TechAgility

This is just some ramblings from me over the xmas/new year break and some general thoughts about the global economy and some technical thoughts

Economy

Option ARM’s – could this be the harbinger of the Second Wave of Foreclosures in the US? 

• Subprime Loans Caused the Initial Illness, Option ARMs will Cause the Relapse
• OptionARM Homebuyers See Monthly Payments Go From $95 To $3,500
• 2010:Foreseeable and unforeseeable risks, the room for policy error is enormous
  Domestic Risks and Uncertainties:
  The Bulk of the Option Arm resets trigger in 2010-2011 – “The reality is that these loans were never meant to survive the reset. Unless an alternative is created, the human pain and loss will be massive.” Institutional Risk Analyst Chris Whalen
• I would certainly like to think that all the Bankers ( <– substitute rhyming slang here ) have actually done their job correctly and with due diligence and actually “priced” in the risk that some of the “Assets” they may be holding could be exposed to any potential risk associated with the Option ARM’s? But that’s probably hoping for a bit too much?

The US economy appears to have somewhat recovered it’s confidence – However most of the “Stimulus Package” has not actually filtered down to the point where it’s spent?

• Presumably it still sits somewhere between the Senate and the States where the money is to be spent?
• One Year After Near Financial Collapse, Americans Wonder: Where’s MY Bailout?

I would imagine that the UK economy will continue to lack confidence until the upcoming Election (mid-year?) is resolved?

• Until then you will still have the “Dead man walking” ex-Chancellor Gordon Brown in charge?
• Who knows, it may still end up being something of a contest, or it may be the Tories are back in charge?
• CBI Raises U.K. Growth Forecast for 2010, Predicts BOE ‘Pause’
• Engineering a Strong UK Economic Recovery into a May 2010 General Election?

Is the European Union starting to flex its economic muscles?

• I have heard that the EU is considering a Flat Tax rate for business?
• I have also been told that there the EU is now considering/implementing a Pan-European Legislature?
• What will the repercussions of this be?
• Will this allow the EU to implement laws quicker than the member states?
• Would we have a situation where the UK prefers to implement legislative motions through the EU process because of convenience or speed?
• Will traditional US based HQ’s start considering moving HQ’s to EU in order to potentially take advantage of these proposed changes?

Technical

MS should be releasing the latest edition of Windows Embedded (WES) 2011 in mid-year – this could be very interesting for a number of reasons

• This is essentially Windows 7 “super lite” and appears to be pretty much compatible with everything
• So easy to build a new runtime it no longer needs a developer to create bespoke instances
• Comes with the choice of enabling either Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) or File Based Write Filter (FBWF) to protect the base image
• A “Thin Client” install is only 1.5G in size – well down for the standard Windows 7 with Office reaching more like 20Gb
• Sure – the terms of the EULA specifically prohibit the *install* of Full MS Office Products
• But that doesn’t preclude any Application Streaming or Virtualization efforts?
• At only USD$90 a runtime version – will this be *THE* VDI base OS of choice? 
• It’s small, light, cheap AND it is non-persistent straight out of the box – it’s certainly worthy of some consideration?

The “Cloud” will continue to gain traction – Amazons Web Services (AWS) has had its 5^th anniversary and MS’s Azure (pricing here) makes its debut.

written by dcaddick

Just a brief update as to some of the changes that I have discovered in WES 2011 CTP2 (as opposed to the original CTP) – this was simply built on a default VM Template based on Windows 7.

Also some useful reference links:

• Windows Embedded Standard 2011 CTP2 New Features and Changes
• Discovering Windows Embedded Standard 2011 – What is different to WES 2009? – Part 1
• Choose the Right Windows Embedded Operating System
• HORM in Windows Embedded Standard 2011 CTP

Please review the screenshots below (sorry about the quality, I’ll redo them this week)

• There are additional Templates (including Thin Client) that seem to have most of what people would need to get themselves started
• The Summary page then indicates anything that’s not there – in this case the VMware Drivers were missing – I just ignored this and moved on, once completed it appears to have managed to find it and installed it
• Disk Footprint
  • This is a huge improvement on the first CTP – Minimal install used to be 650Mb, and just adding Explorer ONLY saw it jump to 2.6Gb
  • Estimated OS footprint was listed as 1946Mb for the Thin Client template
  • After installation it appeared (at least in the VM as only 1.57Gb)
  • To be fair – there does not appear to be too much installed by default though?
• It looks just like Windows 7 – seriously
• So without even telling it what HW I have just check out the listing from Device Manager – only two items were not sorted!!
• No drivers were installed or referenced by me – I just let the wizard do its thing and here it is with the Internet working
• One curious thing I noted was that there is no RUN command, or Search function in the Start Menu, not that this is a bad thing on an intended Thin Client?
• I was able to check that both FBWF and EWF is installed by default
• As things stand I’d say this is a huge leap forward by Microsoft from the disk space point of view as it now looks quite likely that with some judicious pruning then a relatively useful Image can be created to simply act as the dedicated Client Device for Citrix, VMware VDI instances
• If you’d like to get your own copy of the Image Builder Wizard (IBW) then log on to connect.microsoft.com to download

So after thinking on this some more I had the following thoughts?

• This is essentially Windows 7 “super lite” and appears to be pretty much compatible with everything
• It’s so easy to build a new runtime it no longer needs a developer to create bespoke instances?
• Comes with the choice of enabling either Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) or File Based Write Filter (FBWF) to protect the base image
• A “Thin Client” install is only 1.5G in size – well down from the standard Windows 7 with Office reaching more like 20Gb
• Sure – the terms of the EULA specifically prohibit the *install* of Full MS Office Products
• But that doesn’t preclude any Application Streaming or Virtualization efforts?
• At only USD$90 a runtime version, and only 1.5Gb – will this be *THE* VDI base OS of choice?  
• It’s small, light, cheap AND it is non-persistent straight out of the box – it’s certainly worthy of some consideration?

written by dcaddick

***UPDATE***
If you would like to follow this – check the discussion at XDA Developers

I recently purchased an LG GM730f as a new mobile – specifically because I thought the form factor was quite good, it also used a microUSB as a connector AND it was being advertised as being able to be updated to WM 6.5 in the New Year. So I sent an email to LG Australia in the first week of Jan asking when they might be releasing it and I got a reply back at the start of the week saying it was ready.

So this is my experience and hopefully it will save you from wasting some time? And if someone from LG would like to contact me I’d be glad to get things resolved?

But it appears that in some cases that the Web Site doesn’t work accurately?

This was sent from LG after I discussed with them that the web page they first sent me to failed to work correctly:

Dear David Caddick,

Thank you for emailing LG Electronics Australia.

We apologise for the problem you have experience with trying to access our website, please try the following website address:

http://au.lgmobile.com/web/web.support.laf?q=201011412401

I hope this has been of some assistance.

So this should bring you to this location at http://au.lgmobile.com/web/web.support.retrieveSoftwareDownload.laf:

So by clicking on Download you should get this tool:

If you have already installed this it will be shown as a desktop Icon like this:

And when up and running it looks like this:

So I started clicking on the “Start Updating for Smartphone (Windows Mobile)” as this seemed to be the most appropriate place to start? J This then pops up with:

Click on Next get you a reminder to save your data:

So at this point the phone changes to a black screen with:

                   !

Emergency Download

And on the computer you see:

So clearly at this point – even though ActiveSync was working fine before this there is some need/requirement for LG’s “process” to use a specific driver to communicate with the Phone when it is placed in “bootloader” mode? So at this point I clicked on OK, and then tried to install the USB Driver

So then at this stage you’d think you should be able to go back and check that the Modem Driver is installed:

And then I should now be able to Start the Update?

But as you can see by the screenshot above this first checks comms with the mobile – and as a consequence it initiates another install sequence of the USB Modem Driver:

So now we are completely in a loop – I could remove the USB Modem Driver, but then regardless of whether it’s installed or not – the process ALLWAYS tries to install the Driver before starting the update.

I can cancel, but this doesn’t help in trying to get anywhere.

Why can’t LG just do this like all other WM Vendors?

• Download a ROM update
• Plug phone into PC
• Start ActiveSync
• Run ROM update executable

I have been using Windows Mobile devices since 2003 and this would have to be one of the *worst* Update mechanisms I have ever experienced

Anyway, if you keep at it long enough and manage to get it in to the “Bootloader” mode then you can try using “Start Updating” without the Smartphone side of things (I know, but by this stage I was willing to try anything?) and it does appear to get going

It also looks like It does download a 107Mb ROM image and that would be about consistent with my experience?

And then goes ahead and flashed the phone

So eventually this gets to 91% or better and the phone starts booting to WM 6.1….. <sigh>

So I have now tried this 6 times or so, from Windows 7 and XP Pro and even though the Web Site clearly indicates that there is a new Update available, and that’s what I was told from LG, it’s clear that they still need to do some work to get this out? I for one am sick and tired of reflashing my Mobile Phone only to find it *STILL* on WM 6.1…………..

If I hear any news I’ll update at the top of this post

written by dcaddick

Now I don’t always figure that the local Newspaper is going to be a good place to pick up this sort of info, but in this case I think Simon from the Sydney Morning Herald has done more than just a decent job – so for what it’s worth I’m reposting but add my 2 cents worth if and when I have something to add  

Top 10 business technology trends for 2010
SIMON SHARWOOD

December 15, 2009

Technology never stops moving, but what are the technologies that CIOs and IT managers really need to consider in 2010?

We sampled opinions among analysts, vendors, users, IT professionals, system integrators and pundits and came up with the following 10 to watch:

1. Cloud computing

Cloud computing now comes in at least three flavours: on-demand applications (software-as-a-service), clouds as a source of computing infrastructure (Amazon web services and its ilk), and as a paradigm for delivering services within an organisation (internal clouds). This means almost every CIO has one type of cloud computing to consider. All three are disruptive forces, with analyst firm Gartner ranking the cloud as the most strategic technology for 2010 because it “does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others.”

This will run and run for a wee while yet – but we are still at the peak of the Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009?

2. Four big Microsoft upgrades

2010 will see the emergence of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Throw in the late 2009 debut of Exchange 2010 and IT managers on long-term licensing deals with Microsoft have three big upgrades to consider. Office 2010 looks like another incremental update but the new SharePoint and Exchange will only ship in 64-bit versions, putting a server upgrade on many users’ roadmaps. And let’s not forget Windows 7, which many CIOs must surely be considering as XP runs out of puff.

Is this starting to emerge as a possible “Perfect Storm” type scenario? XP is going EOL on Support, so we have to upgrade ASAP. Do we want to do Office 2010 while we are at it? We don’t have the budget – but if we leave till later then it adds additional cost – best do it together then! Oh wait, we’re still on Exchange 2003? Look there’s just no way we have budget for that – yes I know that we need to consider 2008 R2 – but there is just no….  what do you mean? Direct Access? it’s like a VPN but comes free with Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7….  really? OK, well let’s just look at this project list for next year and see what we can do?  WHAT!! Direct Access needs IPv6? Pass me the Panadol…      (I can see plenty of scope for future Dilbert episodes?)

3. Virtualisation

Virtualisation has hogged headlines in recent years but continues to evolve at an impressive pace. In 2010, Gartner says virtualisation will become a standard disaster recovery and availability technique, as the practice of moving virtual machines from one location to another matures. The idea of desktop virtualisation is also powering a new round of thinking about whether thin clients are a cheaper alternative to PCs.

Yes I see Server Virtualization becoming more entrenched, however with Desktop Virtualization – it’s getting there – but there are still some potential roadblocks? see Musings on VDI performance?

4. Biometric authentication

2009 saw National Australia Bank adopt voiceprints as its preferred method of authenticating its customers for phone banking and general customer service inquiries because it improves security and customer service. Many call centres have noted this experience and this technology is ready for wider deployment in 2010.

One can only hope it is a better experience for the Public than the Voice Automated response systems? “Agent”, Auto: I’m sorry I did not understand you, can you please repeat?

5. Next-generation firewalls

Most organisations tend to operate a fleet of security appliances, with firewalls, intrusion protection devices and unified threat management devices all helping to build a layered defence. Firewalls, however, have grown up and can now take over some of the functions of other security appliances. CIOs wishing to consolidate their security infrastructure may welcome this evolution.

Not my area at all

6. Employee-owned IT

Traditionally, IT departments decide what kind of computers and software employees use and they take responsibility for all maintenance chores. Younger workers, however, have grown up choosing their own computers and applications and want to keep their personalised computing styles. Enter employee-owned IT, which sees workers bringing their own computers to work so that IT can lock them down with virtualisation or multiple operating systems that deliver security. IT departments save as maintenance devolves to computer vendors, while employees swear they are more productive using a machine of their choice.

So this is effectively an extension of the Desktop Virtualization concept where it is possible already today to run a Type 1 Client Hypervisor on a Laptop or Desktop and host one or more VM’s running on it with very little performance overhead – this means that it will quite likely be possible (with sufficient HW resources) to run Windows 7, along with a dedicated VM acting as the FireWall keeping it all secure provided by IT, and XP for your Games. All of this will be managed by Policies driven by IT and the various components will be updated on the fly by being provided by Delta changes that are smart enough to recognize what bandwidth you have available and know if they can proceed or wait until you’re connected via LAN? Virtual Computer and Neocleus are doing this now, Citrix and VMware have products in development.     

7. Loyalty schemes

Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s Industry Director Andrew Milroy believes loyalty schemes will go mainstream in 2010. Citing their mainstream acceptance in retail and aviation, Milroy notes their absence from telecommunications and other industries and expects newly mature loyalty software will be something many CIOs are asked to consider in 2010.

I’m not too big a fan of these unless there are substantial benefits to the Customer – there is way too much detail out there on me already – I don’t want to add to another CRM database all my personal details…

8. Solid state disks

Storage may not be fashionable but it remains a colossal industry, and right now that industry is shifting towards solid state disks – a technology that sees storage assigned to flash memory instead of magnetic spinning disks. Solid state disks are smaller, faster, cooler and use less power than conventional disks, which means they can speed up applications without the need for new servers while keeping electricity costs low – an irresistible combination. While we are on storage, note the 2010 release of LTO-5, a new standard tape format packing 3.6 terbaytes of data onto each tape.

For an example of how SSD’s make a difference see these comments –
Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec. Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

9. Smart grids

Smart grids are an emergent technology that imagines sensors embedded in devices to monitor electricity consumption so that they can “decide” to operate when power is cheaper. This in turn allows power companies to predict demand more precisely, reducing waste. The idea is a favourite of green IT boosters and is also seen as a likely source of traffic for the National Broadband Network.

This may take 3 – 5 years to be common place, but it will be coming as soon as possible, this is one way we can all be green. What it also means is that we will be charged for our power consumption much more accurately, which in itself is no bad thing, and as a consequence over time we will develop better habits with regarding conserving power. The real kicker is that in the process we will be able to “get away” with not having to build that new powerstation for a further 5 – 7 years, etc.. which will be further savings to the environment.

I see this as very similar to the “User Pays” model in Car Insurance today – you can now pay for your Car Insurance based on a max number of Klick’s a year, the less mileage you do the less you pay. DO NOT be surprised if/when this also applies to Car Registration? Here in NSW we pay an extortionate amount of money in Tolls already – and DON’T even get me started on the NSW Govt?

10. Hybrid servers

The big IT transaction of 2009 was Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. The former has been experimenting with all-in-ones that pack a server, storage and other goodies needed to run business applications into a single box, and is said to be keen on extending Sun’s work in the same space. HP is going down the same path, working to make its storage arrays more similar to its servers to make them cheaper to manufacture. If this trend continues, data centre hardware will start to look similar.

So this is not normally my area of expertise – so I can only guess this might be referring to the LH Storage side of things? As far as I am aware there is already a 30 day trial LH Virtual SAN Appliance available for download at VMware Appliance web site – I’m sure we’ll see more of this in the future?

Top 10 business technology trends for 2010

written by dcaddick

So as things slowdown in the lead up to the break I have had some time to get back and review some twitter posts and other blog articles that I have been meaning to catch up on. I must admit that I tend not to use Twitter that much but do find it quite useful as pointers to additional material for research and recently posted material on the topics that I’m interested in.

So one article that really caught my eye was this from Ruben Spruijt’s post at Brian Madden, because for a number of years now it is the Hard Drive that has not kept pace with advancements in technology for the rest of the PC/Laptop components, and in particular I have noted a number of people getting very enthusiastic about the performance improvements they have actually noticed when using Laptops with SSD’s

Runcore SSD’s – promises to boost computer performance vs. the traditional 1.8" HDD by more than 400% with read/write speeds up to 75/40MB/sec.
Experience with 128GB 1.8" ZIF in HP 2710p – Read/write performance for 4K random files has improved over 500% (even under Bitlocker). it just became the fastest computer I ever used… Word and Excel launch in one or two seconds (compared to 30-60 before)…

Just how fast does the storage component of VDI have to be?
So it stands to reason that if you are going to Virtualize your Desktops (and by definition centralize?) then you are going to need to give some serious throughput for the Disk I/O or IOPS? So for anyone who is embarking on this then I would seriously recommend giving this article a through read? Understanding how storage design has a big impact on your VDI!

Possibly the most interesting point that Ruben did bring to my attention with this is that in VDI implementation the Disk I/O is predominately Writes and not Reads – I know this sounds contradictory in some respects, but do review this for yourself – in particular is a good comment from Claudio Rodrigues regarding the nature of how the O/S’s deal with this, as well as confirmation from Dan Feller at Citrix who confirms that most of the numbers and math are in sync with his findings. Ruben has also supplied a Sizing Tool to get a good idea of what might be needed?

So it also starts to make sense that you make sure that you focus very sharply on the XP or Windows 7 Template VM’s in the first place to reduce the I/O required as much as possible?
Citrix has some great tips in this document - Best Practices – Citrix XenDesktop with Citrix Provisioning Server

So as this brought up some interesting thoughts I also found this article relating to sizing and best practices, VMware View sizing & best practices
which followed on from this original article Virtual Infrastructure best practices and in essence this confirms that the storage requirements will need to focused somewhere around an 20/80 split on the Read/Write (20% read and 80% write)

While this table gives a quick representation of what sort of sizing requirements are out there please make sure you research this subject thoroughly, and read the post in full? J

In all fairness I must also confess at this point that my weakest area in IT is storage, and as yet I have not had a functioning Lab running either Citrix’s XenDesktop or Vmware’s View to be able to play around with this and get my hands dirty with either Provisioning Server or Composer. From what I can see (based on Marketing so far J) both of these products have the ability to drastically minimize the storage needed for VDI and as a consequence I am assuming that this may indeed have a flow on effect to mitigating the IOPS issue? (Can anyone comment or set me straight on this?)

I then went on to find some more details around the costing and financial side of VDI implementations and found this article of Doug Brown’s regarding Cost Savings of VDI: Is It Possible? as the diagram below points out, it is complex, and as such it could be that the regular ROT/TCO calculations are not highlighting all the potential benefits and savings?

Changing the ROI/TCO Calculation?
So this then brings me to another update in my Twitter was from Tyler at LiquidwareLabs.com with a new addition to the ROI/TCO debate,
COP – Coefficient of Productivity in VDI the New Math , in which he points out that you should also factor in any additional productivity gains and use this to dilute the true cost of the CAPEX.

Now I wonder how many VDI proposals are brave enough to start assigning values to what has traditionally been seen as "additional" benefits related to an architectural change? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against it, but I can see the debate might start to get a bit heated in the boardroom? and in some respects maybe that’s exactly what’s needed – by assigning values and assumptions and then extrapolating them across an enterprise the resultant *potential* savings become too hard for the board to ignore?

Sure there will be debate, and rightly so, but in following this sort of process it should quickly become apparent that there is a technological shift under way where the concept of "My Desktop" still being something that can be pointed to in the Office sitting on a desk somewhere is rapidly becoming redundant?

Now having said all that – it’s interesting to note that Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report for 2009 seems not to have VDI listed? Maybe it’s hiding under something else here?

So will VDI make it to "mainstream"? AMD seems to think so, Taking Desktop Virtualization Mainstream, but also a lot of it will depend on a number of factors.

My main thoughts on this are:

To truly succeed VDI needs to be able to deliver a *High Fidelity* User experience equal to or better than what users have today – if what you are designing is unable to provide this then you should stop and re-evaluate now

If you can build a system that is able to provide this then users will want (no, Demand!) that they have it ASAP – you will know that you have succeeded when demand outstrips supply

To provide this *High Fidelity* User experience I’d suggest focusing on two key areas that may/or may not apply depending on your particular focus and what is considered in or out of scope for your project?

• Graphics
  
  • Bottom line – Graphics performance in this design CANNOT be measured, it has no metrics, or Best Practices. One persons "that’s fine" is another persons "there is absolutely no way I’ll put up with that", etc. This will always be a completely subjective assessment based on whoever is rendering the judgement.
  • You may think that you don’t need to focus too much on Graphics because "there isn’t much need or requirement for Video from the business" but I can almost bet that you would be wrong – if you are operating on this assumption be sure that you double-check with Stakeholders and get their agreement in writing?
  • So much content on the Internet is done in Flash today, it’s not just watching a CEO or Analyst briefing via YouTube, a lot of Web Based Training modules use the same or similar technologies, so even if you currently block YouTube and Facebook today it’s still quite likely that you need to factor this in to your design
  • Is RDP good enough? Check this assumption by giving targeted business users a Thin Client and removing their desktop to the lab and forcing them to access via the Thin Client – this is a simple but effective test that validates whether they truly need/demand High Fidelity, or will OK Fidelity do?
  • Do you need Citrix HDX? PCoIP? RGS? While I’m making the point about Remote Protocols – don’t forget to gather details of connecting accessories? Do you need to support serial or parallel?
• HDD or IOPS
  
  • Make sure the VM performs as well as possible while measuring the I/O on the VM itself? Check the disk queue, and ensure that it’s not the disk performance that’s holding this back – and make sure you have enough throughput to allow for Login’s etc.

So where does that leave us?
In the Graphics space there is already a number of solutions for VDI that have been out for some time (Citrix’s HDX) or have recently been released (Teradici’s software version of PCoIP). In addition to that there are other approaches if you need to support High Fidelity Users at the top end with HDX-3D taking advantage of Nvidias GPU’s that almost bring TeraFLOP performance to the Desktop.

A good introduction to CUDA – Just how powerful can GPU’s be? Back in mid-2008 the GT200 was able to deliver 1 TeraFLOP performance, the G80 supports 768 Threads per Core – on 128 Cores… Want a Personal Supercomputer? What would you use it for?

So I suspect that we are not far away from seeing vGPU’s being available to VM’s that will be able to deliver the performance on demand – the main thing is that you make sure you are either using a Remote Protocol stack that can provide this functionality – OR make sure you are using a Broker that supports a shift to one?

At the HDD level I’d suspect that as SSD prices come down and SSD longevity increases, along with improved methods of utilising this in some kind of shared caching mechanism in a VDI deployment we may well see some serious advances that enable VDI to overcome this IOPS roadblock?

With the monotonous regularity of Moore’s Law driving CPU performance up it should be possible to provide way more CPU power to users than they really need to enable this – but again – it’s quite possible that the Disk I/O that has the potential to spoil this party?

Please feel free to correct any of my ramblings?

written by dcaddick

While I was at the local MS TechEd event some while back I went and had a chat to the folks manning the Bing Search booth and this also deals with the info regarding Live Earth and mapping etc, and the up shot of this chat was they they forwarded this info as a follow up – of particular note was the Air Services noise monitoring which is awesome in the detail it displays regarding flights in and out of Sydney Airport.

Here below I can see that the forecasted cool change is nearly here as the Northerly wind has clearly swung around to the West as we now have incoming commercial jets from the East, the first one is a Jetstar A320 from Hobart on short finals closely followed by a Qantas Boeing 737 400 series from Brisbane. The main excercise of this is that you can nominate where your house is located and then if you feel that the flight is too noisy you can pinpoint it and send in a note?

1. Technical

There is a developer comparison paper that highlights the various mapping features and benefits, and importantly the differences between the web services and APIs. This document can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers/.
There are two interactive SDKs, the AJAX version at http://www.microsoft.com/maps/isdk/ajax/ and the new Silverlight Map Control at http://connect.microsoft.com/silverlightmapcontrolctp.
To start developing with Bing Maps, visit here to obtain a free evaluation account https://mappoint-css.live.com/MwsSignUp/Default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0 .

2. Supporting technologies (web links are embedded within each)

Mapcruncher – a Microsoft research tool that allows you to render your own picture files (schematics, floor plans etc) atop a Virtual Earth map.
SQL server 2008 with new Spatial Engine enabling Business Intelligence to be transformed to Location Intelligence.
Photosynth – stitches together a large collection of photos transforming in to a unique viewing experience.
VE Server –is an on-premises, integrated set of visualisation, search and analysis capabilities that delivers maps, imagery and geospatial analysis through a web browser behind your firewall, onto private or classified networks, and onto portable platforms.

3. Bing Maps example sites (some require Silverlight)

ABS data -  Demographic data mashup
Sentinel & Country Fire Authority data – Australian Bushfire locator
Imagery of Brisbane city from 1958 to 2008 – Imagery from 1958 to 2008
US data mashup including Swine Flu RSS, demographic data etc (zoom in to Florida for the best experience)  – IDV Solutions
Traffic cameras embedded within Bing Maps from Soul Solutions (local partner) http://tc.soulsolutions.com.au/ and http://soulsolutions.com.au .
Noise monitoring service for Australian airports – Air Services noise monitoring

4. Content

Aerial imagery and road data is critical to any mapping platform. Microsoft continues to upgrade our aerial imagery available globally and specifically we have deployed to over 100 areas within regional Australia and NZ in the last few months. We also provide optional and exclusive access to Birdseye imagery and have extensive coverage for Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, Canberra, Gold Coast and Wollongong with more to come. See http://bing.com/maps/?mkt=en-us and click on the location search tab and enter “Sydney, AU” and zoom in and you will see the Birdseye tab enabled. Click on that tab to bring up the Birdseye imagery.

written by dcaddick

Just something worth mentioning that I have come across recently that might be of some help?

I was recently hunting down the exact reason for why a 2533 running RGS across WiFi was struggling to be able to deliver the video content and found that I had to do quite a bit of logging and then gathering the raw data in to an excel sheet to make sense of it all – in the process I ditched PerfMon – in part because it wasn’t working under XPe, but also because I feel its performance can’t be relied on when things are already going wrong, so I had started using TYPEPERF.EXE which is actually installed by default on everything from at least XP onwards.

Then on one of my initial builds of Windows 7 on my laptop I found that on resume it would occasionally appear quite sluggish and when digging deeper this appeared to be caused by 50% of the CPU being consumed by DPC’s (Deferred Procedure Calls). So after ascertaining that Typeperf wouldn’t cut it I started looking deeper for a tool that would help identify exactly what driver was causing this.

So I then discovered this article Measuring DPC time that highlighted the latest tool being Xperf – the main difference is that this is not installed natively in the OS, so you’ll have to go and download it and install it.

The really neat part of this is that it comes with an XPerf viewer that allows you to intuitively drill through the results, highlight particular time slices, overlay multiple graphs, etc.

And as if this isn’t enough, it also allows you to download symbols on the fly exactly like the latest debugging tools so that you can drill in to find the offending file/driver, etc. There is also a similar tool that will allow you to do similar performance tracking at boot time, and from what I can see it is this set of tools that has assisted MS in getting on top of the performance issues from Vista to Windows 7. My understanding at this stage is that this *should* work to capture info in XP (failed for me so far…) 

XPerf:
Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) – Download
Two Minute Drill: Introduction to XPerf
Using Xperf to take a Trace
Xperf support for XP

Typeperf:
Although it’s not installed/supported in XPe by default it is possible to run it direct from any drive (Temp, USB, etc. ) and collect data
See Two Minute Drill: TYPEPERF for more details

Example:
Check your Total CPU usage every second:
C:\>typeperf "\processor(_Total)\% Processor Time"
"(PDH-CSV 4.0)",\\2K8SRV\processor(_Total)\% Processor Time
"04/13/2009 09:50:04.359","2.509119"
"04/13/2009 09:50:05.360","0.754295"
"04/13/2009 09:50:06.360","2.899090"
"04/13/2009 09:50:07.360","1.534207"
"04/13/2009 09:50:08.360","0.559314"
"04/13/2009 09:50:09.360","10.113409"
"04/13/2009 09:50:10.360","10.113409"
"04/13/2009 09:50:11.360","3.094071"
"04/13/2009 09:50:12.360","0.559314"

I hope this is of some use?

written by dcaddick

The T5545 Thin Client from HP is quite a neat mid-range device that has some nice features that can make your life quite easy, but so far it seems that it’s not all that easy to find out how to go about tweaking it to your environment and users?

I’ll update this later with some additional links to docs – but feel free to email me if you need additional info?

So some handy hints:
(This all applies to the latest Build 31 )

Logging on as Administrator – default password is root

Add HP or Debian Packages to T5545

• Fsunlock – unlocks file system (equivalent to XPe/WES’s EWF or FBWF)
• cd /media – or cd /mnt
• hpkg -i xxxx.hpk   or
• dpkg -i xxxx.deb
• fslock – locks the file system back up
• reboot

Use ezUpdate to automatically update image/packages/custom scripts/Stateless Settings/Persistent Settings
(This is also valid for the new ThinPro K2 build on the T5145)  
Do be aware that you do not need to endlessly reboot to test it – just call ezUpdate from the X Term Console?
·         If you need to validate what it’s doing then check the logs in ./writable/ezUpdate/log/ezUpdate.log using the MousePad from the Advanced area of the Control Panel
·         If you still do not have enough info then run “ezUpdate –d 5” to enable debug mode on the log
·         The order of what it will look for is:

• New Image
• Any new packages
• Custom
• Then check for valid Stateless profile
• Finally check for valid Persistent profile
  

  ezUpdate Admin Guide

·         If you’d like to test/demo the ezUpdate process then you could always *add* the rar package as shown here:

• Download this sample package: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/rar/download
• Put the package in the packages directory on the ezupdate server
• reboot or simply run ezupdate
• Check the log and you should find that it has installed the package correctly
• Run “dpkg –list” in the Terminal to show that rar is now an installed package

·         If you’d then like to remove the application, then this is how we can go about it:

• fsunlock
• dpkg -r rar    (this might need to be hpkg depending on where the package came from?)
• fslock
• reboot/run ezUpdate
• if it still looks like it might be there, then use the dpkg –purge command?

How to deploy ThinPro Settings via Altiris or HPDM
Link to doc here:

Configuring TeamTalk
Have you ever been frustrated or in the dark on how to configure TT when it comes to GUI Menus?  There are a ton of specific GUI configs commands in the Team Talk 7.0 manual chapter 21 command line.   The commands can be added to teemtalk_wrapper.sh.  These settings will apply to all connections from HP Connection Manager.
The file to modify is – /usr/bin/teemtalk_wrapper.sh

Modifying the Menu
If your user has a need to modify the Menu under ThinPro (say they don’t want the Control Center up and available for users) – use the following technique.  You can use it to display commands as well as long as you select the right command.
1)      Login as administrator
2)      Right click on the Menu
3)      Open the menu editor
4)      Click the (+) to add an entry
5)      Then the command to start a connection is
a.      Connection-mgr start $ID
b.      connection-mgr start type:label  (under the usr/bin directory)
ex. connection-mgr start ica:”My ICA”

Get back in after locking down?
Pressing CNTL+ALT+SHIFT+S will bring up  hptc-shutdown – the Shutdown dialog that will give the Switch to Admin Mode Option.

written by dcaddick

The best piece I have read from the IT Industry in the last two weeks or so is:

Why desktop virtualization projects fail

Desktop virtualization is one of the hottest topics of interest and a major initiative of many companies. Touted benefits include lower operating costs, simpler management and desktop mobility. Below we’ll explore what the barriers to wide-scale adoption of desktop virtualization solutions are and some approaches to deal with them. It’s not a fit for everyone in a company but it can be for many.

Challenge #1: Assuming desktop virtualization makes sense because thin clients are cheap - Many people assume that virtualizing desktops is going to be magnitudes cheaper because thin clients can be found for approximately $300-400 whereas a PC can cost $500-$1200.

Tip: Client costs are only part of the picture. Desktop virtualization can reduce capital expenditures but do not expect that to be the case in the first year. Building the infrastructure is expensive (storage, servers, licenses, etc.) and may be the same in the first year. Think about using existing PCs as clients instead of replacing them with thin clients. Thin clients are cheaper than PCs but the reduction in hardware costs may not be seen for a couple of years due to the infrastructure needing to be built. More importantly, operational expenses will be seen immediately and that is where the true cost savings can be found.

………   more at source

I have also collated below some of the details I have discovered around the latest news on PCoIP and HDX-3D

From Brian Madden:

Look out PC-over-IP! Citrix announces new host-side GPU-based encoding for HDX 3D

For me the most crucial part of this post is explaining this:

How HDX 3D works

On the remote host side, Citrix is releasing a custom VDA for the environments where you want to use HDX 3D. (The VDA, or “Virtual Desktop Agent,” is the software agent you install on your remote workstation OS that lets it participate in a XenDesktop farm and gives the ICA hosting capability to a desktop OS.) Having a separate VDA shouldn’t be a problem for anyone since this is a physical workstation host solution anyway, so it’s not like you’re sharing the same disk image with remote desktop VMs.

On the client side, HDX 3D is just another plug-in for the Citrix Receiver. (That’s newspeak for “it’s just another virtual channel for the regular ICA client.”)
HDX 3D lets you configure the image quality, so you can balance the bandwidth-to-user experience. (PC-over-IP lets you do this too.)

From a technical standpoint, the HDX 3D engine replaces the existing ICA progressive display capability. It lets the OpenGL or DirectX stuff render on the host, and then it scrapes them and makes what’s essentially like an M-JPEG movie which is streamed down and played on the client. In many ways this is similar to the way HP RGS and Teradici PC-over-IP.

……….    more at source

What this tells me is that this is right in the zone for HP’s Blade Workstation’s as they have Nvidia based GPU, and that the BladePC’s would not be in at all as they are AMD/ATI based hardware. It’s also interesting to note some more details coming out via this Citrix Community Blog HDX 3D – What Happened to Projects Pictor, Apollo and Prism? and the subsequent comments from Sridhar Mullapudi, Sr. Product Manager:

Though the first release is available for only XD customers, future releases will enable XA customers to get HDX 3D using VM Hosted Apps technology. And with GPU virtualization and related technologies in the future, we will enable support of HDX 3D on virtual machines as well.

And for VMware Brian Madden had this commentary…

After VMworld, VMware still has to prove they "get" desktops. 13 questions about their desktop strategy they need to answer.

The irony of this is that I really, really want VMware to be successful with desktops. Competition from VMware has caused Citrix to put more innovation into their desktop delivery products in 18 months than they have in the past ten years combined. If VMware rolls over on the desktop, I hope that the Symantec or Quest can step up to apply pressure to Citrix or else we’re going to have another decade of innovation ice age.

But back to the main topic: VMware’s lack of desktop vision.

At last year’s VMworld, we got all these great indications of what VMware was capable of in the desktop space. (Here’s my article from then where I could hardly contain my excitement about six desktop announcements.) And how did VMware follow up at this year’s VMworld?

• We got demos of the PC-over-IP and the client hypervisor. (This has a lot of promise and looks to be really great.)
• We learned that VMware will OEM RTO Software’s Virtual Profiles technologyfor some future release of View. (Not View 4 though, from what we can tell.)

So those were two great things. (Tactical, but still great.) Unfortunately that’s kind of where the good news from VMworld stopped:

• VMware demoed their client hypervisor known as CVP. (yay!) But we learned that it won’t be available until 2H 2010! Last year they said their client hypervisor was going to ship by the end of 2009, and now it’s another 8+ months away!?!
• The View futures session was just about View 4. VMware still hasn’t announced a release date, although the rumor is it’s still coming at some point this year. View 4 will have PC-over-IP, but little else new. (Oh, it will have vSphere 4 support.)

  …………    more at source

from Citrix Community blog:

• Desktop Virtualization is not Server Virtualization  (This title pretty much tells it like it is)
• Setting the Record Straight on XenDesktop (there’s not that much difference between XenDesktop and View apparently? )
• Interesting comment towards the bottom – Lastly, while I differ with most of what one VMware Community member, Rkelly, posted re View vs. XenDesktop, I have to say I agree with his final point for the IT team in any VMware shop:  "Download the trial versions of both products and see for yourself" . You just can’t beat a “Try before you buy”

From Alessandro and Virtualization.info

Virtual Computer partners with XenoCode

The company already has a Xen-based client hypervisor and a fairly complex web-based console which uses virtual machines,  snapshots and clones to publish the right system environment to the right user with the right customization. Now Virtual Computer also simplified the management of the application layer thanks to a technology partnership with XenoCode, the application virtualization company that already has an OEM deal with Novell.

Compared to the Novell agreement, Virtual Computer is not OEM’ing the XenoCode Virtual Application Studio. It is just supporting the applications virtualized with the XenoCode technology out-of-the-box inside its NxTop virtual machines.

It is not a revolution but this way Virtual Computer is silently building an end-to-end VDI stack that one day could rival with the upcoming ones from Citrix and VMware.

And lastly….  I haven’t see this before? The AppFactory, based in UK from the looks of it and promising to Virtualize your Apps from 149 pounds an App?
I wonder how well these guys will do? Very slick and professional web site, so it will be interesting to hear how well they do?

written by dcaddick

Well with the release of the Windows 7 Embedded and how easy it is to create a customer Embedded OS I was almost considering getting back on my high horse to use a Thin Client (with added HDD? ) to create my idea of a small ultra quiet Home Theatre PC – but then I saw this little beast? Now we are talking?

Fujitsu Esprimo Q1500 Windows 7 Media Center Mini HTPC

By Alexander Grundner | September 5th, 2009

Brother, this looks like something that we’d like to see released worldwide! Fujitsu at IFA unveiled their latest Mini PC addition called Esprimo Q1500 running Windows 7. This little bugger packs an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB of RAM, a slot loading Blu-ray drive, HDMI, and a 320GB hard drive. What’s more, it only uses 19 watts of power when in idle mode. Now that’s lean and mean! Pricing: 699€ and comes packaged with a Windows Media Center remote. [via / via]

Filed in: Entertainment PCs  Tags: Fujitsu, Fujitsu Esprimo Q1500, HTPC, Mini HTPC, Windows Media Center

Fujitsu Esprimo Q1500 Windows 7 Media Center Mini HTPC | eHomeUpgrade

written by dcaddick