TechAgility

So for some while now I have been waiting for the right technology to be incorporated in to a device that actually looks good, makes sense and does what it says it’ll do.

When I first noticed this unit from Sony it looked like it might tick all the boxes but it was quite some time before we saw in the flesh in a Sony store while I was in Las Vegas for last years iForum - even then the price of USD$350 was a bit steep (even more at AUD$500 here in Australia) and there is limited built-in memory - but once Natalie (the missus) saw the unit in White she was all for it.

So just prior to Xmas I managed to find one on eBay at DFJ (Direct from Japan) and secured one via Japan for a Xmas present for the wife - the only issue was that the LCD menu screen was in Japanese - but this was resolved via the seller and the details are:

1. there is [setting] button to the right side of screen
2. push the [setting] button
3. you can see menu on the screen
4. you select [各種設定] category by up&down button which are left side of [setting] button, and push [enter]
   [各種設定] category is second category from bottom (maybe?)
5. you select [言語] category by up&down button, and push [enter]
   [言語]category is third category from bottom (maybe?)
6. you select [English] category by up&down button, and push [enter]

So far I have been quite pleased with this device, although it might be useful if it had more internal memory so that it would make more sense to update the internal memory with a couple of dozen favourites and then you could take this to a BBQ, the beach etc..

But, all that aside, it’s quite neat - now the price is dropping it’s looking better and better?

BTW, I have simply set it up to connect via the Netgear Wireless Access Point - very neat solution  

Model Number: VGF-WA1/W

VAIO® WA Wireless Digital Music Streamer VGF-WA1/W

Carry the party from room to room or stream your music collection from your PC throughout your home with the VAIO® VGF-WA1/W wireless digital music streamer.
Save $150 instantly. Original price $349.99.

In stock. Estimated ship date: 01/28/2008.

SonyStyle.com | VAIO^® WA Wireless Digital Music Streamer VGF-WA1/W

written by dcaddick

So this certainly adds some ammunition for VMware’s coming stoush with Microsoft in the Battle of the Hypervisors?

It makes you wonder who’s next on VMware’s radar?

VMware acquires Thinstall

Just yesterday virtualization.info published the news about a possible acqusition of VMware in the application virtualization market, speculating that the acquired firm could be FastScale.

The official announcement comes today, clarifing the actual acquired company and the company strategy behind the move:

VMware, Inc. , the virtualization software leader, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thinstall, a privately-held application virtualization software company headquartered in San Francisco. VMware is acquiring Thinstall to expand its desktop virtualization capabilities which help customers better provision, deploy and update desktop environments. The terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the current fiscal quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed…

The acquisition of Thinstall and its use for VDI scenarios extended the competition front with Microsoft (which acquired Softricity application vendor in June 2006) and Citrix, and brings the company a notable set of OEM partnerships: with LANDesk (March 2007), with Provision Networks (July 2007), with BMC (September 2007) and with Macrovision (October 2007).

Given the strong focus of Thinstall on Microsoft platforms, the acquisition seems to validate an important point, often emerging in surveys: large majority of virtual machines contain Windows guest OSes.

At the same time this acquition validates once and forever the fact that application virtualization is considered one the next mainstream technology for most major players: before VMware, Microsoft acquired Softricity, Citrix acquired Ardence, Symantec acquired Altiris and even Google acquired GreenBorder.

Thinstall is the 7th acquisition for VMware. Before it the virtualization player acquired Akimbi (June 2006), Propero (April 2007), Determina (August 2007), Dunes Technologies (September 2007), Sciant (October 2007) and Foedus (January 2008).

If the trend continues VMware will acquire a new company per month.

virtualization.info: VMware acquires Thinstall

written by dcaddick

So from what Alessandro is saying it currently only works with Linux, I wasn’t aware of that limitation but that’s OK from an Appliance perspective, but you kind of wonder how hard it might be to replicate that on the Windows side of things?

Certainly this sounds like it can really help VMware distinguish itself from some of the other competitors - but only for the moment as I’m beginning to think that we might see something like an “Arms Race” as all the Virtualization players rush to out do each other in the bells and whistles stakes?

FASTSCALE COMPOSER SUITE

With FastScale® innovation, bloated operating systems and complex software are no longer an IT constraint. Software environments can be streamlined and built automatically, on demand and then provisioned in seconds — all without the need to build and manage golden images. FastScale does the work for you. FastScale Composer™ Suite delivers a new generation of software virtualization and provisioning including:

• Bare metal provisioning in seconds
• 99% smaller software environments — automatically
• Automatic patch & configuration management
• Easily configurable policies and settings
• Intuitive & flexible administration

Perhaps it also shows that we are very much in the early days of Virtualization when a firm can develop this from concept to acquisition in just over 18 months?

VMware acquired an application virtualization firm?

virtualization.info has learned from different sources that VMware just acquired an application virtualization vendor.

There is no confirmation at the moment so what follows is pure speculation.

Among the many listed in the Virtualization Industry Radar, one company seems the best candidate for this acquisition: FastScale.

FastScale doesn’t provide application virtualization and streaming solutions like Softricity (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), Thinstall, Endeavors Technologies and others, but introduces a new approach: through its Composer, FastScale is able to track down which libraries and OS components an application requires, and assemble them in an autonomous package, freeing the software from the operating system dependency.

Only available for Linux systems at the moment, VMware is adopting the startup’s technology since a long time, much earlier than the official launch date in August 2007.

On top of that FastScale Advisory Board includes a VMware veteran, Al Pappas, former CIO, and VMware seems to prefer acquisition of former employees (Akimbi, Determina).

While VMware is not an application virtualization company, FastScale acquisition would fit its strategy, much focus on virtual appliances.

While the idea of a modular data center, through virtual appliances, is interesting and would bring in some notable benefits, it woudl also lead to some major issues. Most of them are related to security and manageability issues.

FastScale capability to deliver incredibly low-footprint virtual machines, tailored around a self-sufficient guest application, would solve part of the security problems, while the just launched Update Manager (integrated into VirtualCenter 2.5) would solve part of the management ones.

This post will be updated as soon as new informations are available (you may want to subscribe virtualization.info Newsletter of RSS feed to receive updates).

virtualization.info: VMware acquired an application virtualization firm?

written by dcaddick

Well I do find this amusing as last night we were just watching the Top Gear episode where Ranulph Clarkson and Ranulph May attempt to race Ranulph Hammond to the North Pole using a truck - as ever Jeremy Clarkson is forever the irreverent motor mouth and larrikin in a likeable way and we actually found ourselves cheering for Hammond to beat them with the Dog Sled.

So it’s no surprise to see Clarkson so spectacularly misjudge how easy it can be to have your Banking details abused? I guess he has learnt a little about how technology works? ;-) 

Clarkson’s ’steal my ID’ stunt backfires

Top Gear chap shoots self in foot

Gobby TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has been forced to reverse his position after he lost money after publishing his bank account details in a newspaper column.

The Top Gear presenter rather rashly published his account details in a column in The Sun to back up his claims that the child benefit data loss furore, which resulted in the loss of unencrypted CDs containing bank details of 25m people, was a lot of fuss about nothing.

Clarkson published his bank account number and sort code, along with clues to his address, insisting that the worst that could happen was that someone could pay money into his account.

Days later Clarkson was forced to admit he was wrong after an unidentified prankster set up a £500 direct debit from the presenter’s account in favour of charity Diabetes UK, the BBC reports.

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again,” Clarkson said in a column published in the Sunday Times. “I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”

Clarkson, never one to shy away from colourful or controversial commentary, is now hopping mad over the data loss. “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy,” he said. ®

Clarkson’s ’steal my ID’ stunt backfires | The Register

written by dcaddick

I have been trying Vista on a corporate Laptop over the holidays in advance of getting hold of the “Approved” corporate image for my laptop and in some ways it’s a clunker - so if you know what you’re doing and want to “trim” some of those annoying messages and confirmations then this might be just the tool for you?

Vista4Experts

Current Version: 1.0.0.1

Download Vista4Experts

Vista4Experts is kind of a treat for computer experts who don’t want security center notifications, User Account Control dialogs, automatic Windows Defender scannings, automatic update installations (which cause you to reboot your system if you don’t react quickly enough). People who want MSDN (or google) set as default search engine in the Internet Explorer search bar, who want the start menu power button to shut down the system instead of hibernating it, etc. These and many more fixes are included in Vista4Experts. All of these changes can be discarded, enabled or reversed. Vista4Experts is the first expert utility of its kind and works on every platform.
This is a free software and so it is given without warranties, this means the use of this tool is at your own risk. I take no responsilbity for any damage that may unintentionally be caused through its use.

I realize, of course, that many fixes in Vista4Experts lower Windows Vista’s default security, but that’s the difference between users who feel enough confident to decide what’s best for their system and users who don’t. Many of Windows Vista’s security features are extremely annoying to many developers and other IT experts.
I even think it’s bad that Microsoft didn’t provide a permanent way to disable the driver signature verification and making it possible only for signed drivers to run on x64 (that if the user isn’t in the mood of pressing F8 on every boot). This is my system and I want to run any driver that I want to! I’m pretty sure I won’t involuntarily execute a rootkit, don’t worry about me Microsoft…

Download Vista4Experts

NTCore’s Homepage

written by dcaddick

So things have been quite quiet for me over the break in some ways as I took advantage of the fact that my Father-in-law made late changes to go over to Perth for the Xmas/New Year break and that unexpectedly left a 42 foot fly bridge cruiser at my disposal for use on the Sydney Harbour - but I digress….

Anyway, I’m now catching up on all the feeds from bloglines and I came across this tasty little snippet of all the work that Microsoft looks to be pouring in to developing the SmartPhone side of things - one might almost surmise that they have been stung in to action based on the hype around Apple’s iPhone? Surely not?

Way more at source…

Microsoft is currently developing Windows Mobile 7, the first revolutionary change to its mobile device operating system. Recently, I was given a document by a source inside Microsoft that details the touch and gesture plans for Mobile 7. This document is a confidential internal use only document, used to explain the plans for Mobile 7, and contains well over a hundred pages of designs, ideas, and changes to the way we interact with our mobile devices.

Below, you’ll find over 3,000 words detailing my notes from the document. I can’t publish the document here, at least not until after the product is announced, to protect my sources. I will provide the document to trusted journalists in order to share and show proof of this information. If there is anything I leave out, please don’t hesitate to ask and I will try to provide a screenshot or answer.

The document appears to be from the past summer, and some of the details may change before the product is announced. However, the touch and gesture plans appear to be set in stone, and will be the focus of Windows Mobile 7.

What’s New

Windows Mobile 7 will dramatically change the way we use mobile devices. It will emphasize the use of touch on the device, as well as motion gestures created by using the device. It is, absolutely, Microsoft’s effort to beat back the iPhone, and the iPhone is referenced several times in the document.

Windows Mobile 7 will use touch gestures, similar to how the iPhone does. You will be able to flick through lists, pan, swipe sideway, draw on the screen. A lot of emphasis has been put on making navigation easier and doing away with scrollbars, including a new scroll handle that allows for multiple ways of finding items extremely fast.

Windows Mobile 7 will use motion gestures, something the iPhone does not. It will not use an intricate and complicated series of gyroscopes and accelerometers. Instead, it will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions. You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag.

Windows Mobile 7 will have an exciting locking screen, that will allow you to play around with it, draw on it, shake it and completely otherwise mess with it.

Windows Mobile 7 will have dramatically improved visuals, different from the iPhone and much more similar to the dark and futuristic visuals of Windows Vista. It will feature graphical transitions, subtle effects, and other things to make it more interesting to look at. This is not detailed in the document, but featured in the multitude of screenshots.

Windows Mobile 7 is designed to use the finger, not the stylus, though many devices will be required to include a stylus. It is designed to be easy to use with the hand, including one-handed, and to be fun to use and easy to understand. It is designed to be used on devices with no buttons, few buttons, lots of buttons, full keyboards, and devices without touch screens.

Windows Mobile 7 is clearly designed for better media playback, with screenshots indicating a much-improved Media Player and photo gallery application. There is talk in the document of a games mode. Mobile Internet Explorer runs full-screen web pages in a minimalistic interface, and has “tabbed” browsing, except you can switch tabs by shaking the phone.

The keyboard has been improved, but plans for a full touch keyboard, a la the iPhone, have been shelved until a future version of Windows Mobile.

Below are my detailed notes. Some of it is raw, some of it is very detailed. It is accompanied by screenshots direct from the document which show off other features planned for Windows Mobile 7.

Click on any image to view it full-size. They’re all high quality images.

more at source…

» Exclusive: Windows Mobile 7 To Focus On Touch and Motion Gestures » InsideMicrosoft-part of the Blog News Channel

written by dcaddick