Mike Lenhart

The Age of Hyperconnectivity Dawns

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:57:36 -0500

IDC has just released a report that discovered there are a lot of hyped-up technology users out in the web world using multiple devices and multiple applications. This is great news for the channel, even if does not surprise any of us who have had their dinner, movie, airplane flight or sporting event interrupted by crazed Internet junkies.

Everything You Need to Know About Terminal Services

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:18:55 -0500

Terminal Services come in handy when you need to deploy or maintain software in an enterprise environment, or when you have to make applications available to branch offices. You can read all the details in the Terminal Services Overview on TechNet.

As you might expect, there are changes to the Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008, and you can catch a summary of those changes on TechNet.

But if you're more of a visual person, there are four videos from the Terminal Services Team that discuss some of the changes in Windows Server 2008. They also give you a chance to meet some members of the Terminal Servcies Team and see demos of the product.

Video No. 1 takes a look at the new Terminal Services features in Windows Server 2008
Video No. 2 explains the TS Gateway and RemoteApp publishing
Video No. 3 explores the multi-user kernel
Video No. 4 examines the TS Gateway, TS Web Access and publishing.

Green Matters: US DOE Sees the Direction the Wind is Blowing

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:52:35 -0500

Bigger than Craigslist vs. Ebay, today's green stories of note.

DOE Report: Wind Could Power 20 Percent of US Grid by 2030 - Wired.com

A new report from the Department of Energy claims that wind turbines could generate 300 gigawatts by 2030, which would power about 20 percent of the US electrical grid.
The forecasting scenario would require tremendous growth in the wind industry, which currently produces about 17 gigawatts of electricity, or a little over one percent of total capacity.

'Green' procurement goes into the black - Purchasing.com

Just ask IBM, Herman Miller and GlaxoSmithKline. At IBM, sustainable sourcing and supply chain efficiency go hand in hand. Herman Miller uses Green concepts to optimize the lifecycle of their products. And at GlaxoSmithKline, purchasing works with the company's research and development staff to find ways to save energy, water and cut down on emissions. Though their definitions of Green and their approaches to environmentally friendly purchasing may differ, each company follows the three Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle—and each works to find the best way to promote Green throughout their respective supply chains.

Ahead of the Curve: It's quiet, it's green, it's the Rack o' My Dreams - InfoWorld

After a long and edifying discussion, GizMac, a company that really needs to work on its name, agreed to send me an XRackPro2 sealed rack enclosure. GizMac was careful to set my expectations. XRackPro2 is not, the company warned, a noise-isolating cabinet. It reduces noise, I've learned, with varying effectiveness depending on the type and amount of fan noise generated inside the rack. But I'll tell you this: I packed an 8-core Xserve and two 16-core machines in a 6U XRackPro2. When I powered them all up, the noise was so overwhelming as to make a telephone call impossible from anywhere in the room. Until, that is, I shut XRackPro2's foam-sealed front and back doors.

The top 10 green issues in the workplace - ITWeb

Results of the survey show that almost 40% of US respondents said their number one office environmental pet peeve was mindless printing resulting in abandoned pages at the printer, followed closely by leaving the lights on in unused offices (37%).

DOE Lab To Get the Biofuels Party (Re)started - Matter Network

Specific projects will focus on perfecting biochemical and thermochemical processes for turning cellulosic biomass into a more eco-friendly ethanol brew. "Cellulosic ethanol is a critical component of the President's comprehensive strategy to diversify our nation's energy sources in a sustainable manner, enhance energy security and address the serious challenge of global climate change," said Andy Karsner, DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Tip: iPhone - How to Stop iPhoto from Opening Automatically

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:42:36 -0500

Some find it annoying that iPhoto on the Mac opens every time they plug in their iPhone to synch it with the computer. iPhoto opens up as soon as the phone is plugged in – even when there are no photos on iPhone’s “Camera Roll.” To stop this from happening, there is a preference in iPhoto that needs to be changed.

Here's what you do:

Open iPhoto->Preferences->General. Change the option “Connecting camera opens” option to “No application”. Close iPhoto.

The next time you plug in your iPhone, iPhoto will not open. To synch photos from the iPhone’s “Camera Roll” change iPhoto’s preferences back so that “Connecting camera opens – iPhoto.”

Reasons To Hate IM (Both Philosophical And Practical)

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:16:48 -0500

OK, maybe "hate" is too strong a word, but I've always had a strong aversion to instant messaging, especially in the workplace. I touched on this subject in a long-ago post, but a recent conversation with two of my colleagues got me thinking about it again.

Upon learning that I and a co-worker not only don't use IM, but assiduously avoid it, another colleague asked us, "What is it with you guys and IM? What horrible things do you think will happen if you are on IM? :-)"

Fair enough question. Here are my reasons:

1) IMs are intrusive. You know how annoying it is when you're mousing over a web site and an ad suddenly pops up or even takes over the screen? That's what IM feels like to me. When I'm trying to focus, I don't need an instant message shoved in my face, especially since...

2) Way too many IMs are trivial and unimportant. Just because IM'ing someone is easy (you don't have to dial, you don't even have to type in an email address) doesn't mean it should be used to convey whatever insipid thought pops into your head: "u c amy winehouse on youtube? WTF!!!!!!" But too many people do.

Worse, there are those -- the insecure, the lonely, the manipulative -- who use IM for mission-critical missives such as "'mornin'" and "hi" and "how r u?" I don't mean to sound anti-social here, but if you worked remotely, would you phone someone at the main office just to say "hi"? We get it; you're at your desk, workin' hard! Well, you're at your desk, anyway.

3) IMs virtually demand instant replies. "mornin'"...
"Chris?"...
"Chris?"...
"r u there?"...

Yes, I took three minutes to go to the bathroom. Is that allowed?

4) IM threads go on interminably. Just when you think the ordeal finally is over, you see the dreaded, "IM Maven is typing..."

5) They have these things called emails and phones. Last I checked, these were still working pretty well and seemed fast enough.

Those are my practical reasons for not using instant messaging. I'll leave the philosophical to my fellow IM-avoiding co-worker, who offers a far more eloquent rationale. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this with you:

For me, I've been addicted to the Internet and technology for years, sort of joined at the hip. So much so that when my wife and I took a weekend getaway, she told me she was surprised I didn't bring my laptop.

Using IM would be like losing that last little bit of myself that isn't connected to the Internet. I'm trying to maintain some healthy separation, however minor.

Raging Thunder: An Independent Racing Game for iPhone

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:15:04 -0500

Author: Damon Brown

We don't know exactly what Electronic Arts, Gameloft and other gaming powerhouses are planning now that Apple has unleashed its iPhone SDK, but a few enterprising folks are giving us an idea of what we *could* be seeing this fall. Tech sites have been drooling over "Raging Thunder," a new, independently made racing game.

More a tech demo than a potentially licensed and sold product, "Raging Thunder" is a traditional arcade racing game - except the car is steered by tilting the iPhone itself. It sounds strange, but, as shown in the video, the controls seem to be intuitive (though we'd have to assume a finished product would use the much easier widescreen mode, not the vertical).

The visuals aren't too shabby, either, which leads us to think that an official version of Need for Speed couldn't look that much different.

"Raging Thunder" Video:

About the Author
Damon Brown wrote the "Pocket Idiot's Guide to the iPhone" (Alpha/Penguin Books). Available on August 7, you can preorder it at Amazon or your favorite online bookstore. Damon also writes for Playboy, SPIN and The New York Post.

One iPhone Isn't Enough

Wed, 14 May 2008 10:34:16 -0500

Author: Susan Schrank

Rubicon Consulting surveyed 460 US iPhone users and found that, although they are generally "very satisfied" with the iPhone, a third of them carry a second phone. iPhone Matters reports that these folks use the iPhone for "media and e-mail functions" and use another handset for phone calls. The article posits, and we have to agree to some extent, that they might not even know that the iPhone is even a phone.

Half of the respondents got an iPhone to replace a standard cell phone, 40% were replacing a smartphone and 10% have an iPhone as their first cell phone, Rubicon found. E-mail and Web browsing are the most-used functions, and 75% said having an iPhone has encouraged them to spend more time browsing the mobile Web.

Post courtesy of MobileContentToday.

Tip: Transferring Desktop Photos to iPhone

Wed, 14 May 2008 10:08:58 -0500

Here’s an easy way to get just some of the photos you have on your computer onto your iPhone.

In iPhoto, create a new album called “iPhone photos.” (File->New Album). Then drag and drop selected photos from the iPhoto library on your computer into this album.

Connect your iPhone to the computer and open iTunes. Under the tab “Photos” check the box “Synch photos from iPhoto” and the box “selected albums.” Then scroll down the list of albums and check only the album called “iPhone photos.” Synch your phone.

All the photos on your iPhone will disappear, except for the photos on your “Camera Roll,” and a new album - “iPhone photos” - will be there.

You can add to, delete, or change the photos on your album, just by changing the contents in the iPhone photos album in iPhoto.

Google Gets IPv6 Religion - But Do You?

Wed, 14 May 2008 09:45:04 -0500

From the 'we're running out of addresses' file:

Google has announced that it is now available over IPv6. Specifically you can access Google search with the next generation Internet protocol. To hit Google on IPv6 you must first be running IPv6 though (ipv6.google.com).

While this is 'good' news I suppose it also exposes the fundamental flaw and issue with IPv6 as it currently stands.

Why aren't more sites available on IPv6? (and why is Google doing this now?).

The problem is simple and complex at the same time. While the US Government itself is moving to IPv6, US based enterprises are not. (It's a problem that I've been researching for the last few weeks in fact).

And why should they?

Sure the 'chicken littles' of the world are saying the sky is falling and we're running out of IPv4 address space (which is true). But the reality in this part of the world is that we've got enough IPv4 to keep us from feeling any shortage. The reality is every organization in this part of the world has already figured out the IP address issues by using NAT and port forwarding scenarios that provide an abundance of addressing options.

So YES, great to see Google jump publicly on the IPv6 bandwagon, but it would be better to see you (yes you dear reader!) jump on the IPv6 bandwagon too.

A Spectrum of Developer Opinion

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:13:57 -0500

This recent InfoWorld article ("Multi-core to leave developers in dust?" by columnist Bill Snyder) is somewhat late in reacting to the concurrency hype, though it provides a good overview of recent market maneuvers among chip makers and ISVs. However, it's worth reading for the comments alone. While there are only a dozen or so, they truly scatter across the spectrum of developer opinion about concurrency, from complete apathy to shoulder-shrugging mastery, anachronistic irony to futuristic fear. Read them and ponder...