LDAP system.

Harvard and MIT sat "No Way" to hackers

Prospective students who used a flaw posted in online discussion forums to access the ApplyYourself service will not be attending Harvard or MIT anytime soon.

From the Boston.com article:
'Schmalensee said he made his decision to reject the 32 applicants after seeing the directions posted by the hacker. ''The instructions are reasonably elaborate," he said. ''You didn't need a degree in computer science, but this clearly involved effort. You couldn't do this casually without knowing you were doing something wrong. We've always taken ethics seriously, and this is a serious matter."'

Just another example of how being stupid with technology is just a plain case of being stupid!

Software Streaming

Network World has an interesting article on Software Streaming that caught my interest. It sounds like they are describing a product similar to Apple's NetBoot, which I've Seen in action at CCC. The article however is very sparse on details - a lot of theory, but no actual how-to's or off the shelf software to accomplish it.

I've seen similar concepts, like the formentioned Apple NetBoot, and LTSP for Linux clients, but haven't seen this done since the windows 98 days for a Microsoft product. Searching revealed two major suppliers of this technology: Bootix (250 euros/license) and Qualsystem (99 euros/license).

An interesting concept, and it would be interesting to see how it compares to a Windows Terminal Server or a Citrix solution - both in price and performance.

Building Your Own PBX with Asterisk@Home

Kerry Garrison has an interesting tutorial on using Asterisk@Home on his website. The best bit for me was his suggestion for getting Digium Wildcard X100P FXO cards on eBay for $6.95 each....

I'm still researching the MultiVoIP MVP210 I've got on my desk, and seeing what it can do...

Authenticating SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 and NLD to eDirectory via LDAP

Cool Solutions strikes again with a great document on authenticating SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 and NLD to eDirectory via LDAP. I've had this project on the "back burner" for some time now in conjunction with LTSP, and this walkthrough will make it a bit easier, since it looks like it corrects some of the inaccuracies in the Novell docs that had me stuck.

Invisibility?

Scientists have discovered that Plasmons can be used to make very small items invisible. From the article:

The proposal involves using plasmons -- tiny electronic excitations on the surfaces of some metals -- to cancel out the visible light or other radiation coming from an object.

"A proper design … may induce a dramatic drop in the scattering cross-section, making the object nearly invisible to an observer," Nader and Alu write in a scientific paper that was made available to the public Feb. 14.

But cloaking ability would depend on an object's size, so that only with very small things -- items that are already microscopic or nearly so -- could the visible light be rendered null. A human could be made impossible to detect in longer-wavelength radiation such as microwaves, but not from visible light.

So, don't go planning on a Harry Potter invisibility cloak just yet...

Sony DVD Direct burns DVDs without a computer

I found this device interesting, as I just bought an external dual-layer DVD burner for about $100 less than this and a standalone DVD recorder for about $300... so if I had picked this up instead, I would have saved $200..... and gotten the same functionality.

Quick and simple Student/User logging in Netware

Here is an interesting idea on logging student (or user) computer useage from the login script. It's one of those ideas that's so simple you wonder why you didn't think of it.

Paris Hilton & You

Frank Hayes has a great article in this week's ComputerWorld on how the Paris Hilton hack should get IT thinking about the use of state-of-ther art cell phones. Once again, do you really want your sensitive information out of your hands - or better yet, as the article asks: "you don't realy want to end up like Paris Hilton, do you?".