Category: The Rack

The Rack

Monday Morning Cloud Computing

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I’ll be attending, on an occasional basis, Cloud Expo this week at the Javits Center in NYC.

Expect sporadic tweets and a few blog posts with accompanying photos.

Having never been to a cloud-centric event, I’m not sure what to make of its intensive agenda of seminars and generals sessions, whose subject matter has been promoted with titles such as “Beyond Storage and Compute”, “Clouds are Built from the Ground Up”, and the enticing “Best Practices for IT Executives”.

In other words, this is an enterprise focused gathering with subject matter meant for technologists and executives in the private sector.Continue reading

The Rack

Quixey: Applification or Bust

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I like the idea of Quixey.

It has the Google-like cyclops interface —a single search box— but instead of searching the web, it’s looking for apps from the crowded shelves of mobile app stores.

I saw Quixey for the first time at TechCrunch Disrupt last week. I discovered this well funded company—cash from Eric Schmidt’s fund— around the corner from the Startup Alley area, in the more exclusive sponsored neighborhood.

After talking with the Quixey gang, I learned that instead of searching on app descriptions alone, their software culls blogs, forums, and social media to accumulate additional descriptive content.

So how does it do?Continue reading

The Rack, Uncategorized

Xydo’s Innards

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Xydo, the social news web site, opened its beta to the public last week.

I’ve been using this news feed aggregator for the last few months, and if you think it’s easy to keep track of which subscriber likes which particular news nugget, there’s 34 slides to prove you wrong.

Robert Blumen and Nanda Yadav of Xydo gave a presentation at NYC Tech Talks in April on how node.js and Hadoop clusters keep the whole show going:Continue reading

The Rack

Royal Wedding on YouTube

 

Reuters reports that the Royal Wedding, scheduled for April 29, will be live streamed on YouTube over the The Royal Channel.

Remote commoners will be able to watch and even interact with all the pomp and ceremony.Continue reading

The Rack

NYC Apple Store: 3/18/11

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On Friday, I dropped by the Apple Store on the Upper West Side of NYC near Lincoln Center to touch the feathery light iPad 2.

As I approached and looked through the plate glass storefront, the interior was less than crowded, practically empty by Apple standards.

Then I noticed a sign taped to the door, which said that the iPad 2s had sold out for the day and that customers should come back tomorrow.

It just meant that I wouldn’t have to wait in line to try out this thinner, faster, and dual-camera-ed  iPad.Continue reading

The Rack

The Great Printer Die-off

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When future paleontologists examine the fossilized remains of today’s corporate printers, they’ll re-use dinosaur die-off theory to explain the mystery of these inkjet beasts: “A series of environmental changes and perhaps a disruptive technology or two set them on the path to extinction.”

One of those disruptive events has only recently meteored through the tech sky. Anyone passing an empty Barnes and Noble— say for example, the Brontosaurus-size flagship near NYC’s Lincoln Center—knows that ebook readers have smashed the book industry into bits. Borders ain’t doing so well either.

But what’s happening in the consumer world is also recurring more quietly in the closed corporate ecosystem.

Instead of feeding their printers with reports, PowerPoints, and emails, enterprise workers have been using their laptops and now their mobile gadgets as electronic readers.

When will printers disappear from the enterprise scene altogether?Continue reading

The Rack

Inventin’ with App Inventor, Part II

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I have completed a .1 release of my first Android app, hammered together with Google’s App Inventor toolkit.

It’s a simple but trailblazing RSS displayer that pulls in bill status from the New York State Senate’s own open government platform, called unsurprisingly, Open Senate.

To be truthful there’s nothing unique or groundbreaking about another Android app that displays government information.  In fact, half-way through my work I discovered Open Senate already has shrink-wrapped iPhone and Android apps.

The revolutionary part of my efforts has little do with me; they reside with Google.  Thanks to its App Inventor, any somewhat technically evolved person can make and customize useful mobile apps that are just right for their purposes.

And it’s all free, minus your own perspiration equity. Continue reading

The Rack

FeedSquares: A Google Reader for Archos

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I finally found one.

With all my relevant RSS feeds already nicely organized in my Google Reader, I naively thought it would be easy enough to view my feeds with an Android app.

Wrong.

For those who have tuned in late, the Archos 7o Internet Tablet doesn’t come loaded with Google Market. It’s a serious inconvenience  since I don’t have access now to Google’s free Android apps, although not fatal.

My first idea was to try loading a semi-official Google Reader apk onto my tablet. The one I eventually tracked down in an Android forum predictably failed to register with my online Google credentials.

I turned next to Archo’s own Android app store, AppsLib. After a few false starts, I discovered a winner.Continue reading

The Rack

Android on Archos: Annoyances

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Wikipedia

I like my newest gadgedroid, the Archos 7o Internet Tablet. It is usable in a way that the lower cost tablets I purchased earlier, and returned, were not.

With sipdroid now installed and configured to work with my onSIP virtual PBX, I’ve turned airy cloudware into a working, low cost mobile phone solution. The Archos’s email app is completely usable, the browser is browsable, and as I just wrote about, I’ve started introducing my own apps using App Inventor.

But …

Archos tablets do not have Android Market installed. That’s not completely bad news, though certainly a disappointment. To load a free Google app onto the Archos 7o (and presumably the rest of their product line), you’re forced to hunt for .apk files in various forums and Android-dedicated sites, and then install manually.

I’ve begun to experience in the nitty details of Android what many others have already gone through: open Android software does not mean software that will install and work uniformly on all devices.

For example, I tried to get the stand-alone Google Reader app to behave on my Archos. Continue reading

The Rack

Inventin’ with Google App Inventor, Part I

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I first learned of Google App Inventor’s existence through David Pogue’s New York Times column. Over the summer, Pogue reported on his experiences using an early beta version of this then invite-only software.

As a former user of visually-oriented rapid development environments, I had a good sense of what the Googlers had come up with.

So it was fun to read how Pogue, no technical slouch by any means, and an expert assistant (his 13-year old son), struggled with this early, glitchy release of Inventor.

Pogue decided that App Inventor was not, in the words of Google’s marketing team, “programming for the masses.”

Based on a long afternoon’s work with the new public release of App Inventor, I would describe it as follows:  “a lightweight Android development environment that lets programmers, students, hobbyists, corporate IT-types, and others in this demographic install a simple app onto a smartphone.”

I can see why Google went with their more enticing call to action slogan. Continue reading

Archaic Telecom, The Rack

New Year, New Android, New SIP Client (Sipdroid)

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I made good on the first of my New Year’s resolutions by overcoming my Android Thriftiness Syndrome and splurging for the Archos 7o Internet Tablet. As soon as I powered it on, it was clear my investment (about $270) had almost paid off.

I watched as the 1 GHz Cortex A8 processor and graphics accelerator made the grass in the default wallpaper gently sway in the virtual breeze. Everything else was equally fluid: WiFi, keyboard, and gesturing. And then with an over-the-air firmware update, I finally was able to enjoy the stabler Froyo (Android 2.2).

I was ready to download a SIP client app, preferably cSipSimple, which I had written about before. Unfortunately, Android Market is not available with the Archos tablets.

Darn.

I had known this before the purchase, but  didn’t realize how limited Archos’s own “AppsLib” was. Less choices, and more importantly the CSipSimple version I installed on my Archos 7 was not the same as the Market one. Continue reading

The Rack

Rest in Peace, Yixin

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I bricked my Yixin. It didn’t really take that much in the end: merely taping over the on-off button in an attempt to lock a micro SD into a defective slot. Ultimately, I de-springed a not very resilient  power switch, rendering this inexpensive Android device powerless, so to speak.

The market is flooded now with under $200 Android tablets with basic capabilities, most of which will not survive till the next holiday season.  And that is the point: overseas factories will be busy again next year around this time churning out the latest gadgedroids.

My New Year’s resolution after the jump.Continue reading

The Rack

Yixin: Yikes!

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I’m afraid my brief infatuation with Yixin may be nearing an end. I was having trouble with freebie voice recorder apps from the Android Market. Since many require an external chip to store the voice files, I knew it was time to purchase an 8 GB micro SD card. That started a chain of events that led to the disabling of my Yixin 7200’s power button.

Valuable lesson I learned: highly sticky moving tape can be dangerous.Continue reading

The Rack

Google eBooks: The Search for Free

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On Monday, Google opened the doors to its eBookstore. Google is just getting started as a ebook seller, but they are already boasting they have “the world’s largest selection of ebooks.” Take that Amazon!

While the Google claim makes for good copy, the truth is that most of their ebooks, over 3 million in fact, are from their trove of public domain classics—Dickens, Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, and all the others you were supposed to have read in high school.

In fact, these free books have been available from Google since 2009. It’s not a big secret that Google has been busily scanning books from partner libraries and making them available on-line.

Sure you can select new books from Google’s growing list. But for me the lure of free books, especially now that they can be read on my Yixin Android gadget, is irresistible.Continue reading

The Rack

PC Quarantines May Be a Good Idea But…

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Bruce Schneier points out—you know he would!—some of his issues with Microsoft’s proposal to quarantine infected computers.  He’s not against the idea in principle. For it to work, though, it has to have a good chance of success.

Schneier’s main concern is that hackers will be motivated to get around the software, initiating another security arms race. Bruce does note that Internet access restrictions would work better if ISPs are the central authorities in deciding who can leave their digital houses.

Of course, as he rightly notes, there would be all kinds of forces, not necessarily benign, who would want their say in this matter.Continue reading

The Rack

Battling Galaxy Tab Reviews

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David Pogue of The New York Times likes the Samsung Galaxy Tab, with the exception of the high price.

WSJ‘s Walter Mossberg considers the 7″ Tab to be a “serious alternative to the iPad and one that will be preferred by some folks.” But not this folk. In spite of the two cameras and Adobe Flash playing ability of the Tab, Mossberg still prefers that larger, camera-less iPad.

The Denton-esque headline of Matt Buchanan’s review for Gizmodo says it all: “A Pocketable Train Wreck.” Matt’s gripe is that it’s more of a phone than a tablet.

And Wired considers the Tab a pleasure to use and likes the smaller size.

So there you have it.Continue reading

The Rack

iPad's Cost Advantage

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Samsung Galaxy Tab Review

Samsung Galaxy Tab

I had to gulp when I first heard about the pricing for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

I’ve since recovered my composure upon learning of the more reasonable carrier offers at around $400 (with a two-year contract) and a WiFi-only version of Tab for $499.

Samsung’s tablet is the best of the Android lot, and even they’re having trouble keeping up with Apple’s iPad.

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan nicely explains why the rest of the pack won’t equal the pricing and functionality of the current version of the Ipad for some time.  Cupertino’s wizards nimbly build the hardware they need to differentiate  and outsource the rest.

And Apple’s IOS tablet software won’t have any serious competition for another Android OS rev or two.  Continue reading