Technically Speaking

I met with someone this morning at breakfast who works for an Irish company aimed at helping non-developer types create applications for mobile devices.  Including the iPhone.

How does it work?

You can download the application from your devices app store and an Adobe Air based application for PC or Mac from TheAppBuilder.com.  Then you start pulling in content, perhaps your twitter stream (by selecting the twitter portion within the builder and entering your username) or a feed for your blog, by selecting Feed and entering the URL to the feed you wish to fetch.

After adding some content and clicking Done, your information is pulled into the emulator (or preview app on your device).  You can customize tile names and make changes to content to get it suited to your needs all within the preview/builder app. Getting this going doesn’t cost anything.  the preview features are free, its when you go all in and publish content for mobile that you will be billed.

What is the cost?

After playing with the preview and poking around the site for a bit I found that there are three plans:

Preview – free starter plan to allow you to preview your work

Standard – the basic content plan which costs 29$ per month and includes free setup

Premium – the whole enchilada which includes developer support and other things and costs $59/month with a $499 setup fee

With the Premium service you get to create your own app store accounts and charge for your app, standard accounts cannot charge for an app.

Are you serious?  My own App?

Being a blogger for both my own amusement (this blog) and other paid publications I can see where extending your brand to a mobile environment… wait, I meant all the popular mobile environments (iPhone/iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7) could be a hugely worthwhile move.  The applications can receive content updates as soon as they are made, for example, if I am out at the Microsoft MVP Summit Reception and take a photo of someone doing a headstand for a beer (stranger things have happened) and wanted to push that out within my app, I could select it from the camera roll and off it goes.

In addition to feeds and twitter streams, you can include the following:

News – which allows you to publish events and other stories right to the mobile app

Contact – your contact information

Web – a webpage right in the app

YouTube – a YouTube Channel

Gallery – a photo gallery

All of these parts can be used for multiple items within the app, for example a feed containing this blogs content and another feed containing content from other blogs or publications I work with.  It is all very simple to get moving with and really requires no developer chops at all.  I would suggest a mobile friendly theme for your blog if you are going to use a feed, but will caution you that the emulator does not render as a mobile browser when testing.  This was the only thing that I found frustrating, other than that the app is a breeze to use.

I am considering taking myself mobile but will likely spend some time talking further with my contact at JamPot before I do.

The last couple days (minus travel) I have been in Fort Collins CO learning about Converged Infrastructure, 3PAR, VirtualSystem and other things HP is doing in storage.  I got the invite about a month ago and having attended other events in the past, I was all in.

I am not sure if the knowledge, and technical learning or the people and networking I get the opportunity to do is the best part.  I will admit, the technical things I liked the most were the ones I knew the least about going in.  My organization is small, and we have bigger storage than we did even two years ago, but some of the storage I have been learning about lately is definitely in the Big Enterprise category.

3PAR

I knew 3PAR was a service provider focussed storage company that HP acquired.  That is about it.  I think I also knew they used yellow bezels.  Some of the programming and data handling software that 3PAR is using to efficiently handle data is amazing.  A good amount of the decisions made (once the user decides where the data should be placed) are handled on the backend in the array.

Once the offload happens, 3PAR has a set of algorithms and software called ASIC that get to work on the commands passed in by an admin.  The compute work is also handled in storage and the whole thing is very fast.  The hands on lab was a great experience, allowing me to play with a 3PAR array, something I will likely not get to do in the real world.

It would be cool if HP could make some of these labs available via the web to allow further learning by us geeks who just have a desire to know as much as we can hold about storage.

I know that I havent covered everything we saw from 3PAR, but for me the ASIC discussion and the efficiency of the system were definitely the highlights.

Virtual System

I have always wanted a kick ass pile of compute in a box.  You know, the kind that falls from the sky and plugs in, bringing you an enterprise quality system.  HP is doing this on medium, large, and huge scale.  They sell certain levels of virtual system which brings compute, management compute, networking, and storage into one or more interconnected rack enclosures.  The customer works with HP and chooses the options they want, and the racks appear  (plus shipping of course). Even though the systems can be high to start, it is a ground up, quick way to take the mess out of a datacenter and get a clean, fast, product that just works.

Networking

The networking opportunity that came from this event, with both other bloggers (some of whom I had met before and some new faces) and HP employees was incredible.  I know that I will be reaching out to a few of the HP-ers to learn more about some of these products and to the other bloggers to help my network and general knowledge of storage technology grow.  I am amazed how much I have learned over the past few years both from attending events and meeting people.

Next up.

Once I get back to Wisconsin (boarding the plane in just under 2 hours) I will be knee deep in Tech On Tap.  That kicks off tomorrow and really is a similar event in style to what I have been doing this week.  On a smaller scale, since we selected a technology and found some smart people to come in and help us talk about it. As much as I am tired at the moment, I cant wait to see what tomorrow brings.

I know that I will also be chasing down a good digital recorder before I goto another event like this.  It is really hard to keep up sometimes and maybe getting notes that way and sculpting them into useful stuff after that is the way to do it.  I missed a good chunk of a virtualization integration session while fielding a couple of support calls, nobodys fault, but a good opportunity to record and review later.  The portions of the session I did catch were interesting to say the least.  I have a lot to learn about virtualization.

Thank you

I want to thank HP (@HPStorageguy and @beccataylor) for putting this event together and all the other HP-ers and bloggers who participated and helped me learn something new.

 So this week is storming right by and is capped off with a trip to Fort Collins CO to learn about 3Par and Lefthand and how HP does storage.  I am interested to learn more about both of these products, and even storage in general. There will be lots of useful discussion for sure which is the best part.  

Bringing bloggers together to discuss and learn about HP products and the tech that makes them work is great and I’m glad to participate.  Like others attending I have read some of the white papers covering both 3par and Lefthand but have no experience with them. No worries, I’m sure it is coming soon. After going to CO, next up is Tech on Tap I am very much looking forward to the first event and hope it is the first of many.

Time to pack and charge my iDevices.

I have been trying to talk myself into learning Microsoft PowerShell for quite some time.  It was always cool for a little while and then, like many other things, it just got dull and lost its shine. Until recently it was something I knew I would need to learn someday because Microsoft would eventually put it into products as the core means of administration.

Note: I realize that they are doing this already, but until recently I hadn’t been close enough to a product that used it to worry much about it.

Then I started getting into Exchange 2010.  PowerShell for managing E-mail from almost all aspects of the process is a damn fine idea.  Now I have a reason to learn more than a few simple commands, because I might actually put them to use.

Where I have been

I signed up for an account at PowerShell.com to get my feet wet and hopefully participate in a community. I have found this to be somewhat useful in the past and am hoping that it allows me an outlet to go dig around in other peoples scripts to see if I can comprehend just what they are doing.

I am on the fence about ISE… I know at some point notepad will become a burden to use, but just starting out, I don’t think I need to worry about that just yet.  If anyone has any suggestions for things to look at in terms of ISE or just good resources for learning PowerShell, please post them in the comments.  I am anxious to get a jump on this thing in the hopes that it will be worth the effort to understand.

Tons to learn

I have tried a few things that I found while binging my way around the web and it has been interesting to see what is out there, surely I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.  I would think a PowerShell magazine or some newsletter type offering would be a huge benefit to the PowerShell community.  Maybe the guys at Redmond Magazine would consider getting something wild like that off the ground??

For now, I will begin re-perusing the books I have on PowerShell and dig into the Internet on the subject further.  Maybe there will be an event near me in the future that will help me learn… I will keep my eyes peeled for that for sure.

Adobe,Web Content,Application Review

I never thought I would be looking at content editing applications for blogs and websites, especially from Adobe, but here I am, creating a blog post about contribute in contribute.

What got me here

A friend mentioned that a friend of his was looking at Contribute and asked if I had worked with it.  Since I hadnt, I thougth going through the trial would be a great way to see what the application is all about. That was over the summer… here it is the last of December and the trial is getting underway for me.

So far, I am not sure what to think.  It is a content editor, like the best parts of what was once Microsoft Front Page, with a better web feel, but most content management systems available today (think WordPress, Blogger, etc) have WYSIWYG editors right on the website.  The way Contribute handles themes from WordPress is the best I have seen for an application.

Figure A

The Interface

As you can see, the interface for a blog post seems to place an edit box right in the middle of what you would see if the post is published. For me this allows me to think about placement and visibility and what the post will look like without having to  save as draft, then preview, then edit some more.

I’ve also noticed that the action buttons or toolbars are moved outside of the editor window and out of the way more like a typical desktop application like Word or Excel. I didn’t really think that was something I would care about because I’m used to using the web editor but it is kind and nice. I have to give credit to a duly for having a clean interface contribute certainly has a clean interface and I can see it being very useful for blogging sites or blog editors who manage multiple blogging sites because you can connect to multiple sites from within contribute.

Figure B

Adding Sites

I’m not sure if it would be super useful for standard website content management because most of the individuals that I interact with that do standard websites or web design use tools like Dreamweaver and build their content within that environment having a content environment aside from that seems a bit excessive to me.

Website content management

Managing websites, which seems to be going away in favor of blogs and other content managment methods, can also be done in Contribute.  Remember, this is only for edting content and displayed items.  You can use it to place images in a directory via FTP or WebDAV and then manage the web pages within the tool.

Website Design and structure would be best done in a tool like Dreamweaver as it allows both content and coding to happen.

Where contribute might be a great addition to your toolkit is as part of a team where there are those who develop web sites and others who create content for those sites.  This way, the content creators can get by without knowing the difference between <Div> and <Span> the editor (and the webdesigners) take care of that for them. 

Is the product worth it?

This is where I am a bit on the fence.  when I first looked at the software I was quite convinced that it was a bit unnecessary when managing content for sites or blogs, however I have been playing with it some in writing this post in and starting to see where it could be very useful. At first my plan was to play with the software and create some content or blog posts and then write a review through the normal process that I use, but since I’m publishing this to my blog I thought the best way to play with the tools to create the review right in it.

That being said, I haven’t scratched the surface on all of the features that contribute brings to the table and if I choose to continue using it once my 30 day trial runs out I will likely dig further into those features. For now I wanted to stick to the right of blog posting contribute side of the house and provide some overview information and thoughts.

The cost of the software if you own a previous version or the cost to upgrade a previous version of one of Adobe’s creative suite products is $99, which could be very worth it if you plan to do a lot of editing a lot of blogging and things like that.

The cost to buy the application new is $199 which to me seems a little bit high for content publication. I plan to use the rest of the 30 day trial to better decide if this product it works for me in terms of some of the blogs that I manage but the odds that I actually purchased the software are slim based on an extremely high cost and limited feature set. I hate to call a limited feature set because I understand what the feature set is but for that price seems little state a little steep if the product were $99 new and $59 to update or better yet a $40 update it might be worth it. The price point is the biggest thing in Contribute makes me run away from this product at this time. I tend to have this position with a lot of Adobe products because they are very expensive but if this product will save that much time and effort in a specific situation where a lot of editing is being done in our new publishing is being done, then the price could be worth it.

The best recommendation I can give at this point would be to download the software and run it for 30 days and see if it fits what you’re trying to accomplish if it does any really use it every day and maybe the price is okay for you if you don’t use it every day then I would imagine the price is too high.

Good luck and happy blogging.

Recently I was working on a project to get an application prepared for rollout. When I received the initial email about the process that needed to be followed, I called the vendor to find out if our usual server configuration would work or if different considerations would be needed. Specifically we are considering virtualization in the future using Windows Server 2008 R2 guest machines.

The response I received was that this application would support Windows Server 2008 but not Windows Server 2008 R2. I asked about plans to support R2 and was told that the application would not support Server 2008 R2 for some time. In other words they have no plans right now to support it.

My first thought was that this was a bit of an odd practice since Windows Server 2008 R2 is the current version of Server OS from Microsoft. Then I got to thinking about some of the considerations I might need to make to work this application. The only testing to be done is to ensure that the application, once installed, communicates to its supported devices over our network.

My plan is to set the application up using a Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machine just to see if it will even run. If it doesn’t work, a 2008 VM will be tested, but since the functionality of the application is very limited in scope, I thought it was worth a shot. My goal is to spin up a 2008 R2 guest for this testing very soon (next week sometime).

I also started thinking about the difference between “not supported” and does not work. There are many applications that vendors no longer support and configurations they choose not to support that work just fine. Case in point, Windows 2000. Microsoft doesn’t support Windows 2000 anymore. But if I install it, it will run just like it was 1999.

If an application can run on an operating system one step (or half step) prior to current, there are few things that would make it unusable on the current OS. This to me, warrants giving it a shot. I believe that the requirements I got didn’t rule out x64 architecture, thus making it likely to work just fine on the current version of Windows Server. This way all of the servers in our upcoming environment will be consistent on the same OS (for a little while anyway). I also have to admit there are times when I like a challenge… and this is one of those times.

When considering supported applications, it is generally good to follow supported guidelines given by the manufacturer. When the application or vendor provides no technical reasoning or explanation for this choice, it might be worth a try. It comes down to the cost of your time and availability of your resources. If you have the time and resources to test, go for it. If not, well, convenience (and downgrade rights) say that following the stated guidelines is the easiest course.

Applications like VMware do not work on things outside their stated hardware compatibility list. Sure there are some who might be able to work on the edges of that list, but mostly it is definitely easier to work amongst the guidelines of the HCL. Being someone new to VMware, I am following the HCL for sure.

My advice here is dependent on your time and interest. If you are curious and have the resources, test it. If not, do not bother testing it. Being a bit of a geek, I rather enjoy the idea of testing things just for the sake of trying them out. It has helped me learn many different ways to do things as well as just learning about technology. Which I certainly encourage.