Category Archives: google

google, microsoft, windows

Crazy Microsoft stuff

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I have a theory that Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS), which is meant to be easy to manage, is actually more complex than a full-blown multiple server setup – though you can now emulate the latter nicely using virtual machines.

Yesterday I spotted a post from Paul Culmsee which makes the point well:

A former colleague called me up because he knew of my dim, dark past in the world of Cisco, Active Directory and SharePoint. He asked me to help put in SBS2008 for him, configuring Exchange/AD/SharePoint and migrating his environment over to it.

“Sure”, I say, “it’ll be a snap” (famous last words)

Culmsee is a SharePoint expert. His mistake was to attempt installing Search Server Express (built on SharePoint) into SBS 2008:

Search Server 2008 Express, uses SQL Server Express edition when performing a basic install. As a result, an additional SQL Server Express instance (SERVERNAME\OFFICESERVERS) gets installed onto the Small Business 2008 server. Then, to make matters worse, the installer gets mixed up and installs some Search Server express databases into the new instance (a Shared Service Provider), but then uses the SQL Embedded Edition instance to install other databases (like the searchDB). Then later during the configuration wizard, it cannot find the databases that it needs because it searches the wrong instance!

The problem: there is too much installed on that box, and SBS comes way down low on Microsoft’s priorities, so it issues products and patches that ought to work on SBS as well as on mainstream Microsoft servers, but do not. Culmsee apparently gave up on Search Server Express.

Evidence 2: Exchange 2007 Service Pack 2. Released in August 2009. Does not work on SBS 2008 without daunting manual steps. Six months later, Microsoft releases a special Exchange Server 2007 SP2 Installation Tool for SBS. Even with the tool, the install may be problematic.

In some ways it would not be so bad if SBS were a totally locked-down product with its own patches and no possibility of installing generic Microsoft products – though third parties might scream. As it is, it falls betwixt and between.

You can make it work. You can make it work very well, if you have patience, read SBS blogs like that of Susan Bradley and David Overton, and maintain it carefully. But … don’t pretend it is not complex.

Note also the hassles Culmsee had configuring his HP server. Google Apps anyone?

amazon, cloud computing, google, microsoft

Store any type of file in Google Apps – in effect, GDrive

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Google has announced a new feature – the ability to upload any type of file to its online storage.

Over the next couple of weeks, we are rolling out the ability for Google Apps users to easily upload and securely share any type of file internally and externally using Google Docs. You get 1 GB of storage per user, and you can upload files up to 250 MB in size…Combined with shared folders in Google Docs, the upload feature is a great way to collaborate on files with coworkers and external parties.

Additional storage is available at $0.25/GB/yr according to this post.

Is this “GDrive” – the long-rumoured generic online storage from Google? Pretty much. Note however that Microsoft’s excellent SkyDrive already offers 25 GB of unrestricted online storage for free.

Enterprise customers who use the Premier Edition of Google Apps are also getting this service, but at a higher price: additional storage is $3.50/gb (or €3.00/gb in the EU). This storage is accessible via the Google Documents List Data API, enabling developers to create applications that backup or synchronise files between Google and client devices, and is therefore more comparable to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). Amazon has no free offering but S3 is modestly priced at $0.15 per GB per month, between Google’s consumer and business pricing, though note that Amazon also charges for data transfer.

Once third-parties do their stuff to make this look like any other network folder, this looks like a handy new feature. One advantage is that you can store Microsoft Office files in their native format, rather than having to convert them to Google documents with loss of fidelity.

It may also mean less usage for a popular workaround – emailing attachments to yourself in GMail.

Update: post revised to include information on Premier Edition.

.net, agile, google, internet, java, javascript, software, software development, web authoring

Technology trends: Silverlight, Flex little use says Thoughtworks as it Goes Google

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Today Martin Fowler at Thoughtworks tweeted a link to the just-published Thoughtworks Technology Radar [pdf] paper, which aims to “help decision makers understand emerging technologies and trends that affect the market today”.

It is a good read, as you would expect from Thoughtworks, a software development company with a bias towards Agile methodology and a formidable reputation.

The authors divide technology into four segments, from Hold – which means steer clear for the time being – to Adopt, ready for prime time. In between are Assess and Trial.

I was interested to see that Thoughtworks is ready to stop supporting IE6 and that ASP.NET MVC is regarded as ready to use now. So is Apple iPhone as a client platform, with Android not far behind (Trial).

Thoughtworks is also now contemplating Java language end of life (Assess), but remains enthusiastic about the JVM as a platform (Adopt), and about Javascript as a first class language (also Adopt). C# 4.0 wins praise for its new dynamic features and pace of development in general.

Losers? I was struck by how cool Thoughtworks is towards Rich Internet Applications (Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight):

Our position on Rich Internet Applications has changed over the past year. Experience has shown that platforms such as Silverlight, Flex and JavaFX may be useful for rich visualizations of data but provide few benefits over simpler web applications.

The team has even less interest in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer – even IE8 is a concern with regard to web standards – whereas Firefox lies at the heart of the Adopt bullet.

In the tools area, Thoughtworks is moving away from Subversion and towards distributed version control systems (Git, Mercurial).

Finally, Thoughtworks is Going Google:

At the start of October, ThoughtWorks became a customer of Google Apps. Although we have heard a wide range of opinions about the user experience offered by Google Mail, Calendar and Documents, the general consensus is that our largely consultant workforce is happy with the move. The next step that we as a company are looking to embrace is Google as a corporate platform beyond the standard Google Apps; in particular we are evaluating the use of Google App Engine for a number of internal systems initiatives.

A thought-provoking paper which makes more sense to me than the innumerable Gartner Magic Quadrants; I’d encourage you to read the whole paper (only 8 pages) and not to be content with my highlights.

adobe, apple, google, internet, iphone, itunes, microsoft, mobile

Joining the Smartphone dots

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Google has made a big splash with its launch of Nexus One, even though technically it is not all that exciting. A neat phone; 1 Ghz Qualcomm processor; runs Android 2.1; good for web video with its inclusion of Adobe Flash 10.1, along with the ability to capture your own videos at 20 frames per second in 720×480 pixels. No keyboard though; and the q&a at the press briefing revealed a few limitations, such as lack of tethering support (using the phone to connect a laptop to the Internet), and that downloaded applications all end up in the 512MB on-board RAM rather than on an SD card, making it more likely that you will run out of space. Tethering is being worked on, apparently, and the application restriction is for copy protection, supposedly making it more difficult to pirate paid-for downloads.

My biggest disappointment is the price. It is a fraction cheaper than an Apple iPhone, but still far from a mass market product; though it won’t feel that way in the tech influencer community.

All this is rather unimportant; even prices will fall eventually. What matters is that attention is shifting from web+desktop (or laptop) to web+smartphone as the computing platform of the moment. That shift is far from complete; most of us still need the large screen and comfortable keyboard of a laptop to do our work. It is real though, and it is obvious that the need to carry around a bulky laptop with a short battery life is diminishing. Netbooks and Apple’s rumoured tablet are part of the same movement towards smaller, lighter and web-connected.

Although these gadgets are getting more capable, there is no sign of them following the desktop model with feature-rich local applications and heavy use of local storage. The applications being downloaded in huge numbers from Apple’s app store – a breathtaking three billion to date according to today’s announcement – are small, single-purpose apps where speed and usability is valued over richness of features, and where data comes from the Internet. This is the new model of application development.

Google’s announcement is also an important move in the identity wars. Most computer users have multiple identities: maybe an Active Directory account on a Microsoft network, a Facebook account, an Apple ID for iTunes and MobileMe, a Google account for Gmail and Google Docs. All these competing players gain hugely if they can increase the importance of your identity on their platform versus the others. If Microsoft can keep your Active Directory account at the centre of your world, then you will be a customer for Exchange, Office, SharePoint and so on. On the other hand, if your Google sign-in becomes more important, then Google’s products are correspondingly more attractive and it can sell you more services and advertising. Buy a Google phone and you hook directly into Google’s world. In ChromeOS the link is even more obvious, since you sign onto the computer with your online Google credentials.

The power shift is obvious. And as Tim O’Reilly implies in his excellent post, Google’s lack of legacy desktop baggage is helping it to compete against Apple as well as Microsoft.

.net, adobe, apple, blogging, exchange, flash, google, internet, microsoft, oracle, silverlight, software development, Sun, visual studio, web authoring, windows

A year of blogging: another crazy year in tech

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At this time of year I allow myself a little introspection. Why do I write this blog? In part because I enjoy it; in part because it lets me write what I want to write, rather than what someone will commission; in part because I need to be visible on the Internet as an individual, not just as an author writing for various publications; in part because I highly value the feedback I get here.

Running a blog has its frustrations. Adding content here has to take a back seat to paying work at times. I also realise that the site is desperately in need of redesign; I’ve played around with some tweaks in an offline version but I’m cautious about making changes because the current format just about works and I don’t want to make it worse. I am a writer and developer, but not a designer.

One company actually offered to redesign the blog for me, but I held back for fear that a sense of obligation would prevent me from writing objectively. That said, I have considered doing something like Adobe’s Serge Jespers and offering a prize for a redesign; if you would like to supply such a prize, in return for a little publicity, let me know. One of my goals is to make use of WordPress widgets to add more interactivity and a degree of future-proofing. I hope 2010 will be the year of a new-look ITWriitng.com.

So what are you reading? Looking at the stats for the year proves something I was already aware of: that the most-read posts are not news stories but how-to articles that solve common problems. The readers are not subscribers, but individuals searching for a solution to their problem. For the record, the top five in order:

Annoying Word 2007 problem- can’t select text – when Office breaks

Cannot open the Outlook window – what sort of error message is that? – when Office breaks again

Visual Studio 6 on Vista – VB 6 just won’t die

Why Outlook 2007 is slow- Microsoft’s official answer – when Office frustrates

Outlook 2007 is slow, RSS broken – when Office still frustrates

The most popular news posts on ITWriting.com:

London Stock Exchange migrating from .NET to Oracle/UNIX platform -  case study becomes PR disaster

Parallel Programming: five reasons for caution. Reflections from Intel’s Parallel Studio briefing – a contrarian view

Apple Snow Leopard and Exchange- the real story – hyped new feature disappoints

Software development trends in emerging markets – are they what you expect?

QCon London 2009 – the best developer conference in the UK

and a few others that I’d like to highlight:

The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment – Sun is taken over by Oracle, though the deal has been subject to long delays thanks to EU scrutiny

Is Silverlight the problem with ITV Player- Microsoft, you have a problem – prophetic insofar as ITV later switched to Adobe Flash; it’s not as good as BBC iPlayer but it is better than before

Google Chrome OS – astonishing – a real first reaction written during the press briefing; my views have not changed much though many commentators don’t get its significance for some reason

Farewell to Personal Computer World- 30 years of personal computing – worth reading the comments if you have any affection for this gone-but-not-forgotten publication

Is high-resolution audio (like SACD) audibly better than than CD – still a question that fascinates me

When the unthinkable happens: Microsoft/Danger loses customer data – as a company Microsoft is not entirely dysfunctional but for some parts there is no better word

Adobe’s chameleon Flash shows its enterprise colours – some interesting comments on this Flash for the Enterprise story

Silverlight 4 ticks all the boxes, questions remain – in 2010 we should get some idea of Silverlight’s significance, now that Microsoft has fixed the most pressing technical issues

and finally HAPPY NEW YEAR

apple, google, internet, microsoft

Browser wars: IE loses 12% market share in 2009, Germany hates it

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I’ve been looking at the browser stats for 2009. According to StatCounter, Microsoft began the year with a 67.19% share for IE (versions 6-8 combined) and ends it with 55.23%. That’s a 12% loss or an 18% decline, depending how you figure it.

The biggest part of that share has gone to Firefox, which started with 25.08% and closes with 31.92 – a gain of 7% or a rise of  27%.

The big story is that Firefox 3.5 is now the world’s most popular browser. Although true on these figures, it is also true that IE 7 on the way down is crossing IE 8 on the way up; it’s possible that IE 8 will overtake Firefox sometime next year, though by no means certain.

However, there are huge regional variations. The UK loves IE: currently IE 8 is on 31.48% vs Firefox 3.5 on 19.2%, and IE overall is 56.02%. Germany on the other hand hates it:

According to these stats, Firefox 3.5 has a 44.19% share in Germany and IE 8 just 15.32%. The USA is somewhere in between, though closer to the UK in that IE 8 is in the lead with 26.64%.

Overall, clearly a good year for Mozilla and a bad one for Microsoft.

What about the future? Well, it’s notable that not all IE migrants are going to Firefox. The Other section is showing steady increase, and I’d bet that a large chunk of Other is based on WebKit, either in mobile browsers or in Google Chrome. Apple’s Safari is also WebKit-based, and has increased its share significantly during 2009. Mozilla should worry that developers are largely choosing WebKit rather than Gecko.

A bigger concern for Mozilla is the big G, source of most of its income. Google pays Mozilla for search traffic sent its way. It cannot be good when your main customer has a product that competes directly with your own. I’m guessing that a Google browser will overtake Firefox during the next decade.

asus, google, microsoft, open source, windows, windows 7

Splashtop: the pragmatic alternative to ChromeOS

Today I received news of the a new Eee PC range from Asus which will be based on the Intel Atom N450. Two things caught my eye. One was the promise of “up to 14 hours of battery life”. The other was the inclusion of dual-boot. The new range offers both Windows 7 and what Asus calls Express Gate, a lightweight Linux which boots, it is claimed, in 8 seconds.

Express Gate is a version of Splashtop, and is a web-oriented OS that offers a web browser based on Firefox, a music player, and instant messaging. There is also support for:

View and edit Microsoft Office compatible documents as well as the latest Adobe PDF formats

though whether that means OpenOffice or something else I’m not yet sure. The Adobe Flash runtime and Java are included, and you can develop custom applications. Citrix Receiver and VMware View offer the potential of using Splashtop as a remote desktop client.

The idea is that you do most of your work in Windows, but use Splashtop when you need access right now to some document or web site. I can see the value of this. Have you ever got half way to a meeting, and wanted to look at your email to review the agenda or location? I have. That said, a Smartphone with email and web access meets much of this need; but I can still imagine times when a larger screen along with access to your laptop’s hard drive could come in handy.

The concept behind Splashtop has some parallels with Google’s ChromeOS, which also aims to “get you onto the web in a few seconds”. The Asus package includes up to 500GB of free web storage, and of course you could use Google’s email and applications from Splashtop. Another similarity is that Splashtop claims to be:

a locked-down environment that is both tamper proof and malware/virus resistant.

That said, ChromeOS is revolution, Splashtop is evolution. The Google OS will be a pure web client, according to current information, and will not run Windows or even Linux desktop applications. Knowing Google, it will likely be well executed and easy to use, and more polished than versions of Splashtop hurriedly customised by OEM vendors.

Splashtop on the other hand arrives almost by stealth. Users are getting a Windows netbook or laptop, and can ignore Splashtop if they wish. Still, that fast boot will make it attractive for those occasions when Splashtop has all you need; and frankly, it sounds as if successfully captures 80% of what many users do most of the time. Splashtop could foster a web-oriented approach for its users, supplemented with a few local applications and local storage; and some may find that it is the need for Windows that becomes a rarity.

It is telling that after years of hearing Microsoft promise faster boot times for Windows – and in fairness, Windows 7 is somewhat quicker than Vista – vendors are turning to Linux to provide something close to instant-on.

google, internet, search

Fear of Google

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Shares in Rightmove, a UK web site for house sales, have dropped  by move then 10% over the last couple of days, following a report by the Financial Times that “Google is in talks with British estate agents to launch an online property portal.”

I do not know what chances of success this venture has. Google does not instantly dominate any market into which it moves; the combination of Google Checkout and Google Shopping hasn’t killed off PayPal/eBay or Amazon as yet.

What interests me though is the impact of the rumour. It is not  only Google’s size and profitability; it is the fact that Google is for many (most?) people the portal to the Web, giving it huge power to reach any Web-based market.

The restraining factor is that it is difficult for Google to exploit that power without falling foul of legislation that protects free markets. When I search for a product on Google, I don’t see any evidence that it favours its own shopping site, for example; though having said that I am only one click away from the Shopping link at the top of the page that searches only Google’s site.

Still, drawing the line between what is and is not reasonable is hard to do. For example, what if Google had a “search for houses on sale here” link in Google Maps?

If Android and later Chrome OS succeed, Google may become the portal to more than just the Web. Its services will have geo-location data as well. Its data-gathering algorithms might learn our shopping and eating out preferences and guide us with uncanny prescience towards things that we enjoy.

I am not surprised that Google rumours have the power to move markets.

adobe, cloud computing, flash, google, microsoft, silverlight, web authoring

Google Gears out, HTML 5 in: what this means for offline web apps

I was interested to read that Google is abandoning Gears in favour of HTML 5.

While that makes sense, it is a hassle for developers who have developed for Gears, since there are differences between features such as HTML 5 local storage and Gears LocalServer. The Gears API was tidy and effective so in some ways I’m sorry to see it go, though a broad standard will be much more useful.

Still, this does mean that you can develop to the HTML 5 standard for Offline Web Applications with some hope that, although broad implementation is lacking now, it will come in future. Even IE 9 is likely to have a fair amount of HTML 5 in it.

It is a critical standard because the success of something like Google’s Chrome OS will depend on it. Nobody can count on being always connected.

In the meantime, there are also offline features in Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.

google

How many people buy software from sites like this?

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Over the weekend I was helping a student find the best price for some software, taking advantage of any educational discounts on offer. We tried Google and soon came up with a company offering excellent prices.

Unfortunately all the software on offer is pirated. If you make a purchase, you are doubly caught: first you have downloaded software that is no more legal than what you might get for free from a torrent; and second you have paid good money while acquiring nothing of value.

But how would you know? I admit, it did not take me long. I went to the terms and conditions, and saw stuff like this:

2.3. You have no possibility to register the software with the producer and updates are accessible for selective commodities.
2.4. The printed license documents will not be available for you.
2.5. We will not give you a disk with a copy of software.

I also noticed that the About Us gave no address nor even a country for the store; and that Contact Us was just a web form, no address or telephone number. Finally I looked up the domain name which is registered to a gentleman in Slovenia; a web search on the name brings it up in connection with other fraudulent ecommerce sites – though frankly it would be surprising if anyone of that name exists at all.

Nevertheless, I would be intrigued to know how many people do purchase from these sites. After all, many of us don’t read the small print; and we may know that both OEM and educational discounts are a reality, and that downloaded software can be cheaper.

I was interested to know how I would be asked to pay, so I commenced a purchase for Adobe CS4 Master Collection for just $299.00. Proceed to checkout, and I ended up on an SSL connection which raised no alerts from the browser bad-site protection in any browser that I tried. In fact, the certificate checked out OK, secured by Equifax Secure Global eBusiness CA-1.

Naturally I declined to enter my credit card details.

Still, I can imagine someone who is in a hurry or not expert in the wiles of the web thinking everything is OK. For all I know, there may be many satisfied customers out there, who got cheap software and do not know or care about its origins.

It strikes me that both the search engines and especially the SSL certificate providers could do better at defending against this kind of scam.

In the meantime, how can you tell if a site is genuine? My suggestions:

1. Disregard any familiar logos – particularly if they are images without links. This example has logos from Shop.Com, PriceGrabber.com, CNet Certified Store, and BBB Accedited Business. Just images.

2. The fact that you got to the site through a Google search or even a Google ad tells you nothing about its legality.

3. Look at the About and Contact details. Genuine companies have address, company registration and tax details, which you can also look up elsewhere. Lack of any such details is suspicious.

4. If the prices seem too good to be true, they likely are.

5. Text in broken English is a dead giveaway – but I’ve noticed the scammers getting better at this.

6. If in doubt, use a well-known and trusted retailer instead.

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