Skype have a small preview of a new system that will enable you to create broadcasts based on your interests and share them with other people.
Called Skypecasts. Unlike Podcasts, which are entirely one-way, Skypecasts are a way of promoting your forthcoming online discussion and getting a decent multi-way conversation on your chosen topic. Since you all talk via Skype, the conversation is free and I would guess this is the next logical progression from online communities, conferencing systems and IRC to a point where like minded individuals can discuss, in real-time, and around the world, about their favorite topic.
There are few things more frustrating than finding a new piece of kit you want and then having to wait months for it to make its way across the water to here in the UK. There are countless examples of products that I've waited months for.
That delay is shrinking - often the reason was lack of a suitable PSU, but today most PSUs are auto-ranging/switching anyway. Today people also find out about products a lot earlier than the one to two months delay there used to be when magazines were the main way of disseminating this information. There's nothing like missing the initial hype period to lower sales.
Having effective backups are a critical part of any business, but the open source community was for a long time ignored. It's only in recent years that we've had tools and extensions that allow backup of Linux software - I've been using the backup client for Retrospect from Dantz now part of EMC for years.
But what about open source backup tools for open, and proprietary, platforms. There have been many bubbling under, although I doubt I will be the only to admit having used tar, cpio or rsync for years on their Unix systems. In fact, I've been using a variation of the same backup script now for about 12 years. Others probably use ufsdump or similar for their backups - a tool that has been part of Unix for many many years, but it is hardly an effective solution for very large systems.
I commented earlier last week on Seagate's new 750GB hard drive and suggested a few possible items of data that could be used to fill it up.
Yesterday, MacNN announced the availability of a Firewire based unit using the drive. The price is quoted as $560 - to me, that seems remarkably cheap. That might be because I'm used to buying large drives, but, in fact, a quick couple of calculations show that at this price, you are get ting 1.34GB/$. Compared to other Firewire hard drives, a LaCie 500GB unit comes out at 1.28GB/$ and a 400GB worse at 1.21GB/$. (Those figures are all recommended prices, I've no doubt the actual ones might be a lot lower.)
I've been using with Parallels on my Intel iMac - the Beta5 was released yesterday with a slew of new features, including virtual machine USB support and lots of bug fixes.
First of all, this virtual machine technology is fast; it certainly feels faster than VMware on similar hardware and running the same OS. Compilation is so quick within Gentoo I constantly find myself doing double takes to ensure it really has completed what I asked for.
What seems to be even faster though is the speed of development. We seem to get a new release every week of the beta, and it isn't just bug fixes that are being incorporated, we get new features with virtually every beta release too.
I'm presenting the keynote at LoCA 2006 this year and on Monday I booked all of the flights, hotel and car parking required to get me there.
As it happens I'm away that week, but significantly closer to Dublin, and to a more convenient airport, to fly over in just under an hour. Everything, I thought, was organized.
Then I got an email today, just 36 hours after everything had been confirmed, to say that they were no longer able to fly out of that airport and it would change to another about an hour (by car) away.
Desktop virtualization is a similar approach to using terminal services, except that you provide a desktop virtual machine which you access through a suitable client (VMware's, or another solution like VNC).
You get centralized management of your desktops, because the desktops are located on your virtual desktop server, and you can closely control the resources allocated to each machine.
There are also security aspects; have a problem with the machine? Re-image it from a backup of the desktop that you made that you know was safe. Viri and trojan houses can be kept under control by using a virtual hard disk that can be deleted or re-generated. You can even use the technology in VMware that rolls back changes to the disk when the virtual machine is shutdown, returning it to the state it was when booted.
I never thought I'd see the day, but I seem to have found a computer that is faster than anything I need at the moment.
The T2000 is quick, especially for a lot of the tasks that I would be considering. Web serving, large compiles and other processes are all areas where I could see a use, but, even with the current range of websites and projects in hand, I don't think I'd ever get to use the power of this machine and that would be a waste, not necessarily of money - it'll probably go the same way as much of my other Sun hardware; still going ten years from now - but it would also be a waste of opportunity. I really don't have enough to throw at this box to get the best out of it each day.
The existence of the 750GB from Seagate, although not yet official, proves that the quest for ever larger storage spaces is never-ending.
Likely to target the desktop drive market, I would think that the problem with such a large single drive is the possibility for failure. 750GB is a lot to lose from a single hardware fault.
As users - home, work and otherwise - we are now storing much more data than ever before. Our music collection, digital photos, even home videos are a prime source of data space in the home, and sometimes at work. For the business desktop it is applications, raw data (photos, spreadsheets and analysis output from databases) and for some more complex types, like virtual machine hard drives and others.
I have some suggestions, based on how I've been using my 1GB unit for the last couple of years:
Use it as a quick backup store - I carry mine in my pocket when I'm travelling, on the basis that it is unlikely to disappear or get lost, unlike, say, my bags. I plug it in whenever I do any significant work, run a backup, and unplug it again.
Carry around standard docs - I've had a key of some description since about 2002, and I've been storing my CV and some sample docs on it (in PDF format) for all that time. It's great, when someone asks you something, to be able to whip out your USB key and give the docs right there, instead of taking a business card and emailing it later. With more storage, I could have more sample docs.