Kevin Schmidt's Blog

Can Comcast support and billing really be this bad?

2011-08-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in the hope that it will help others, or perhaps others can help the rest of us figure out how to not have to call Comcast periodically to getting billing issues resolved. What billing issues you ask? Here is my story.

In 2009 I ordered the MLB Extra Innings package so I could watch out of market baseball games. Great service, used it some, but in 2010 I decided I didn't want it. Comcast sent a letter saying they would offer the "convenience" of auto-renewing me in 2010 so I called and said I didn't want to renew. I thought all was well.

Unfortunately, I received a bill with the first of four MLB Extra Inning charges on it. A little upset, I called them and was told it was resolved and I'd receive a credit and not be billed again. In this case, it finally stuck and all was well.

In 2011, I never received a notice about an auto-renewal and baseball season started and I never received a bill, so all was well, right? Nope, in June I receive a letter saying due to an error in their billing system, they were going to be billing me the four installments for MLB Extra Innings as it was a service I'd been receiving since the beginning of the year. WHAT? I never ordered it, never received a renewal notice, was never given any indication I was receiving it. Further, I'd cancelled the year before and never got it! Well, I checked the channels and sure enough I was getting them.

I again called and had to navigate several layers but finally got someone who apologized and said I wouldn't be charged and I asked that I be taken off any auto-renewal they have and was told that was the case. This was in June. And sure enough I get my next bill (dated 7/10) and there is no charge.

So imagine my surprise when I receive the following bill (date 8/10) and the second of four charges has shown up! Ummm, I cancelled, and seemingly that stuck as I wasn't billed the first charge, so why do I now get the second charge?

To top it off I also see on this bill that changes were made to my account effectively changing my discount which will result in a bill $18 more per month for no change to my service. I'm not on or around any anniversary date or contract expiration that would explain this, so I'm baffled once again. Perhaps I just lost the "just accept our billing errors and pay them" discount?

Of course, I'm finding this out on a Sunday as I pay my bills and the Comcast's billing support isn't open. So not only am I having to waste time researching this today (and writing this blog entry), but I'm going to have to waste time during my work week to get it resolved.

Have others had experience like this? Are Comcast's systems this bad? To their support staff just make lots of errors? Or is there something deliberate going on to see if customers will just pay?

I'd love to hear what you think.

Cloud Event Processing on CloudBees RUN@Cloud PaaS

2011-07-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

I did some prototyping of a Cloud Event Processor around a year ago that combined the open-source Esper CEP engine with Amazon's SNS and some code I wrote to create a loosely coupled event processor in the cloud.

Now, when I did this I used SNS to serve as the Cloud based loosely coupled messaging, but I did have the event processor itself running on a server on my network. I noted then that because of using SNS and HTTP as the protocol between my server and SNS that the event processor could be deployed anywhere, but until today I hadn't actually moved it somewhere else.

What did I move it to? I could have just found a hosting provider or gone the IaaS route and used AWS's free micro instance and configured the OS and installed a Web container, but with just a standard WAR file what I really wanted was a Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering I could just deploy to. Doing this would save me the time and effort of setting everything up myself and having to maintain/upgrade it over time. As much as the geek in me likes to play around with infrastructure and platform components, there isn't really much value in me spending time doing that in a situation like this.

So, I took a look at CloudBees and their RUN@Cloud offering. It advertised the ability to develop like I'm used to and then instantly deploy to the Cloud. Does it live up to this promise? Based on my simple application and a very basic deployment, the answer is yes.

I signed up for a free CloudBees account which was very straightforward, and in a matter of minutes I had access and could create a new RUN@Cloud application. Once created, I could then upload and deploy my WAR file and voila, I was deployed in the Cloud. I didn't have to change a line of code or create/modify any descriptors or XML, it couldn't have been simpler. I simply had to change my client and/or SNS URLs to point to the new server and it just worked. And my initial goal of not having to deal with installing/configuring the platform was realized.

On top of it just working, I get some nice monitoring and administration tools that show me session, request, memory, and load statistics. Very nice.

If you are looking for an easy to use Java PaaS, give CloudBees a look.

links for 2011-04-20: Who should(n't) by an iPad 2; Oracle gives up on OpenOffice

2011-04-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Apple iPad 2: Who should buy and who should pass - Blind fans of Apple products will still just go buy one, but this article is a good dose of reality on why you should or shouldn't get one.
Oracle gives up on OpenOffice - At least the LibreOffice crew didn't think Oracle got open-source and forked, and Oracle was unable to stop it. Does Oracle not "get" open-source?

Is GlassFish v3 slower and a bigger footprint than v2.1?

2011-04-13T20:25:00.000-07:00

When I was at Sun, we often touted the work we did with GlassFish v3 to improve startup times. A lot of this was based on v3 being more modular with an OSGi kernel and "HK2". Now that I'm on the other side, at a software vendor (NextGate) that supports GlassFish as an app-server for our product, I get to see if it is really true in the real world!

To try it out, I did a few quick tests. For the record, what I tested was GlassFish v2.1.1, v3.1 Full, v3.1 Web Profile, and I included Tomcat 7 for one test just to compare. I also did this all on OS X on a fairly new MacBook Pro.

First, I deployed a fairly small and simple Web-app and then stopped and restarted each app-server several times. My observations on startup times and footprint after start were:

Container	Startup Time	Footprint
GlassFish v2.1.1	16 sec	178 MB
GlassFish v3.1	6.5 sec	153 MB
GlassFish v3.1 Web Profile	5 sec	123 MB
Tomcat 7	1 sec	74 MB

This shows that v3 has clearly made improvements over v2 in both startup time and footprint This is as expected.

What surprised me a bit was that Web Profile had further improvements over the full profile, this because I thought only what was required would be started with the full profile and so it should basically match Web Profile in this case and it didn't. It was also significantly heavier weight. Does this make sense?

Also, Tomcat is clearly the speed demon and lightest weight, but this isn't really an apples to apples comparison as Tomcat doesn't offer as much as any of the other options. It still sets the standard for fast startup and small footprint though.

Next, I deployed another EAR and WAR file that make up our application. Here is what I observed:

Container	Startup Time	Footprint
GlassFish v2.1.1	20 sec	207 MB
GlassFish v3.1	24 sec	400 MB

Now this was more surprising. Not only did v3 take longer to startup, the footprint was nearly twice that of v2! Effectively, v2 added 4 seconds to startup a second WAR and an EAR, but v3 added nearly 18 seconds to do the same. And why v3 is using so much more memory, I'm not sure.

Now, perhaps my test is too simple or I'm not looking at the exact right metrics to really measure startup time. But what I'm using is the Real Memory reported by Activity Monitor and both the time it takes for "asadmin start-domain" to return the the start time reported in the server.log file.

As additional background, I'm deploying the same WAR and EAR files to both v2 and v3, and since they run in v2 they are not specific to EE 6 and the only EJBs are SSBs.

So GlassFish experts, help me out. Is what I'm seeing real? Is v3 really slower and larger than v2 for this type of use case?

links for 2011-03-13: iPhone 5 wishlist; Do you think like an Engineer?; Gmail outage

2011-03-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

Wish list: 27 features we want on the iPhone 5 - A good list, some even not just gripes but innovative suggestions.
Do you think like an Engineer? - It said I'm a Computer Engineer.
Gmail Outage: The sky is not falling - Naysayers make a mountain out of a molehill when there is a glitch, but fail to point out downtime when hosting yourself is likely much higher and more costly.

links for 2011-01-28: AT&T unlimited data plan for iPhone back; LibreOffice release; iPhone and Google Voice; Startup business models

2011-01-28T07:46:00.000-08:00

AT&T quietly matching VZW's unlimited data plan for iPhone - I never gave up my unlimited plan, but good to know others can get it back.
First LibreOffice Release arrives - Sounds like a good release, will have to check it out.
Why the iPhone and Google Voice don't mix - I have not had the issues this story lists, it works great for me.
Why DropBox won - Good read for folks introducing new technologies that require adoption.
Kill your business model - Another good read on the same subject.

links for 2011-01-26: AWS Simple Email Service; Marc Fleury on Oracle and Open Source; No screenshots on Windows Phone 7

2011-01-26T08:17:00.000-08:00

Introducing the Amazon Simple Email Service - Another in the line of "simple" services.
Oracle and Open Source. NOT GOOD - Marc's view on how Oracle is handling open source, based largely on what has happened with OpenOffice and Hudson.
Capturing screenshots in Windows Phone 7's future? - Hiding behind DRM seems like a poor excuse. And no one has ever asked for it?

Fun with QR Codes - Encoding URLs and contact information in images

2011-01-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

I've been playing with QR Codes recently. What is a QR code you ask? It is one of those square bar-code looking images that you may have started to see lately, and are used to encode text which can be URLs, vCards (contact info), phone numbers, or other data. By encoding this information in the QR Code, the data can be easily decoded by say a camera phone, and the information acted upon. Common uses are sharing URLs, avoiding having to type in a long sequence of characters on a small keyboard, or sharing electronic business cards (vCards).

Here is an example that encodes the URL to the Wikipedia page on QR Codes.

Use a QR Code reader on your mobile phone and it should launch your browser on that site. Most readers I've come across have this built-in behavior for URLs, but what about other forms of text encoded in the image?

I've done a fair amount of experimentation with several readers on the iPhone and have discovered some that simply show the text for non-URLs, while others have nicer behavior, especially with vCards. For example, the following QR Code has a name, work phone, e-mail, company, and title.

On an iPhone, scanning this with QRReader just displays the vCard text. i-nigma 4 recognizes it as a vCard, parses it, and lets me add it to my contacts, but ignores the company (ORG) and title (TITLE) fields as well as the work attribute on the phone number. ScanLife does the best, recognizing the vCard and all the fields.

So, your success with using a QR Code as your business card will depend on the reader your audience is using. Feel free to comment on how your reader works.

As you can see, when more information is added the QR code larger/denser which is natural and to be expected. The specification calls for a maximum number of characters of 4,296 but that would have an image that was 177x177 pixels and the dense one above is 1/9 as large. So when using it as a business card, particularly if you are printing it on the back of your business card, at some point it is too dense to print on such a small card and have readers still be able to process it, so you are somewhat limited in what you can include. You'll notice that I didn't include an address or secondary phone numbers in either case above and those would add significant characters.

The other thing I learned in trying things out is that while there are numerous services on the Web that will create the image from text you enter, they don't all properly format the vCard with the proper syntax and punctuation when you fill in their vCard form. But part of my project was to find a way to encode without internet access so I had to write my own anyway and did so using the Google's zxing project. That project seems focused on readers, but has encoding classes in it too.

What is your experience with QR Codes? What readers do you use and which work well?

links for 2011-01-24: Forrester on the Future of Java; Honda 1-ups Segway; Linux distros switching from OpenOffice to LibreOffice

2011-01-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

The Future of Java - "Over time, developers will begin to view Java as a server-side language for enterprises — like COBOL."
Honda Personal Mobility Concept U3-X - Honda 1-ups (or 2 or 3?) Segway.
Ubuntu opts for LibreOffice over Oracle's OpenOffice - Justified or not, Oracle just can't win with open-source advocates, developers, and Linux distributions

links for 2011-01-21: AWS Elastic Beanstalk; Googled copied Sun's Java code

2011-01-22T12:29:00.000-08:00

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: A Quick and Simple Way into the Cloud - AWS continues to avoid going up stack to compete with partners, but still offer new services and value.
Oops: Android contains directly copied Java code, strengthening Oracle's case - That would be a big ooops!
Oops: No copied Java code or weapons of mass destruction found in Android - Or maybe not.

links for 2011-01-17: New data roaming option for international travelers; Battle over video on the Web; Android passes iPhone; Unplugging from LBS

2011-01-17T14:27:00.001-08:00

DROAM - Dreaming about Cheap Data Roaming - Great to see more options out there.
Can Google and Mozilla dethrone H.264 on the Web? - Probably good in the long run, a bit bumpy right now though.
Android passes iPhone in market share - Sounds like Gartner was awfully conservative in their Q4 2012 prediction.
Why I’m Unplugging From Location Based Services Until The Privacy Issue Is Resolved - Great list of things to remember when using location based services.

links for 2011-01-03: Android dominates top phone list; Surprises of 2010; Outlook for 2011; Facebook IPO; Amusement Park Technology

2011-01-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

The 10 elite smart phones of 2010 - Seven Android, one BlackBerry, one Windows, and one iPhone.
The year in review: 10 technology surprises of 2010 - It was an interesting year.
2011 Tech Preview - SaaS to grow, interesting thoughts on HP acquisitions, "cloud" to become meaningless as everyone overuses it.
Facebook IPO Likely - Been rumored for a long time, will it finally happen in 2011?
Technology at work at Disney - Some good insight into what an amusement park has to think about.

links for 2010-12-26: Chrome OS Review; Microsoft wins USDA; Dumping an iPad for a Galaxy Tab

2010-12-26T07:14:00.000-08:00

A Very Chrome-y Christmas - Interesting review, an indication of what we may be using in the future.
Microsoft Wins Largest Federal Contract for Cloud - But was Google allowed to compete?
Infor offering 15% referral fee for anonymous referrals - Is this move astute or naive?
10 reasons to dump an iPad - A bunch of good reasons.

links for 2010-12-21: Thoughts on Java stewardship; Losing your automotive anonymity

2010-12-21T18:45:00.000-08:00

Java: Nothing Without The Community - Can Java flourish without deep community stewardship? See this too.
Big Brotheresque App Kills Your Automotive Anonymity - Interesting use of data, but not sure I like the loss of privacy.

links for 2010-12-17: Invisible open-source; Oracle Apps on EC2; Pirate or DRM; Netflix on AWS

2010-12-17T07:24:00.000-08:00

2010: The year open-source went invisible - It has gone mainstream and is even a pre-requisite in some markets.
Oracle Apps on EC2 - You could do it on your own before, easier now.
Pirate or buy DRM? - Not a fan of DRM it would seem.
Netflix lessons from using AWS - Also read this for why they switched.

links for 2010-12-15: Microsoft at crossroads; OpenJDK for OS X; Java lawsuits; Oracle Cloud Office

2010-12-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

Microsoft: A big ship at crossroads; What else is new? - I don't think there is any question they'll survive, the titanic references are off, but will they flourish in the new markets?
Oracle and Apple Announce OpenJDK Project for OSX - I missed this when it was announced, but is great news.
Oracle mobile Java licensing suit boomerangs - Can't we all just get along? This this also.
Oracle Announces Oracle Cloud Office and Oracle Open Office 3.3 - It is great that it is "announced", but they previewed it at Open World. Where can we actually see it? Only mention is in the datasheet where it says to call to get a demo account. Not looking for mass adoption I guess.

links for 2010-12-14: IBM's Watson to play Jeopardy; FreeBSD on EC2; Data on Hudson/Kohsuke; Open data

2010-12-14T07:55:00.000-08:00

IBM’s “Watson” Computing System to Challenge All Time Greatest Jeopardy! Champions - This should be entertaining and interesting to watch.
FreeBSD on Amazon EC2 - I'm somewhat surprised it has taken this long!
Hudson's Secret: Kohsuke - Eduardo offers some insight into a fantastic developer. But also shows a great example of visualizing data. Love it!
Make Data Dance - Another great article on generating value and intelligence from data. And kudos to the Bill Gates Foundation for requiring that data from projects they fund be open.

links for 2010-12-11: Oracle 'anti-competitive'; Linux on SPARC; McNealy Speaks; Air Force bans removable media

2010-12-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

Oracle 'anti-competitive,' customers dissatisfied - I don't think it takes a report for people to see what Oracle's business practices are like, but how far is a company supposed to go to be "competitive"? Isn't the objective to beat the competition? Wouldn't other companies do similar things if they had the same opportunity? Customers need to vote with their pocketbooks.
Oracle to port Linux to SPARC - It makes sense. Oracle wants customers to buy from Oracle regardless of the product the customer wants.
McNealy on Sun and open-source - A good read, great to hear Scott talk.
US Air Force bans removable media - I'm surprised it wasn't already banned.

links for 2010-11-11: Oracle raises MySQL pricing; ASF draws line in sand over JCP; WS-I completes their journey; PG West Notes

2010-11-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support - This had been rumored and was expected, but now we know the details. The lowest priced offerings are gone, Standard Edition at $2K/yr now the cheapest, differentiation between editions is now with different add-ons, not level of support, and a server is limited to 4 sockets. Note that if you weren't buying the cheapest offering, the prices haven't really increased.
ASF Statement on JCP - Same issue as there has been for awhile, but now saying they'll withdraw if not addressed.
Microsoft and IBM web-control war finally silenced - Interesting read on the motivations for WS-I and entertaining quip on SOA: "WS-* and the WS-I paved the way for the Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) bubble, a cacophony of hype about a set of systems that could never be delivered but paid the wages of consultants and enterprise vendors, and involved some kind of choreography wrapped in a portal."
Ex-Red Hatters eye Larry's MySQL wobblers
Ex-Sun boss gives Ellison open-source wedgie

links for 2010-10-27: Netflix moves to AWS; RedMonk Analytics; Google Docs Charting; Apple alienating their users

2010-10-27T18:32:00.000-07:00

Netflix transitions to HA storage in the Cloud - The value of moving to the Cloud isn't just for startups. Netflix has their own data center, but elected to transition to the Cloud to not burden their IT staff with mundane data center build out.
RedMonk Analytics: What Operating Systems are Developers Using? - It depends on the perspective and which developer audience is looked at!
Using new visualizations to tell your story - Improving the charting Google Docs can deliver.
Apple Won't Push Flash Player Updates - Apple's alienation of developers and consumers continues.

links for 2010-10-22: AWS free for a year; PostgreSQL vs MySQL; Stacking the JCP election; Java on OS X; What Steve could have said; Adivce to Oracle regarding Java

2010-10-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

Amazon Web Services: Try us free for a year - Something worth looking in to.
PostgreSQL vs. MySQL: How to Select the Right Open-Source Database - A balanced well written article.
Stacking the JCP election - An interesting read even if it is a bit biased (and I don't know if it is or isn't).
Steve Jobs Comments on Apple's Java Discontinuation - Some interesting history from James.
What Steve could have said - "We’ve been in the computer business for a long time and we’ve learned that 80% of people just aren’t very interesting. They don’t need to create that much content, because when they do, most it isn’t very good. The iPad actually saves them from themselves because it keeps them from creating a bunch of useless stuff that no one else wants to read."
Dear Oracle, Get a Clue - Some good advice. Is Oracle listening?

links for 2010-10-21: Apple deprecates Java; Apple announces OS X Lion ... 11 months off?; NYC adopts Microsoft Cloud; EnterpriseDB Postgres TCO calculator

2010-10-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Apple deprecates Java - I struggle to see how this makes sense as part of OS X's resurgence was due to developers adopting the platform due to good Java support. Perhaps Oracle adds support or someone steps forward with a good OpenJDK port, but Steve is clearer trying to cleanse his products of non-native apps.
Apple's unveiling of updated OS X takes its cues from Microsoft - Apple rarely announces products that won't ship until nearly a year later, but did with OS X Lion.
City of New York adopts Microsoft Cloud services - It will be interesting to watch how the battle goes between Microsoft and Google here. Google gets Los Angeles, Microsoft gets New York City.
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus TCO comparison calculator - No matter how you cut it, EnterpriseDB is less expensive than SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, and DB2. Think MySQL is cheaper? Guess again.

links for 2010-10-20: SkySQL forking?; IBM, Oracle, and Java; Linux catching Microsoft; Developer Intelligence; Twitter predicts stocks; McNealy at PG West

2010-10-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

SkySQL will try to drive MySQL fork, Oracle's ouster - Not a fork yet, but supporting one (MariaDB) and not ruling out creating one.
IBM, Oracle and Java: The Q&A - @sogrady's always well written Q&A with a kind mention of the questions I sent him.
Linux Starts to Eat Microsoft’s Lunch in Servers - Shows Linux growth (79% adding more Linux vs 21% adding more Windows), but it is a lot easier to show growth when coming from behind.
Introducing Project Arcturus, Part 1: The World’s First and Only Developer Intelligence Tool - A great use of data to provide insight into developers. Kudos to RedMonk for building it. ReadWriteWeb has a review here.
Twitter mood predictions the stock market - Another fascinating use of data.
Scott McNealy Keynote Speaker at PG West - A great opportunity to hear Scott speak.

links for 2010-10-19: Twitter stats; Windows Phone 7; AWS Management Console adds SNS support

2010-10-19T20:59:00.000-07:00

Replies and Retweets on Twitter - Some interesting stats, love the data. Are you surprised the retweets/replies are that high or do you think it was higher?
Windows Phone 7 - Seems like an uphill climb in the phone market but tablet market could be a place to grow share.
AWS Management Console Now Supports Amazon SNS - I didn't mind using the command line tools, in fact they are preferred in many cases, but adding support to the Management Console GUI is a nice addition.

links for 2010-10-10: If Oracle and MySQL had a child; AWS weakness a strength?; JavaOne content will cost you; Android revolution; Short-term focus hurts R&D

2010-10-11T06:55:00.000-07:00

If Oracle and MySQL had a child - Why not get the best of both worlds with PostgreSQL?
Amazon Web Services: an instance of weakness as strength - Most people like simple evolution when making change in the enterprise.
JavaOne 2010 content costs money? - In the past, the content from JavaOne was generally made available for free to the community, but the link seems to indicate it now costs $245 or you have to have been an attendee. Past content on SDN only includes 2008 and 2009. To be fair, there is still a lot of free content but this seems to be a change.
The five factors powering the Android revolution
R&D: Short-term focus, cynicism hampers us - Who else will innovate just for the sake of doing so?

links for 2010-10-08: More on MySQL price hikes; Jaspersoft predicts Java/MySQL resurgence; Salesforce.com adds REST APIs

2010-10-08T08:30:00.000-07:00

MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle's wallet love: Time for Postgres? - Mentions same content I posted earlier, but clearly suggests PostgreSQL as the natural alternative.
Months After Oracle's Acquisition of Sun, OSS Survey Predicts Resurgence of Java and MySQL - Survey doesn't address what people's answers would have been had Oracle not acquired Sun (perhaps the "resurgence" was already happening and it has diminished under Oracle), and in a few cases the conclusions are classic viewing the data the way one wants. For example, their highlight #1 is that more than three quarters said MySQL use would increase or stay the same. That is convenient grouping of answers as their data could be used to make the exact opposite statement, i.e. more than three quarters said MySQL use would decrease or stay the same.
Salesforce.com Finally Adding REST API - While their approach to their SOAP API was somewhat RESTful already, the addition of true REST APIs is welcome.

links for 2010-10-7: IE market share dips below 50%; Analysis of Google's response to Oracle; SQL and Big Data

2010-10-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

EU dings Microsoft's IE browser market share, says Statcounter - The move towards other browsers continues.
Google responds to Oracle's Android patent lawsuit, we break it down - Google accuses Oracle of flip-flopping, and implies if they've violated anything than Apache Harmony has too.
Who's suing who in the mobile business - Wow, I didn't know Nokia was at the center of so many of the suits.
Who's suing who in the telecoms trade - Similar to the above, but with a bullet on each suit.
Why relational databases make sense for big data - Good car, Indy car, helicopter analogy from Ed.

links for 2010-10-04: Forking of Java; Stewardship of Java

2010-10-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Is it time to fork Java? - Clearly disappointed by JavaOne (JavaHalf?), Greg proposes "Lava".
Time to fork Java? - Sacha's response. Provides some good history on the issues and highlights Oracle's flip-flopping positions. "when ORCL’s lawyers have the same opinion two-weeks in a row, the only conclusion you can draw is that they changed their mind an even number of times."
Java: The Unipolar Moment - James points out many instances where single vendor stewardship is not the norm and why that can't be the case for Java.

links for 2010-10-02: WebP saves bandwidth over JPEG; Java, OSGi, Oracle, and more;

2010-10-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web - It is fair to say that the image compression algorithms we use today were developed when we had CPU and memory limitations, so why not update them to make the web snappier?
Java, OSGi, Oracle, and more - James doesn't paint too bright a picture of Oracle's stewardship thus far.

links for 2010-09-30: Gosling on JavaOne; MySQL prices going up; Gmail capitulates; MySQL vs PostgreSQL performance; PHP SDK for AWS

2010-09-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

JavaOne was fun - Some interesting, albeit likely biased, observations.
Oracle raising prices on MySQL - Rationalizing the pricing to Oracle's way is to be expected, but the removal of Basic and Silver is important and what the prices actually are will be doubly so.
Gmail unthreads messages - I prefer threaded views and find search works much better than sort.
MySQL vs PostgreSQL performance - Simply confirms what I think we all knew: PostgreSQL is much faster for inserts, MySQL slightly faster for selects.
New AWS SDK for PHP - Adds to the existing Java and .NET SDKs.

links for 2010-09-28: OpenOffice.org forked into LibreOffice; Free Software Defenders; Platform as a Service Adoption

2010-09-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

LibreOffice: A fresh page for OpenOffice - As other open-source projects from Sun have been terminated, kept as tokens for the community, or left to wither away with no investment (the list includes OpenESB, OpenSSO, Mural, OpenSolaris, and more), it isn't a surprise to see a spinoff from OpenOffice but this is one that certainly has more visibility as it is actually software end-users use. It will be interesting to see how things play out and if Oracle joins and grants use of the name.
OpenOffice goes its own way - Another story on the subject. Oracle has not commented yet but IBM has although with no commitment one way or the other. Google, Novell, Ubuntu, and others are supporting the foundation. See the FAQ too.
The Defenders of Free Software - Interesting read. I have no doubt that there are 100s of violations or improper use of open-source out there.
Platform as a Service: Current vs Future Returns - Everyone says it is a matter of time until enterprises are on the Cloud, but how long will it be before more than Amazon style IaaS is accepted?

links for 2010-09-27: Benioff fires back at Larry; PostgreSQL vs MySQL Performance; Droid X Dumping

2010-09-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Salesforce's Benioff: "Clouds aren't in a box" - A host of great one-liners, a couple of the best:

“The cloud is a multi-tenant shared architecture that runs on a pay-as-you-go model,” not a million dollars just to get started.
We’re not going to show you computers taller than you. We’re not going to show you a cloud in a box because clouds aren’t in a box. They never were. That’s the whole idea.

Database speed tests (mysql and postgresql) - part 1 - It doesn't appear to be tuned much at all, but interesting results nonetheless. MySQL 5x slower?
Why I dumped my Droid - What leading smart phone doesn't have battery issues?

links for 2010-09-21: Amazon Hiding in Plain Sight; PostgreSQL 9.0 released; iPad good for two things; Oracle and HP make up; Unbreakable Enterprise Linux kernel performance doubts

2010-09-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Rise of Amazon Web Services - It really is surprising AWS doesn't get credit or press for much of what they are doing. When they announce something they have it working and available, often with a free/beta tier. When most other vendors announce something, it isn't available yet and when it is, you have to pay for it, get a machine, install it, etc.
EnterpriseDB Announces Support for PostgreSQL 9.0 - 9.0 has some great new replication features that make it even more of a natural cheaper alternative to Oracle.
The iPad is good for only two things - Admittedly, the first thing is pretty big and broad.
Oracle and HP settle spat - Having the issue prolonged would not have been good for HP.
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Which Is The Best Open Source DB Of Them All? - Will PostgreSQL fill the perceived void created by Oracle's ownership of MySQL?
Oracle announces Unbreakable Enterprise Linux kernel - This story seems to doubt the performance claims.

links for 2010-09-20: Flight data in Google Earth; PostgreSQL performance fixing; Browser war hurting us?; Oracle's new Cloud definition

2010-09-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

View Near Real-time Flights over the U.S. in Google Earth - This is very cool.
PostgreSQL planner performance fixing - Open source isn't just about "free", for some it is about improving the code!
Is the browser war pushing us forward or holding us back? - If it really is just about full HTML5 support, any issues should only be temporary hopefully.
Oracle has new definition of Cloud - As the author puts it, this isn't Cloud, it is Cloud washing. Now, perhaps this box could be useful for Cloud vendors, but if you have to buy a box and more capacity than you might need, it isn't Cloud.

links for 2010-09-16: Android benchmarks; Android market share up; AWS Linux AMI; Password resuse

2010-09-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

Benchmark showdown: High-end Android smartphones - Unfortunately, there isn't one "fastest" phone, but several do very well in multiple but different categories
Android market share up, everyone else flat or down - Interestingly Palm is flat, RIM, Apple, Microsoft all down
Amazon Linux AMI - Need Linux in the Cloud? This should save you a little time
Password Reuse - Hmmm, I'll be changing some passwords now thank you

links for 2010-09-13: iPhone Flash tool back on; YouTube goes live; Android Leaderboard

2010-09-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Adobe resumes work on iPhone Flash tool after apple reveral - Predictable after Apple's policy change. Adobe can't afford to ignore the iOS platform if they can technically address the market.
YouTube live: Public access meets old school ESPN, but potential abounds - Being able to watch more second tier sports that the major networks choose to ignore would be welcomed by me.
Android Leaderboard - I may be on the market for a new phone soon so I'll be watching this.

links for 2010-09-09: NetApp vs Sun/Oracle quietly resolved; Developer vs CIO perspective; Apple relaxes restrictions

2010-09-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

NetApp, Oracle dismiss patent suit - It is probably the best result since both sides were suing each other.
Meet the New Kingmakers: Same as the Old Kingmakers - The different perspectives of the Developer vs the CIO.
Apple throws developers a bone, relaxes restrictions on third party tools - An interesting about face, probably due more to the FTC poking around than Apple wanting to appease developers.

links for 2010-09-03: Google not at JavaOne; Historical NASA pictures

2010-09-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

A Story of O - A little background on Google's not attending JavaOne. An interesting set of comments. Companies and developers can vote with their pocketbooks and feet.
Flickr gives NASA's historical photos some distribution - Some great pictures.

links for 2010-08-30: Background on Oracle vs Google; Google won't be at JavaOne; YouTube movies?; US Open tennis starts today

2010-08-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

Software War Pits Oracle vs Google - More background on what will prove to be a very interesting case.
Google Bails on Oracle/Sun Java One Conference - A natural, but unfortunate, reaction.
YouTube eyes pay-per-view films - I'm kind of surprised it has taken this long.
US Open Tennis - Starts today, for what is usually a great two weeks of tennis.

links for 2010-08-27: Apple going after jailbreakers; Google integrates voice into Gmail; Happy Birthday EC2; QWERTY Face-off

2010-08-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak: That shouldn't be Apple's decision - I'm sure glad Apple is so passionate about protecting me from myself.
Call phones from Gmail - A nice feature and integration of Google Voice into Gmail. It appears they are going after Skype at least in part with this one. But it appears Google Apps users don't get it, at least yet.
Happy 4th Birthday Amazon EC2 - It is amazing how far things have come in 4 years.
Phone QWERTY Face-off - They aren't a fan of the Droid 2.

Trying out Liferay 6 CE

2010-08-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

As part of some work I'm doing I've been working with Joomla for a corporate web-site and it works great, but I wanted to see what other Content Management Systems had to offer and so decided to give Liferay a spin.

Liferay is launching version 6 Enterprise Edition in September, but thanks to being in open-source the Community Edition is available now. I grabbed the Tomcat bundle of version 6.0.5 CE and got started.

Making bundles available (there are bundles for other containers including GlassFish, JBoss, Jetty, etc.) makes installation a snap. Just download, unzip and run the startup script. On my laptop, after a bit over a minute I had a running Liferay installation.

Thanks to a few pointers and instructions from Paul Hinz, I was off and running configuring Liferay and creating some pages. Since I was primarily interested in creating a web-site, after trying some basics, I went to the Web Content Management section to give its capabilities a spin.

This is not intended to be a comparison with Joomla, but right away there was a different paradigm. Rather than navigate an administrative interface to create pages, content, and lay things out, with Liferay one simply logs in, navigates the site, and a few extra controls are available to do all the edits you need. This is probably a personal preference item but I like the Liferay approach better.

For now, I'm simply using the default Liferay theme, although I decided I didn't like the breadcrumbs it had so went in and hacked that out of the template. I'll have to take a look at create templates properly in the future.

Liferay is a portal, not just a CMS, so there are a host of portlets and components you can add to your pages. But even for just building a web-site the default theme has nice pull down menus, a configurable navigation portlet, and a simple and convenient way to add new pages and content. Want to add a page? Click a button to manage the page, click the Children tab, enter a name for the new page, and that's it.

Adding content to a page is just as easy. Open the Add pull down menu, pick the component to add and position it on the page. When creating a web-site, you'll usually be adding the Web Content Display component. Once added, you can either link to and edit existing content to display, or create new content in a nice editor.

But even when creating "just" a web-site, you can add other components like wikis and blogs, although my installation gave me errors when trying to post new content to either. I'll have to visit the forums to see if it is a known issue.

As far as resources, being a Java EE app Liferay is somewhat hungry. Running on Linux, with the use above creating a web-site the Java process is using about 400 MB of RAM. It also isn't terribly speedy starting up, but that may be more of a Tomcat issue. On my old slow Linux server (dual 450 MHz Pentium), it takes a whopping 6 minutes to start. But on a dual core MacBook Pro it takes about 80 seconds.

To compare performance and memory, I did grab the GlassFish bundle and start it up, but ran into a few issues. First, the bundle didn't have the right permissions on some scripts and then once started, Liferay doesn't appear to be installed or working as all I get is a GlassFish "your server is running" page. I'd pursue it more but am fine with using Tomcat.

Stay tuned, I'll share more and perhaps will have a live site to point you to soon.

links for 2010-08-20: Ellison to hire Hurd?; Laptop reliability survey; Google thwarted by California; Oracle vs Google on Java; Cloud data offers intelligence; Ubuntu advantages over Windows and OS X

2010-08-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Mark Hurd to Oracle? Don't be surprised - An interesting idea.
Acer makes the shoddiest laptops, say IT professionals - From those they surveyed, I'd agree Acer is at the bottom of the list. It is interesting to see HP and Dell with high percentages in both the best and worse categories.
Google accuses California of rigging bidding process for e-mail contract - I personally find Google's labels and search preferable to traditional e-mail clients. Let's hope California didn't have a closed mind on the subject.
Charles Nutter's thoughts on Oracle vs Google - A great read if you have the time. If you don't, Stephen O'Grady's thoughts are good as well (and shorter).
Intuit: Small businesses slow hiring; increase pay and hours worked - Another great example of how Cloud based services (Intuit's Online Payroll service) offer an opportunity to use volumes of data to offer intelligence.
Ubuntu's two big advantages over Windows and Mac - Jason makes very good points. I doubt it is going to cause a major shift to Ubuntu though...

links for 2010-08-17: Future of JavaFX; OpenSolaris is dead

2010-08-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

Enterprise Applications are Good Candidates for Using JavaFX - Highlights the pros/cons of JavaFX and gives it 6-12 months to address the cons.
Oracle apparently shuts doors on OpenSolaris - It isn't a surprise, but is unfortunate. With source code only making it to the community after the commercial Solaris is released, it appears Solaris is now headed for "Visible Source", not open source. Some of the comments are telling; "Here I was just getting started with OpenSolaris for my home server because of ZFS and all the wonderful features it has. I had figured if I can make it work at home, I would try to bring it in to the company. Now that OpenSolaris is dead and it looks like Solaris is encumbered with support licenses I don’t know how easy it will be to have them switch."

links for 2010-07-26: Phillips claim of acquisitions not true?; LA's move to Google hits a few road bumps; "Mac guy" no longer Apple fanboy?; Dell drops Ubuntu

2010-07-26T19:41:00.001-07:00

Did Oracle hand Charles Phillips a PR written pink slip? - Charles said they'll spend $70 million, then Larry's PR said no.
Los Angeles' move to Google Apps continues with a few hiccups - They've made progress but didn't meet a June 30 deadline to get everyone on Google.
Why this "Mac guy" will dump Apple fanboy club card - Competition is good for the consumer.
Dell dumps Ubuntu loaded machines - "“The reason why they’re not on our main pages is because Ubuntu systems are primarily targeted towards advanced users and enthusiasts...” ... if I’m an advanced computer user, what are the odds I’ll order a computer by phone before using the internet?"

Visualizing your data with Tableau Public

2010-07-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

As I've written before, I have a passion for data and oftentimes, particularly with large amounts of data, visualizing it is an extremely important part of understanding it.

As part of my computer ratings, I've created performance charts for awhile now and they are very useful in being able to see how a team has performed and any trends there may be. You can see examples from my 2010 Superbowl Preview or BCS Championship Preview.

I've created these using Google Charts using a series of scripts to extract the data from my ratings system and format it into the appropriate URLs, but after learning about Tableau Public I've been wanting to give it a shot to see if it was easier or offered other benefits and with summer arriving finally had a chance to.

I created the charts for a few teams from last years college football season and the process was very straight-forward. All I had to do was to create a CSV file of my data, import it into Tableau Public Desktop, then with a little drag and drop and configuration, create the charts. It is then simple to publish to the web. Here it is (click the image to get a full screen version):

This was definitely a lot easier than what I've been doing before. As the 2010 football seasons start, I'll be trying it out more and seeing what else I can do with it and hopefully automate the generation of the charts as much as I have with Google. Give it a try yourself!

links for 2010-07-22: Twitter to build own data center; Apple iPhone 4 fallout; Firefox Home; Ellison doesn't get the Warriors

2010-07-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

Twitter to Build Data Center to Beach the Fail Whale - Seems to support the theory that cloud is a great way to start, then you go to hosted as you grow, but ultimately at large scale, owning your own data center is needed.
Apple's iPhone 4 fallout: The smartphone "industry" fires back - "Apple has always taken pride in offering a premium product to customers willing to pay a premium price. That set it higher than the others. But clearly in the iPhone game - and now in the crisis management game - Apple is looking more like a rookie, instead of a global powerhouse."
Firefox Home hits the iPhone: Looks handy - Interesting. I've been using Chrome as my browser but may have to give this a try.
Ellison Beat Out in Record Warriors Sale - I'm surprised, but he apparently made his best offer too late.

links for 2010-07-19: HP closing campus; iPad didn't meet expectations

2010-07-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

HP to close Cupertino campus - Consolidating in Palo Alto.
Why I’m Craigslisting My iPads - Seems to have had wildly unrealistic expectations. Wanted full blow Excel? Flash?

links for 2010-07-17: OpenSolaris Discontent; Open source or not?; Motorola Droid X self destructs; WinPhone 7 just an iPhone 1 knock off

2010-07-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

OpenSolaris Governing Board Threatens to Shoot Itself In The Head - Interesting point of view on how things were with Sun and are with Oracle regarding OpenSolaris.
Choosing Whether to go Open Source - Huh? "That explains why using open source for production in mission-critical environments, particularly where security is essential, has been relatively rare." This premise is shot down moments later with this: "About 90% of our servers are running Linux. They're certainly as secure as the Windows world"
Droid X actually self-destructs if you try to mod it - The majority of users won't know or care, but it will be interesting to see if techies avoid the device and this backfires on Motorola.
Windows Phone 7: Don't bother with this disaster - Not a good sign: "Microsoft's demos of its great mobile hope shows Windows Phone 7 to be only a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone"

Amazon further integrates Simple Notification Service with AWS

2010-07-15T07:23:00.000-07:00

I've always been interested in messaging systems and had some fun learning about AWS's SNS and then building a simple Cloud Event Processor that utilized it earlier this year. Amazon had already provided out of the box integration of SNS with the Simple Queue Service (SQS) but has now introduced integration with S3 so that you can get notifications for certain S3 Reduced Redundancy Storage events.

Asynchronous programming at work. Good stuff!

links for 2010-07-13: iPhone 4 Apple's Vista?; Consumer Reports on iPhone 4; Google's master Android plan

2010-07-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

Is the iPhone 4 becoming the Windows Vista of Apple? - The author makes a bunch of good points.
Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can't recommend the iPhone 4 - They blame the new antenna, not AT&T's network for dropped calls.
Google's master Android plan: We're all mobile app developers now - Do we really want "everyone" to be a developer?

links for 2010-07-09: EMC and Data Management; Returning software licenses; Android takes market share from everyone; Follow HTC-Columbia in the Tour De France

2010-07-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

Is EMC Moving To Tackle Data Management Market? - "I’m going to recommend to EMC that they acquire both Informatica and TIBCO and challenge IBM for world domination of the information management market."
Approaches to Return Shelfware - Great idea if you are the customer, but what is in it for the vendor?
Android takes market share from everyone - Android up 4 points to 13% while all of RIM/Apple/Microsoft/Palm shrink 0.4 to 1.9 points.
Follow HTC-Columbia in the Tour De France on Google Maps - Very cool app.

links for 2010-07-02: IBM defaults to Firefox; AT&T-Apple class action suite; Apple fesses up on reception

2010-07-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

Saying it out loud: IBM is moving to Firefox as its default browser - 400,000 employees "encouraged" to use it as their default. That's a big step.
The Apple-AT&T class action suit should have come years ago - How about rather than bog the court system down, just like the author did, return the device if it doesn't work for you! "I suppose I could have dragged them to court myself when I was one of those disgruntled iPhone owners who suffered from poor iPhone reception in the San Francisco Bay Area. But instead, I chose to return my device and move on."
Apple can't fix iPhone reception, will start telling truth about signal strength - How can this statement be true? "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong." The phone has been out for years and people have been complaining the whole time, and you just got around to checking the formula?

links for 2010-07-01: iPhone to Verizon rumor (again); Brown University goes Google; SQS Updates; Open Source Licensing; Steve Jobs on the Enterprise; Database Migrations Easy?

2010-07-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

Verizon to Start Selling iPhone in January [REPORT] - This report seems to be a bit more credible than ones of the past, so will it really happen?
Brown University has gone Google - "Our students were really the ones that led us down the Google path. They knew these tools would work because they already used them in their non-school lives."
New: Free Tier and Increased Limits for Amazon Simple Queue Service - Some incremental updates making SQS a little more valuable.
Open Core the new Dual License - He still advocates pure open source and using telemetry and data as ways to generate incremental revenue.
What Steve Jobs hates about the enterprise - So Apple will just rely on the consumerization of IT as their way into the enterprise? Is this an opportunity for Microsoft to capitalize on RIM's weakness?
Database Migrations Are Finally Becoming Simpler - Compatibility layers make sense. I knew EnterpriseDB had been doing this for some time, I didn't know IBM was too. Oracle, your move.

NextGate Webinar on Integration Options for Sun Customers; Convert your Monk Code to Java

2010-06-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

Back in February just after Oracle's acquisition of Sun closed, I wrote a few thoughts on the strategy for Sun's middleware. Something I didn't go into detail on is what the plans were for Sun's MDM and legacy integration products like DataGate, e*Gate, TRE, SRE, and ICAN. Thankfully for those customers that have a lot invested in those products or technologies they included like Monk, NextGate is holding a series of webinars on what the options are.

The first one was held last week and there is another this Wednesday. If you want to learn more, join one!

links for 2010-06-28: iPhone 4 doubles 3G bandwith speeds; iPhone wish list = Android; Google Voice goes GA; AWS in the enterprise

2010-06-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

iPhone 4 upgrades to HSDPA and HSUPA can double 3G bandwidth speeds - I wonder why these upgrades to HSDPA and HSUPA weren't advertised? This is probably the benefit some are most interested in.
An iPhone wish list looks more like an Android feature list - A survey says iPhone users want choice of wireless networks, a 4G network, 8 megapixel camera, and FM radio tuner, all features available on some Android devices.
Google Voice: Will the masses adopt it? - It's been in private beta for a long time and is now GA for the masses. I've indicated before I've a big fan and user and use it as my primary number for business.
10 things: Using Amazon Web Services in the enterprise - Looking to leverage the cloud? Things to think about.

links for 2010-06-25: iOS4 vs Android Multitasking; Tiered Data Pricing; AWS SNS User Survey; eGate and Java CAPS future options

2010-06-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

Apple iOS 4 vs. Android Multitasking: Which Approach Is Better for Users? - A good highlighting of the pros and cons. What it fails to note is that the con against Android (grace and vision?) can and will be addressed while the con against Apple will likely not be as it goes against Apple's approach of dumbing it down for the user.
Report on AT&T's tiered data pricing forgets the innovation factor - It is interesting how the cycle seems to be going back to tiers and not unlimited.
AWS SNS User Survey - An opportunity to give feedback to Amazon on their Simple Notification Service. I'd advise not simply asking for all the features of your favorite JMS provider, think Cloud!
NextGate webinar for Sun Integration customers - Good information on what the options are for future strategies around eGate, ICAN, SRE, and Java CAPS. They are holding it again next week.

links for 2010-06-24: iOS 4 missed on multi-tasking; iOS4 vs Android; History of Communication; Oracle see Sun profit

2010-06-24T15:13:00.001-07:00

Multitasking With iOS 4 is Horrible: Apple Blew It - One person's view of one of the key features of iOS 4. It seems only select apps can do it and/or developers have to write special code for it. Also see this: "on day one, this feature is a mixed bag, and appears to be best left to Apple's own core apps--as opposed to third-party apps--which largely defeats the purpose of the feature."
iOS 4 ... All you need to know! - One persons review, another here comparing an iPhone with Android.
A Modern History of Human Communication - Interesting chart, and yes I'm a Google Voice user and love it.
Oracle Beats, Sees Sun Profit - They say Sun contributed $400M to operating income.

links for 2010-06-22: Flash goes Mobile; Java's Future; Java CAPS Future;

2010-06-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

Adobe launches Flash 10.1 for Mobile: More than half of all smartphones by 2012? - There may be issues at first (battery life?), but pushing the envelope is how issues get resolved, not by constraining innovation.
Why I'm Worried About Java's Future - John highlights the 2GB JVM memory limitation as a key issue.
Wondering what to do about your integration strategy as it relates to Java CAPS? - NextGate to hold 2 webinars on what options Java CAPS (and eGate and DataGate) customers have now that they are Oracle's customers.
The Economics of Open Source: Why the Billion Dollar Barrier is Irrelevant - As he's mentioned before, Stephen says data is the key: "Data is likely, in my view, to be more profitable longer term than mechanisms such as dual licensing (coverage). Telemetry (coverage) is the obvious next revenue source for open source entitites."

links for 2010-06-21: CSC's Cloud; SaaS Adoption Discrepancies; Tiered mobile data plans; Verizon's 4G network; Finding zip code areas; Sybase says iPhone 4 to grow in enterprise

2010-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

CSC Launches Cloud Collaboration, SaaS - CSC evolving their datacenters to the Cloud.
Research Report: How SaaS Adoption Trends Show New Shifts In Technology Purchasing Power - A huge disparity between business and IT on how SaaS is being used.
Tiered mobile data plans accelerate: Verizon Wireless to follow AT&T's lead - Once AT&T did it, you knew Verizon would too. But will Sprint and T-Mobile? As the smaller players, they may have incentive (and capacity to support it) to keep unlimited.
A step closer to 4G: Verizon moves to 'user trials' in LTE - Sounds like AT&T is investing, but will still be behind Verizon and folks like Clear on rolling out 4G.
Find Zip Codes With This Useful Map - Nifty utility.
Sybase: Apple's iPhone 4 likely to solidify enterprise traction - Some interesting data.

links for 2010-06-17: iPhone to Verizon? (again); Emerging Cloud Wars; YouTube video editing

2010-06-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Apple iPhone to Verizon drumbeat picks up (again) - The rumors (or wishes) continue.
The Emerging Cloud Wars - A good discussion of the move to and strategic value of PaaS.
YouTube Video Editor: A nice start but hardly ready for prime time - They aren't impressed, but my guess is this is just a start and more features will come.

links for 2010-06-16: Scott McNealy on 25 years of .com; Oracle cutting more Sun jobs; NetBeans 6.9 released; Twitter outages; Linux share increases; JPL in the clouds

2010-06-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Scott McNealy’s Top 15 Reasons He’s Surprised We’re Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Web - It is always great to see Scott on stage, especially when he has a top-10 (errr 15) list.
Steven Strogatz on the Elements of Math - I blogged most of his individual entries earlier this year, now you can get them all in one place. Good stuff for those curious about math.
Oracle Cutting More Jobs Tied To Sun Deal; Taking Big Charge - Seems to be tied to LEC completing in European and Asian countries, but still sad to see.
Oracle Delivers NetBeans IDE 6.9: Expanding Support for JavaFX 1.3 and OSGi - It is good to see that NetBeans doesn't seem to be withering away. But the preferred IDE for Fusion is still JDeveloper and Eclipse.
Twitter: Sorry, but outages come with bigger improvement plan - Interesting analogy to road construction.
Linux inches up on desktop, holds steady on servers - The only OS to gain share in May. I can understand Windows dipping but I'm surprised Mac OS dipped too.
NASA JPL, robots and the AWS cloud - Some interesting applications of EC2, SimpleDB, and S3.

links for 2010-06-13: AT&T flaw exposes iPad owners e-mail addresses; iPhone vs Android vs webOS?; Multitenancy risks; AT&T's new data plans

2010-06-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed - It is shocking that a RESTful Web service for retrieving e-mail addresses would be completely unsecured.
iPhone vs. Android vs. webOS: A Counterpoint - What HP does with webOS is going to be interesting and is the wildcard in the mobile OS battle.
WordPress and the Dark Side of Multitenancy - Yes, with multi-tenancy the failure of one machine/datacenter can mean multiple sites go out, but that risk is still outweighed by the benefits in many scenarios.
The bottom line: iPhone 4 vs. Android’s best (does Nokia, Microsoft, RIM have a chance in getting into the game?) - Another comparison, this one liking the iPhone 4 on everything other than voice quality, carrier, tethering, and synch, or everything other than being a phone! :)
The Problem with AT&T’s New Data Plans - I'm glad I'm still grandfathered in on the unlimited, but did change my wife's to a new plan to save a little money.

Eclipse Community Survey 2010 Published; Interesting OS, app server, and open-source results

2010-06-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Eclipse Community Survey 2010 is now available, and as a big fan of surveys and data, I couldn't help but dive in to take a look at what the community had to say.

First, as is the case with all surveys and data, one has to consider the audience when looking at the results to understand the context, and in this case, the survey was promoted on the eclipse.org web-site and related blogs/tweets. It was also only available in English and 1,696 respondents completed it. And over 50% of the respondents listed themselves as programmers.

Ok, with that out of the way, what are some of the interesting results or observations?

Nearly 40% of developers now use Linux (32.7%) or OS X (7.9%) for their primary development OS. The audience is clearly the reason this is much higher than you'd expect for the general desktop population, but both the Linux and OS X numbers are growing at the expense of Windows which is down 6% to 58.3% from last year.
Linux (46%) is ahead of Windows (41%) for deployment OS.
Sun Hotspot (69.8%) and Open JDK (21.7%) still dominate the JVM used for deployed applications.
Scrum (15.4%) and iterative (10.9%) are the leading development methodologies.
Hudson (21.8%) is the 3rd most used release management tool behind Ant (50.4%) and Maven (28.3%).
There is a nearly even split among the primary types of apps being developed between RIAs (26.9%), Server-centric apps (26.9%), and desktop client apps (21.0%).
For server frameworks, in something of a surprise given all the bashing EJBs have taken over the years, EJB (18.6%) and Spring (19.7%) use is nearly on par and ahead of Servlets (10.1%).
It is no surprise that MySQL (31.8%) is the leading database used, but Oracle (21.6%) is not far behind and well ahead of the others.
Tomcat (33.8%) far and away the most used app-server and disappointingly, GlassFish (2.9%) is last listed behind WebSphere, Jetty, and WebLogic.
Nearly 60% have no plans to use the Cloud! This is somewhat surprising given all the hubbub we are hearing about the Cloud.

What is perhaps most interesting (and gets its own paragraph, not just a bullet :)) is the section on open-source maturity. There has been a gradual shrinking of companies that have a business model that relies on open-source and a pretty big decline in companies that use open-source and contribute back. There is a pretty big increase in those that use open-source but don't contribute back, so it would seem that use has not declined, but engagement and collaboration with the communities has certainly suffered. And somewhat alarming is that, while still a very small percentage, the number of companies not allowing the use of any open-source software is growing.

What does this all mean?

I believe that the growth of non-Windows platforms for development and deployment continues although it is probably getting closer to the ultimate balance point.
Developers continue to use and adopt new tools and technologies that enhance their productivity but are not abandoning prior technologies that have had significant improvements (EJB with Java EE 6).
Developers are taking a pragmatic or perhaps more pessimistic approach to the Cloud and open-source. Perhaps due to the economy and companies having to tighten their belts, use of open-source continues but there is no longer the resources to fully buy into the model and contribute back.

What do you think?

track links for 2010-06-05: Lagat sets new 5000m AR; Bryan Clay wins Gotzis

2010-06-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

Lagat sets American record in Diamond League Oslo 5000m - A great run, but his son is disappointed he finished 3rd! The 5000m at Pre could be very interesting if Lagat, Solinsky, and Rupp all run.
Nike Elite Stories: Bryan Clay - Good article on Clay.

links for 2010-06-04: iPhone to Android switch; Open standard, but only in Safari; AT&T Data Pricing

2010-06-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

So You Want to Switch to Android…One Man’s iPhone to Nexus One Migration - Stephen makes the switch and shares his thoughts.
Only Apple can do open standards, apparently - This is laughable. Yes, HTML5 is fairly new and so it is still being fully implemented in browsers, but Chrome and Firefox have been near or at the lead in those implementations so demonstrating and open standard but requiring Safari kind of defeats the purpose.
AT&T's data plan pricing: Bringing confusion back to the game - It may be confusing, but I check my usage and it was actually quite low due to being on WiFi most of the time. But I haven't been traveling much so it may be artificially low.

links for 2010-06-01: Apple pulled previously approved apps; Primer on "HTML5"

2010-06-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

It's Groundhog (Software) day again as Apple rejects already-approved app - This is what is really frustrating, an app that was approved being pulled with no recourse or direction on what to change. "The problem lies, absolutely, in the shifting goalposts of Apple's rules on what it is going to allow on its platform."
A HTML Primer for the Overwhelmed - Not sure what exactly HTML5 is (and isn't)? This is a good read and introduces the "HTML5 Family".

links for 2010-05-25: MPEG-LA sued; Stonebreaker's VoltDB; Apple playing catch-up?; Android to be "Windows" of phones?

2010-05-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Company Sues MPEG-LA, Claiming Antitrust Violations Over Patents - Is it just sour grapes from Nero or has MPEG-LA not held up their end of their deal with the DoJ?
Database daddy goes non-relational on NoSQL fanbois - VoltDB, perhaps offering the best of both worlds?
Google vs. Apple in the battle of the fanboys - Is Apple playing catch up? This years WWDC will tell us for sure.
Is Android destined to be the Windows of smartphones? - Informative piece that highlights Google getting into mobile back in 2005.

links for 2010-05-21: Sayonara iPhone; Google and Adobe gang up on Apple

2010-05-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

Sayonara, iPhone: Why I'm Switching to Android - "The Android OS is already outselling iPhone OS in the United States. Now it's blowing past Apple in terms of the technology it's delivering." "What makes this even more insulting is that Jobs tries to dress up his selfishness as a kind of altruism. He says it's all about creating a beautiful experience, that while he may be selling you an intentionally crippled device, he's doing it for your own good."
Strange Bedfellows, Google And Adobe Gang Up On Apple - It was a bit of a change from day 1 to day 2.

links for 2010-05-20: Android on the iPhone; Google IO; Conan visits Google

2010-05-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

VMware’s Cloud Portability Promise Powered By Google - One of the announcements out of Google IO was their working with VMware to offer Java via SpringSource in the cloud. This is Stefan Ried's analysis.
The Mall of Google - Jeffrey Hammond's analysis of Google IO day 1.
Conan visits Google - Entertaining if you have the time to watch it.
How to install Android on your iPhone - I haven't tried it yet, but thinking about it ...

links for 2010-05-18: Oracle releases new version of MySQL Enterprise; Amazon stealing the Cloud; Book on Facebook; Future of Development; Flavors of Cloud Computing

2010-05-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Oracle Announces Immediate Availability of the Latest Release of MySQL Enterprise - But press release only mentions MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.2. No new server yet, but a beta was announced at the MySQL conference.
Amazon is stealing the Cloud - Some interesting stats and survey numbers listed.
The Age Of Facebook: Excerpts From The New Book By David Kirkpatrick - Interesting insights into how they started and Zuckerberg's unwillingness to cash out.
Understanding the many flavors of Cloud Computing - If you are confused by all the *aaS's.
Beyond Cassandra: Facebook, Twitter and the Future of Development - Is the data or code valued more?

links for 2010-05-17: Google I/O is the new JavaOne; Government using the Cloud; Caspio = Access + Cloud?; Jobs engages blogger

2010-05-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Google I/O is the new JavaOne - Google I/O is this week. Will it become "the" developer conference superseding the new, not at Moscone, JavaOne Oracle puts on in the fall?
Recovery.gov finds new home in the cloud - It is good to see the government saving the taxpayer a little money by using the cloud.
Is Caspio The "Microsoft Access" Of The Cloud? - Interesting tool for simple query (and presumably full CRUD) applications.
VMware/SpringSource buys GemStone - I worked with their Smalltalk offerings in the past and really liked them.
Steve Jobs engages blogger via e-mail - Kudos to Jobs for engaging, but I still think Apple goes too far in "protecting" their users.

Event Processing in the Cloud - Combining Esper with AWS SNS

2010-05-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

The folks at Amazon Web Services released their Simple Notification Service in beta a little over a month ago, and I used it to create a loosely coupled weather notification system by publishing weather events to an SNS topic. It is working great, but I started to think of other types of situations I'd want to monitor and have notifications for, and what better way to process these weather events than with a Complex Event Processing (CEP) engine? While I could keep extending my shell script, that would be a bit of a hack and I wanted something cleaner that would more easily last the test of time.

Event processing is in many ways a natural extension of messaging infrastructure as the latter is typically used for the passing of events between systems and so having an easy way to plug in or use an event processor makes a lot of sense. In my case, I wanted to be able to feed periodic weather observations, the raw events, into the messaging infrastructure, then be able to dynamically define the processing rules for those events, and then be able to publish any notifications or "complex events" back into the messaging infrastructure where I could then subscribe or receive them for e-mail/SMS notifications or to kick off other processes or logic.

So, how to put this all together? There are CEP engines from many of the major middleware vendors, but on my shoestring budget I wasn't about to go spend 5-6 figures on software just to process events for my weather station! At Sun, as part of the OpenESB project we had developed the Intelligent Event Processor in open-source so it was a natural choice, but it requires the complete ESB infrastructure and can't run standalone. As I was already using SNS for my messaging and was aiming to make what I created Cloud friendly (see below), I didn't want to bring along an entire ESB, so I needed something else. Another open-source CEP engine I was familiar with is Esper, and after a quick refresher on its capabilities, I decided it would be perfect.

Esper provides a simple to use but very powerful Java API for configuring the events, queries, patterns, etc. and so I set about creating the interface between SNS and Esper. What I ended up building has the following capabilities:

A simple (HTTP/JSON) API for dynamically configuring the events and queries/statements in the engine.
Receives events from an SNS topic via HTTP and feeds them into Esper. The publisher of the raw events just publishes to the SNS topic like it was before and I just create a new subscriber for the CEP engine, thus leveraging the beauty of a loosely coupled messaging system.
Esper processes the events per the configured queries. As the queries generate results, the results are published to a specified SNS topic which can result in a notification e-mail or kicking off some other process or logic, again leveraging the decoupled nature of SNS.

Now, Esper provides a variety of ways to configure the engine, XML being one of them, but you'll note above I chose to create an HTTP/JSON API to serve as the interface to Esper's Java API for doing this configuration. This was to be both Cloud friendly and to make the configuration dynamic. This allows the idea of an event processor in the Cloud that is just available to be configured dynamically, receive events, and publish results, all with no installation or maintenance of the engine or other infrastructure. One never even needs to log in to a machine to mess with any configuration files.

With this created, I was then able to easily configure the following:

I had an existing script called by cron every 10 minutes that sent the weather observation to the Weather Underground. I added a few lines of code to this script to publish the observation to an SNS topic as well.
I created a subscription to the SNS topic that notifies the event processor using HTTP/JSON of each event.
I configured my "Cloud CEP" with the following JSON to define the events it would be receiving:

{ "Type": "EventConfiguration", "Name": "WeatherEvent", "Fields": [["temp", "double"], ["humidity", "double"], ["dewpoint", "double"]]}

I configured a query to use for processing the events, this one telling me the high and low for the past 24 hours every 12 hours at midnight and noon, and sending the result to the specified SNS topic. The statement is Esper's SQL like syntax for specifying queries:

{ "Type": "ListenerConfiguration", "Name": "Every 12 hours high and low", "Statement": "select max(temp) as High, min(temp) as Low from WeatherEvent.win:time(24 hours) output at (1, */12, *, *, *)", "ActionType": "SNS", "SNSTopicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:444520459559:WeatherEventOutput"}

I then created a subscription to the WeatherEventOutput topic to send myself an e-mail.

I now get an e-mail at midnight and noon each day telling me what the high and low were for the past 24 hours. If I want to know any time the temperature changes more than a certain amount in a given period, or if the temperature shows a trend of getting closer to the dewpoint (i.e. it is about to rain), I can add this to the processing with just a simple HTTP/JSON configuration request. And with the power of Esper, those scenarios and a lot more are possible for my weather data or any other event data one might have.

The further beauty of this is that while I happen to have this running on my server at home, because of the way it is built using SNS and HTTP, it could be located anywhere on the internet whether hosted on EC2 or your favorite provider, or a "Cloud CEP" service available to all.

Note also that what I've written is by no means tied to SNS either. It just happens to be Cloud based messaging infrastructure that is convenient to use and gives the benefits of loose coupling. The input to my Cloud CEP is just an HTTP request and I've written an e-mail and HTTP handler so that generated events can go direct as well instead of going to SNS.

So what do you think? Do you have scenarios where a Cloud CEP would be useful? Would you like to try out what I've built thus far? Feel free to leave a comment or contact me at kschmidt at techrunning dot com.

links for 2010-05-13: Ellison on fixing Sun; Fragmenting Linux a bad thing; Apple's cache waning?; Infinity; SAP acquires Sybase

2010-05-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

Ellison on how he is fixing Sun - He doesn't hold back on pointing out Sun's pre-acquisition flaws. It is unforgivable if they are all so easily fixed.
Fragmenting Linux is not the way to beat Apple - But will the vendors using Linux as the core of their mobile strategy align?
Is Apple's cache waning? - The iPhone 4 announcement in June will tell us a lot in answering this question.
Android's army passes iPhone OS, says NPD - The jump seems pretty big when comparing with other research from 2009, but the trend is clear regardless of the actual numbers.
Infinity - The Hilbert Hotel - If you ever wondered what infinity squared is, this one is for you.
SAP acquires Sybase - This is a reflection of being a software vs hardware company, but Oracle pays $7.4B for Sun with >$10B in revenue while SAP gets Sybase for $5.4B with about $1.2B in revenue

links for 2010-05-12: Apple update for iPad WiFi woes; Flash not a CPU hog?; Microsoft responds regarding HTML5/H.264; Rich Green CTO at Nokia; Oracle Office; Adaptive PaaS

2010-05-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

Apple Plans Software Update For iPad WiFi Woes - Adjust your screen brightness to solve WiFi issues?
Top Flash Misperceptions : Flash is a CPU Hog - Hopefully the performance issues on Mac are addresed with the API access, but a related issue (to me at least) is that Flash is now used in places it isn't needed so its performance compared to HTML5 is accurate at times.
Microsoft responds to questions about stance on HTML5/H.264 - Not that this will end the debate, but interesting to see Microsoft respond as I don't expect Steve Jobs to issue a followup to his remarks. Read Ed Bott's analysis.
Rich Green Nokia's new CTO - I was wondering where he might end up.
Oracle Office on sale - A lot cheaper than Microsoft Office for sure, but now a perpetual license not a subscription like it was under Sun.
Adaptive PaaS - Interesting thought on what PaaS needs to do to gain momentum.

links for 2010-05-07: Red Hat vs VMware; Cloud washing; Netflix selects AWS; Android in iPhone 3G

2010-05-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

VMware and Red Hat: The war for the data center - Increasingly overlapping portfolios force them to compete. VMware's next acquisition SUSE Linux to get an OS?
May the cloud washing begin: Enterprise software giants graze on cloud startups - "The burden of cloud computing proof rests with the large enterprise software folks. Your job will be to distinguish from mere cloud washing and real IT value."
Netflix Selects Amazon Web Services to Power Mission-Critical Technology Infrastructure - They'd been using AWS for more than a year but are expanding their use.
Android now running on the iPhone 3G - It is still a bit rough (no audio support, but coming in days the story says), but getting close to being able to really run Android on an iPhone 3G

links for 2010-05-05: Apple's control freakishness; Chrome update; SOA embraced; Android tablets; Solinsky AR splits

2010-05-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

The upside to Apple's control freakishness - I like this from Tim O'Reilly: "It is becoming increasingly clear that the Internet is becoming not just a platform, but an operating system, an operating system that manages access by devices such as personal computers, phones, and other personal electronics to cloud subsystems ranging from computation, storage, and communications to location, identity, social graph, search, and payment."
Google Chrome update: Speed, performance and a deeper push into browser computing - Upgraded, still had it freeze on me once, but now it pops up a dialog telling me what page is the culprit and I had Flash enabled at the time.
Just as vendor-speak turns from SOA, the users are actually embracing it - No surprise here. Vendors and analysts are always talking about the next great thing while there is a lot of money to be made just delivering and implementing the last thing.
Android based tablets on their way - Already running Flash and Air.
Chris Solinsky's splits from his 10000m AR - It appears he could have run faster with more even pacing! Bodes well for his 5000m AR attempt at the Pre Classic in July.

links for 2010-05-04: IBM acquires Cast Iron Systems; Scaling open-source; Browser market share; Software patents are good ... for lawyers; Google's cash; Open Data; Android on your TV

2010-05-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

IBM acquires Cast Iron Systems - IBM making more of a push into the Cloud. Another set of thoughts.
Open-source support: Can it scale? - "Enterprises turned to open source to shave money in the economic downturn and are staying with it now to drive greater innovation and productivity."
Browser market share: IE drops below 60% - Every browser other than IE shows a growth trend (Opera interestingly seems to have plateaued though), particularly Chrome.
Browsers: Does minimalist win the race? - ZDNet speculates on why IE is losing share and Chrome is gaining. A few quotes: "Tech geeks aside, people are more interested in web content than they are the browser" and "... Chrome just kind of blends into the background".
Patent Litigation Weekly: MobileMedia's Unusual Patent Infringement Campaign - Give it away free or let folks use it for free to get adoption, then swoop in and sue. Nice.
Google at a loss for what to do with cash? - They'd have to do a lot of acquisitions to spend $26.5B!
The Future of Open Data - Some interesting ideas. I have to admit that I've run across data sets where I have made changes or cleanup and what Stephen describes would work better than just sharing the Google Spreadsheet I've done in the past.
Ready for Android on your ... TV? - Not really a surprise as TV's are a natural for being connected and a platform for new types of apps.

links for 2010-05-03: Apple/Adobe debate brings in Microsoft; More on HP/Palm; iPhone envy erased by Droid Incredible; iPad reaches 1M sold

2010-05-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

IE9 HTML5 Video Will Be H264 Only - Microsoft supporting H264 (they are part of MPEG LA so that's natural) but don't seem to be quite as opposed to Flash as Apple.
Mobile is the New Desktop: The HP/Palm Q&A - Stephen's take on the acquisition. Also see Cote's and James' to complete the RedMonk trifecta.
HP: Is it spreading itself too thin in the IT wars? - They do cover a lot of different areas now. Too much?
Top 10 ways the Droid Incredible killed my iPhone envy - The author has given up waiting for the iPhone on Verizon and it appears for good reason.
Apple sells 1M iPads in 28 days - But there is still ample demand for the iPad it would seem.

Is Flash costing the American public money in electricity costs?

2010-05-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

There has been much furor about the lack of Flash on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad with Apple espousing a number of reasons for that, a key one being performance and resource utilization. I wrote about my experience with Flash and some minor improvements a beta of 10.1 seems to bring, but I've observed that even when not watching video, with the number of sites that use Flash for other things the CPU is actually quite busy when one would think it would be idle (i.e. I'm not actively browsing).

To test this out, on a Mac I opened up several windows, each with several tabs opened to sites I'll typically have open during the day including Gmail, Google Calendar, Blogger, ESPN.com, StatCounter, ZDNet, and a handful of others. I also watched a Dodger game on MLB.com for a bit but closed that window and left the computer basically idle but with the tabs still open in my browser.

At this point the Shockwave plug-in was using about 2-3% of the CPU, not bad. But 20 minutes later of just sitting otherwise idle, the plug-in was using 10% of the CPU. During this test I did not wait significantly longer, but previously I've seen the plug-in using 15-20% of the CPU while the machine is seemingly idle.

So, even at a conservative 10% of the CPU being used unnecessarily by Flash on an idle machine, one has to then wonder what that is doing to the power consumption of the machine. A little quick research revealed that moderate usage of a desktop uses 30-50 watts above idle and a laptop 10-15 watts above idle. If moderate use is 20-30% CPU, then our 10% CPU is going to be using around 10 watts on average.

Let's keep doing more math to see where this takes us. The current population of the US is just over 307 million and 76.2 computers per 100 people that is roughly 234 million computers. If only 10%, or 23.4 million, are used on a daily basis and when they are used 10%, or 2.34 million of them visit sites each day for an hour that use Flash and have this CPU waste, that is 23,400 kilowatt hours each day, or 8.54 million per year.

To make that number more meaningful, at an electricity price of $0.10 per kilowatt hour, the use of Flash is costing the American public $854K per year. And the 10%'s and single hour I used above are likely clearly on the low end of what the actuals are and my analysis ignores computers used at work. So the actual cost is likely well into the millions. In the grand scheme of things, $854K isn't that much for the entire country, but it is still sobering to think about.

Now, is this all Adobe's fault? If their software is indeed buggy and inefficient they do shoulder some of the blame, but I would argue that Flash is likely used in many situations it isn't needed and that it is poorly written Flash apps that is a big factor too. Poorly written AJAX apps running in your browser could cause the exact same issues.

So what can one do about it? Well, you can choose to do nothing as it is really only costing you at most pennies in extra electricity costs (although what about wear and tear on your computer from heat and the fan running?), but your other alternatives are to not install the Flash plug-in and forgo benefiting from sites that use Flash, or installing a Flash blocker. I've done the latter and it blocks all Flash applets by default but allows you to white-list sites or selectively enable specific applets.

Using the blocker it is interesting to see what sites use Flash and the list includes Google Mail, ESPN.com, ZDNet, java.sys-con.com, StatCounter, and more. Do each of these really need to use Flash?

Chris Solinsky shatters the 10000m American Record

2010-05-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

An historic event occurred last night at Stanford as Chris Solinsky ran 26:59.6 to shatter the American Record that was 27:13.98. It was a fabulous run but what was more surprising was that this was his debut at the distance and the race had been billed as Galen Rupp's attempt to break the record and Chris upstaged the runner from the sister training group. Also, Chris becomes the first non-African born runner under 27 minutes.

The IAAF story above has a good recounting of the race and you can see Flotrack's finish of the race but a quick summary is the rabbits took it through mid-race on 27:10 or so pace and then Rupp took over the lead and pulled everyone along with Chelanga, Salel, and Solinsky close behind (Bairu may have been there too). Rupp made a move with 3 or so to go, Solinsky went with him and passed him with about 2 to go and closed in about 1:56. Rupp finished 4th in 27:10, breaking Meb's former AR time, but Salel and Chelanga beat him, Chelanga setting a new Collegiate Record.

Quite an impressive race, especially considering it was his debut, but clearly shows he is likely in sub-13 5000m shape which it appears is his goal for the year, or rather breaking Dathan Ritzenhein's AR of 12:56 is the goal. He'll be running one in Oslo in early June and then another at the Pre-Classic in July.

It is shaping up to be a great summer for American distance running. Look for Rupp to come back strong and Matt Tegenkamp who went sub-13 last year should have a another go at the AR. Enjoy!

links for 2010-04-30: Response to Jobs missive against Flash; Another view on VMforce; Indians most hated team?

2010-04-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

The parallel world of Apple: Where open is not always open - Correctly points out the similarity in Apple's lack of openness particularly around iTunes.
Steve Jobs on Flash: Correcting the Lies - Pokes holes in many of Steve's points, but (if you have a lot of time) read the comments and see holes poked in his hole poking. It is entertaining, but he goes a bit far I think.
Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife - Clearly points out the hypocrisy regarding use of Cocoa, H264 being as if not more proprietary than Flash, and iTunes locking users in more than Flash. How is Apple "open" one might ask?
Though Miffed, Media Companies See Silver Lining In Apple-Adobe Tiff - Rather than pout about it, media companies are looking for ways to make a buck. Too bad the record and movie industry has fought technology when they could have embraced it and been innovative.
VMforce - Another Cloud Computing Solution for Java - Asks how they get to claim they are the first enterprise Java Cloud when other vendors have been supporting Java in the Cloud for some time.
Report says Indians most hated team - The natural response would have been that everyone hates the "Evil Empire", but no, it is the Indians and the Yankees are only the 5th most hated.

links for 2010-04-29: AWS to be as big as Amazon retail?; Steve Jobs on Flash; Backlash against PowerPoint; Flash History

2010-04-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Amazon Looks to Widen Lead in Cloud Computing - Opens a new data center in Singapore, but also says "Amazon Web Services can be as big as our retail business, in the fullness of time".
Steve Jobs thoughts on Flash - He makes several good points, but calling Adobe closed and proprietary given Apple's tools target a single platform (vs many) and the closed nature of the App Store (vs anyone can create an app without approval) is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. And if third party software not taking advantage of new APIs and features is really so terrible, let the market determine that and decide.
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint - "Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs."
Flash History - A good reminder that Flash did fill a need, but he also had a zinger directly at Cupertino: "... a platform with a vendor who gets to decide what’s allowed to run is profoundly uninteresting to me anyhow."
News Analysis: Salesforce.com and VMware Up The Ante In The Cloud Wars With VMforce - Good summary. Pits the Java offerings vs Azure.

links for 2010-04-28: Android momentum; Microsoft and Open Source; VMforce; Web vs Enterprise; AWS Presentations

2010-04-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

Google: Numbers favor Android over iPhone - Some interesting stats and trends, and Apple and Microsoft certainly are validating that Android is a threat to them.
Microsoft contributing to OSS - GPL even.
The Java cloud? VMforce – Quick Analysis - Force.com gets real Java (well, Tomcat + Spring, no Java EE) and VMware gets a customer buying into their message/vision.
Salesforce.com's partnership with VMware: Offense, defense or something in between? - Another view.
Cassandra and The Enterprise Tension - MySQL responded to the tension one way, what will other tools built for the Web do when confronted by the "opportunity" to go after the enterprise too/instead?
AWS Presentation Roundup - A good source for a variety of presentations on the Cloud and Amazon.

links for 2010-04-27: Promising cancer research; VMware and Salesforce; Gizmodo iPhone raid

2010-04-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Substance in Breast Milk Kills Cancer Cells, Study Suggests - Research takes awhile, but this sounds like a great start.
VMware, Salesforce announce VMforce platform, bring Java to cloud - More details needed, but sounds like it could be interesting.
Understanding the legal issues that are clouding the Gizmodo iPhone raid - It is somewhat surprising that the police would mess this one up. Pressure from Apple I'm guessing led to the hasty actions.

links for 2010-04-26: Chances are; Apple goes after Gizmodo

2010-04-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

Chances Are - Learn more about conditional probabilities.
Cops raid Gizmodo editor's home over lost iPhone, raise questions of legal search upon journalist - Does Apple have the judicial system in their pocket?

links for 2010-04-25: Is Apple or Adobe or Google open?; iPhone crimes; Amazon building out capacity

2010-04-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

Apple channels Google, Microsoft to attract developers - No one is fully open, but everyone tries to play the "open" card as they see fit.
Tech cops are investigating possible crimes over lost iPhone prototype - Was Gizmodo committing a crime?
Amazon to build out capacity for cloud, fulfillment and third party services - "... the need for more capacity means that fledgling businesses like Amazon Web Services ... are growing at a healthy clip." Use of the Cloud is growing!

Flash Performance Issues on Mac OS X

2010-04-23T18:50:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of debate about the lack of Flash support on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and part of the larger debate is that Adobe hasn't invested in Flash support on OS X sufficiently leading to performance issues on that platform. As I use a Mac, I've suffered from some of these issues including high CPU utilization when watching video using Flash to having the fan turn on when the system is seemingly idle because a Flash applet or two in a web-page is using excessive CPU.

So, I was pleased to hear the Adobe is promising to address these performance issues in the forthcoming Flash 10.1 release. I was more pleased to see that release candidate 2 is available and downloaded it and installed it to try things out.

For my test, I elected to compare CPU utilization of the Flash plug-in while watching a Dodger game on MLB.com. On a side note, this service which provides the ability to watch out of market games in HD on a computer or on many mobile devices is an awesome service and I highly recommend it.

Using the latest Flash 10.0, I observed the CPU utilization of the process running the Flash player at around 90-95%. Good thing I have a dual core machine (2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo), but it is still working pretty hard to play the streaming video.

With 10.1 RC2, I did observe a slight decrease in utilization to around 80-85%, so it has improved, and it may improve more before the final release.

But the performance is still well short of Flash on Windows it would seem as an old notebook I have with an AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-34 at 1.8 GHz can watch the same HD stream using around 80% CPU and that is a single core machine. For comparison, according to cpubenchmark.net the old notebook has a 437 CPU rating and the Mac is around 1400 so even using 1 core at around 700, the Mac is "using" 560 while the old PC is "using" 350, so more efficient.

Let's hope the work Adobe is doing to improve the performance of Flash on the Mac continues.

links for 2010-04-23: Flash, Adobe, and Apple; What makes SaaS successful; Red Hat to follow VMware into cloud databases?; Letterman on iPhone prototype

2010-04-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

The Flash fracas between Adobe and Apple (FAQ) - A good summary of the arguments on each side.
VCs: What makes SaaS successful? - Some interesting thoughts on where SaaS should and should not be used.
VMware’s Database Play: Will Red Hat Follow? - It seems like a natural step to do so.
Letterman on the lost iPhone prototype - His rant before the list is interesting, and a few of the items on the top-10 list are great.

links for 2010-04-22: Oracle on OpenESB; Android on iPhone; Dell Android phone

2010-04-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

OpenESB under Oracle - Frank writes what has been said on the mailing lists in bits and pieces. It is now time for the community to step up, especially with Frank leaving Oracle to go to Google.
Android running on iPhone - If only Apple actually allowed this stuff, think of the innovation we might have.
Dell Thunder explodes Android with 4.1-inch OLED screen, promises Hulu app - 4.1 inch display, Flash, Hulu app, what's not to like?

track links for 2009-04-22: Tyson Gay breaks sprint barriers; Penn and Drake Relays

2010-04-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a big track and field fan so with the start of the outdoor season, I'll start periodic "track links" entries, the first today.

With sub-45 run, Gay becomes first to break three major sprint barriers - Amazingly, no one else has ever gone sub-10, sub-20, and sub-45. This could mean a great year for Tyson.
The Penn Relays - Start today! Some great early season high school and college action with some "USA vs the World" action thrown in in the relays.
The Drake Relays - The action isn't only in Philly. Lagat headlines the invitational mile.
Comprehensive broadcast schedule - Great resource to see what is on TV and streaming.

links for 2010-04-21: VMware's "database" play; AT&T buoyed by iPhone; 2010 NFL projected records; Adobe giving up on iPhone

2010-04-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

VMware’s SpringSource Redis and Rabbit acquisitions: A Database Play is Emerging - Just don't call it "database" apparently. But as Paul Martiz said, "... we are adding to the repertoire of underlying middleware and technologies that we think are going to be needed to generate – to develop a new generation of applications." appears to be a strong plan.
AT&T earnings propelled by iPhone activations, connected devices like e-readers, GPS systems - If this causes them to continue to invest more in their network, all good.
2010 NFL projected records - With the draft tomorrow, will your favorite team improve? These projected records serve as a good baseline of what to expect next year and an interesting use of data from last years performance.
Adobe casts Flash lot with Android; Drops iPhone plans - Will this bite Apple in the future? "The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development. The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms." Note that I've increasingly seen Flash crashing or hogging CPU on a Mac, but that too could be part of the Apple/Adobe battle.

links for 2010-04-20: E-commerce witch hunt; ODF plugin no longer free; Oracle Java virtualization on JRockit, not Sun JVM; NoSQL and Cloud; iPhone leak loses customer

2010-04-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

Amazon's suit vs. North Carolina about preventing e-commerce witch hunt - Let's hope the witch hunt is prevented.
$9,000 is the new 'free' for Oracle - This one doesn't make sense to me. Why start charging, with a 100 user minimum, for something that isn't going to be adopted if it is charged for? Especially since there is an open-source offering? (I have not tried it) How does this drive adoption? And not only are they charging for it but are going to charge you maintenance too. To top it off, the licensing information says there is a 90 day eval but you have to pay to download it. Hmmm.
Oracle Introduces Java Virtualization Solution for Oracle(R) WebLogic Suite - Sounds like a useful offering. Perhaps it was in the works before the acquisition closed and is the reason, but what does it being based on JRockit say about the Sun JVM?
NoSQL Needed For Cloud-Sized Data - Use the right tool for the right scenario.
Peek at lost-and-found iPhone seals deal on Droid Incredible - The leak has affected at least one decision.

links for 2010-04-19: Integrals explained; Gosling's departure; iPhone 4 sneak peek

2010-04-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

It Slices, It Dices - Moving on from derivatives to integrals.
Next for Gosling? - Sheds a little more light on the subject but still doesn't say why he left.
iPhone 4 in the wild? - I feel sorry for the Apple employee that lost it ...

links for 2010-04-18: Jive goes after open-source; iPhone app approval issues

2010-04-18T17:19:00.000-07:00

Why is Jive bad-mouthing Drupal and Liferay? - They've already pulled the whitepaper and backtracked which is probably wise. I wonder who ok'd the strategy in the first place?
As Apple reconsiders Pulitzer winner's iPhone app, news outlets should think twice about iPad strategy - More odd approvals of iPhone apps.

links for 2010-04-17: iPhone users aren't sheep; MySQL threats; What is/isn't Cloud?; RAIC; Volcano impact to flights

2010-04-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

News Flash: iPhone users aren't sheep - "Supporting contentious software like Adobe Flash and Sun's Java would instantly make Apple's products much more compatible with the Web as we know it, further enable its app developers, and Apple would get brownie points with its own fans for giving them a choice to install it or not."
YourSQL, MySQL, and NoSQL: The MySQL Conference Report - With the emergence of many other databases for the Web, Oracle being the custodian of MySQL is no longer the greatest threat.
But is that really Cloud? - Unsure what is/isn't Cloud? Take the test.
RAIC? What's that? - Read and learn.
Google Earth animation of UK Air Traffic problems - Interesting to see how everything changed over the course of a day or so.

links for 2010-04-16: McNealy Speaks; Microsoft and Google on collision course; Cloud printing

2010-04-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

Scott McNealy can still dish - "... in the ‘80s we were preaching that the network is the computer. Shame on us for not summing it up in one word – cloud"
Microsoft, Google On Office Computing Collision Course - Interesting how they are converging on the same space. Much like various vendors in the middleware space converged on SOA platforms from EAI, BPM, and app-servers.
First look: Google Docs gets realtime collaboration - The presence feature sounds very nifty and useful.
Printer drivers: A thing of the past? Google, HP seem to think so - Isn't a printer driver still required where the printer is attached?

links for 2010-04-15: Google and Sun vision and results; Free meals for biking; Opera on iPhone

2010-04-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Google and Sun: Same vision, different results - "... it's hard to realize a "network is the computer" future when you're stuck selling the hardware to power that network, rather than profiting from the software running atop the network, as Google does."
Danish eco-hotel offers pedalpower free meal - Ride a bike, get a free meal!
Opera off to nice iPhone start; Will it have staying power? - "But here’s the big question: What happens to Opera when all the included mobile browsers—Webkit based and otherwise—improve?"

links for 2010-04-14: Twitter ads; VMware/SS acquires RabbitMQ; Apps=Fish, Data=Wine

2010-04-14T18:21:00.000-07:00

Quicktake Analysis: What Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” Means To The Ecosystem - It will be interesting to see this play out.
Twitter predicts the future? - Great example of how the influx of data we have today can be used.
SpringSource Acquires RabbitMQ Cloud Messaging Technology - A continuation of their move into the Cloud.
Oracle drops top architect into MySQL skeptic zone - "If Oracle corporate hoped Screven's message would draw applause based on some collective relief it was wrong: just one person in the hushed room clapped - furiously - and this was possibly one of Oracle's employees spotted at the show trying to cheerlead a round of unspontaneous applause."
Infosys lands deal to manage Microsoft's internal IT services - A great win for Infosys.
Why applications are like fish and data is like wine - "But if we look at business architectures data has the longest shelf life, followed by business logic, followed by presentation."
Bravo Apple - "Finally, Apple is doing away with those arrogant upstarts who think then can write a few lines in a high level language and call it a program."

links for 2010-04-13: New Google Docs; Adobe and Apple; Abandoning iPhone Development; iPad Review; Twitter news; Stats and views on taxes

2010-04-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

With Rewrite, Google Docs Takes Microsoft Office Head On - More collaboration is good, see more details here. The city of LA is easing over by just not upgrading Office without justification. Another more detailed story here.
How Do Google, Microsoft Clouds Stack Up? - A nice comparison of pricing and what is required from each vendor to do office collaboration in the Cloud.
Adobe at fault with Apple? - Sounds like they burned a few bridges they wish were still there now.
I’m Abandoning iPhone Development - Sad to see an "ask permission" environment stifle creativity and innovation.
Apple's iPad Not Ready For The Enterprise - Author fails to get the point that the iPad isn't intended to be a general purpose laptop replacement. But getting documents on/off the device does seem awfully clumsy.
Twitter Open-sources the Home of Its Social Graph - Good news for developers.
Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads - The long awaited business plan. Will users revolt against ads in their personal stream?
Tensions Rise for Twitter and App Developers - Turning the dial from ubiquity to figuring out how to make money.
66% say American is overtaxed - Some interesting stats and data.

"In Fiscal Year 2009, 50% of all federal spending went to national defense, Social Security and Medicare. When the cost of veterans affairs are included, that number grows to 53%. Five percent (5%) paid interest on the federal debt, and 42% was used for everything else in the budget."
"Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on the issue of taxes. Thirty-four percent (34%) trust Democrats more on the issue. Republicans also are trusted more on health care and the economy."

links for 2010-04-12: What Microsoft and Apple can learn from Ubuntu; Who will buy Palm?; Greenplum moves data to Cloud; Calculus explained

2010-04-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

One big thing Microsoft, Apple, and all CTOs can learn from Ubuntu - "What Canonical does really well is to methodically produce incremental upgrades to its OS. It is transparent about its goals and plans, and it releases its software on schedule. In fact, this incremental approach is Ubuntu’s most potent competitive weapon against rivals Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X."
Who may buy Palm? - Interesting question.
Greenplum pushes enterprise data cloud with new releases - Interesting that McNeally is an advisor to Greemplum and they have their sights set on Oracle.
Change We Can Believe In - The next in an excellent series of blog entries explaining math.