Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Amazon EC2 Gets It Right

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 27, 2008
in Open Source, Software, Startups, Technology and Virtualization
. 0 Comments

I’ve written a couple of articles about the Amazon EC2 service. It’s the Elastic Compute Cloud that lets you build very scalable (and, reliable) web sites "in the cloud", using Web Services created and operated by Amazon.

It’s amazingly good.

And, just got significantly better.

Amazon just announced two significant improvements to the service:

Elastic IP Addresses:

Elastic IP Addresses are static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing, and now make it easy to host web sites, web services and other online applications in Amazon EC2. Elastic IP addresses are associated with your AWS account, not with your instances, and can be programmatically mapped to any of your instances. This allows you to easily recover from instance and other failures while presenting your users with a static IP address.

Availability Zones:

Availability Zones give you the ability to easily and inexpensively operate a highly available internet application. Each Amazon EC2 Availability Zone is a distinct location that is engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones. Previously, only very large companies had the scale to be able to distribute an application across multiple locations, but now it is as easy as changing a parameter in an API call. You can choose to run your application across multiple Availability Zones to be prepared for unexpected events such as power failures or network connectivity issues, or you can place instances in the same Availability Zone to take advantage of free data transfer and the lowest latency communication.

These two capabilities answer the primary complaints that I have heard about the EC2 service, and I suspect will allow for significant customer adoption in the next 18 months. Static IP Addresses, combined with serving up the proper certificates, should allow for fully secure computing under Amazon EC2.

The guys at RightScale have described Setting up a fault-tolerant site using Amazon’s Availability Zones.

Amazon also announced User Selectable Kernels:

Amazon EC2 now allows developers to use kernels other than the default Amazon EC2 kernels with their instances.

Including:

This release makes the following new AMIs and AKIs (Kernel IDs) available:
AMI: Fedora Core 6 - 32 bit - a stock FC6 release with matching kernel and RAM disk
AMI: Fedora 8 - 32 bit - a stock F8 release with matching kernel and RAM disk
AMI: Fedora 8 - 64 bit - a stock F8 release with matching kernel and RAM disk
AKI: 2.6.18 Kernel - 32 bit - a stock 2.6.18 kernel (can be used with 32 bit AMIs)
AKI: 2.6.18 Kernel - 64 bit - a stock 2.6.18 kernel (can be used with 64 bit AMIs)

Tags: Amazon, EC2, Cloud Computing, Web Services, Static IP, Failover, Redundancy, Brian Berliner, brianberliner



Sharpcast Puts $16.5M To Good Use: Releases SugarSync

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 26, 2008
in Gadgets, Software, Startups and Venture Capital
. 2 Comments

Sharpcast, founded in 2004 and funded in 2006, has just announced the launch of their SugarSync product (formerly known as Project Hummingbird).

Similar to the products I talked about last week in the article, "FolderShare, Dropbox, Syncplicity, Oh My…", SugarSync is a tool that keeps your files synchronized across multiple computers (PC & Mac today, maybe Linux as well someday), including mobile devices.

One of the things that sets Sharpcast apart from the others is the support for many mobile platforms. They support Brew, J2ME, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian (coming soon). I don’t really think that the mobile aspect of this is where the market is right now, but I could be wrong. And, Sharpcast certainly has enough VC money to address the perceived needs of the mobile users. In any case, Sharpcast certainly has a big enough market with just the Universal Sync service.

Sharpcast charges $9.99/month or $99.99/year for their basic plan, which includes 30GB of storage in the cloud. I have 40GB of music, 30GB of photos, and 50GB of documents, so for me to use the service for just that (not counting my 450GB of camcorder video), I would need the Business Plan, which runs $499.99 yearly and covers 250GB of storage in the cloud.

Yikes! That’s pricey.

For data protection, I think I’ll just buy another Time Machine drive.

A Note About Sharpcast Photos:

Sharpcast has had a product in the market for a couple years now known as Sharpcast Photos. Focused on synchronizing just your photos between your computers and mobile devices. A subset of what SugarSync provides, to be sure. However, it does not appear that Sharpcast Photos has gained many subscribers. The site https://www.sharpcastphotos.com/ doesn’t even register traffic on Quantcast or Compete.com. Does anyone have any paid subscriber data for Sharpcast Photos?

When Sharpcast Photos was first released, my feeling was that they had priced themselves out of the market. The cost is $5.99/month or $64.99/year, which is a bit steep for just photo protection - especially since the sharing part was limited to their photo sharing service. Perhaps the limited subscriber base backs that up. Anyone?

Tags: Sharpcast, Photos, Sharpcast Photos, SugarSync, Dropbox, FolderShare, Syncplicity,Synchronization, Sync, Brian Berliner, brianberliner

VirtualBox Corrupts My VMware VMDK Files!

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 26, 2008
in Open Source, Technology and Virtualization
. 0 Comments

I hate it when I’m stupid.virtualbox-logo-1

I started blogging again, and wrote about how I am now using Windows Live Writer as my blog editor. Problem is, that I use Mac computers exclusively, so I needed to run WLW under VMware Fusion (inside a Windows Virtual Machine).

That works pretty well, for the most part, but VMware Fusion does not do copy/paste of images between the virtual machines (yet). And, since I like to include an image with every post, it’s kind of a pain to save the image to a file under Mac OS X only to turn right around and load the image into Windows Live Writer. For me, the writing process is enhanced when friction is removed from the process.

So, I thought, naively, that perhaps the free VirtualBox tool might have this capability. Download the product and install it on my Mac OS X Leopard Server and give it a go. The VirtualBox site says that you can use your existing VMware VMDK (Hard disk image) files with VirtualBox. There is evena video showing you that it works great. The VirtualBox User manual says:

Starting with version 1.4, VirtualBox also supports the popular and open VMDK container format that is now supported by a large number of virtualization products. This means you can import your existing VMDK files by way of the Virtual Disk Manager just like existing VDI images; see chapter 3.5, The Virtual Disk Manager, page 34. While VirtualBox fully supports using VMDK files in most situations, the more advanced features of virtual hard disks are presently not supported.

After trying, and failing, to import my VMDK files into VirtualBox, I found, much to my dismay, that my VMDK files were trashed by the VirtualBox import and no longer readable by VMware Fusion. The term "import" usually implies that it is non-destructive. Nope.

I blamed the Fusion failure on the Apple Security Update that I had just installed. Silly me.

After quite a few hours of reading VirtualBox code and poking around with the VMware VMDK on-disk formats, I was able to "patch" my VMDK files into something that Fusion would once again read. Take a look at the VMware Community Forum article for detailed history.

In the corrupted VMDK that was mucked with by VirtualBox, mine looked like the following:

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=4c06b51e
parentCID=f6d5af3d
createType="monolithicSparse"
parentFileNameHint="AmyOffice.vmdk"

# Extent description
RW 41963828 SPARSE "AmyOffice-000001.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.toolsVersion = "7362"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "6"
ddb.uuid.image="309b24ab-4acf-4b11-cbbe-f6935882d848"
ddb.uuid.modification="12ff42d5-f691-4ba3-7abb-6686efa6d59f"
ddb.uuid.parent="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.geometry.cylinders"0"
ddb.geometry.heads"16"
ddb.geometry.sectors"63"
ddb.geometry.cylinders="0"
ddb.geometry.heads="16"
ddb.geometry.sectors="63"

And, it was padded by NULL characters. I extracted it from the VMDK using "dd":

# dd if=AmyOffice-000001.vmdk bs=512 skip=1 count=2 > out

I didn’t like the look of the entries: Note that there is no equals sign between the cylinders/heads/sectors section at the bottom and the values. That did not sit well with me at all. Nor did I like the value of the cylinders was 0 and the heads/sectors did not match the binary values in the first data structure after the MAGIC KMDV in the VMDK file.

Badness.

Comparing this text header info with a very old backup of my VMDK file, it appeared that I could drastically simplify this section.

So, I did.

I edited the "out" file, and made the following changes:

  • Changed the CID to 613506eb
  • Deleted everything after this line (but keep it in): ddb.toolsVersion = "7362"
  • Extended the NULL padding at the end to get the file back up to 1024 bytes exactly.

Then, I patched the VMDK with the following command:

# dd conv=notrunc if=out of=AmyOffice-000001.vmdk bs=512 oseek=1 count=2

Don’t forget the "conv=notrunc", or your VMDK file will be truncated (which I did, and had to copy over from backup again, sigh).

And, guess what? The VMware Virtual Machine booted up with no problem!

I promptly uninstalled VirtualBox. You get what you pay for sometimes.

Now, if I could just get Time Machine to efficiently backup my 30GB Windows VM…

Tags: VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, VMware, Fusion, Virtualization, Open Source, Brian Berliner,brianberliner

Brain Fitness Program and VMware Fusion

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 25, 2008
in Entertainment, Personal, Software, Startups and Virtualization
. 2 Comments

    

My wife and I listen to National Public Radio almost exclusively when in the car these days. And, living in the Bay Area, you are in the car a lot. Trust me.

So, we make sure to donate to KQED, our local station, every year. And, with that donation, you often get a gift in return.This year, we received Brain Fitness Program Classic.

That’s a fantastic gift, and one that we were certainly looking forward to receiving. Because, hey, we all need to keep our brains sharp, right? We can’t just rely on blogging to do it, can we? No. I didn’t think so.

The product arrived today!

Installation into Windows was a snap, but it wouldn’t run:

The error message is: "Protected program can not be run under virtual machine!"

Now, why would they do that?

So, the problem is that we run our Windows system under VMware Fusion on our Apple iMac computer. Works great and saves electricity (two computers and only one plug in the wall).

However, the fine folks at PositScience that created the Brain Fitness Program seem to specifically check if their application is running on a virtual machine, and refuses to start!

That’s ridiculous.

I now have no way to run the program.

Ridiculous.

Harumpf.

Tags: NPR, KQED, Public Radio, National Public Radio, Charity, VMware, VMware Fusion VMware,Fusion, Windows, Mac OS X, Brian Berliner, brianberliner

5 Years In Iraq By The Numbers

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 19, 2008
in Blogging and Personal
. 0 Comments

Sobering.

Lindsay Campbell and the MobLogic.tv team have done an excellent job putting this summary together. Click here for the video, if the embed below does not work.

Bug Labs at EclipseCon 2008

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 19, 2008
in Mobile, Open Source, Software, Startups, Technology and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

bug_labs I enjoyed the presentation done by Bug Labs at EclipseCon 2008, titled BUG: A Customizable Hardware and Software Platform using Linux, Java, and OSGi. If you haven’t seen the BUG device, you should check out their Products page.

It’s Geek Candy.

And, it’s entirely built with Open Source goodness - both software AND hardware. Bug Labs gets it!

Start with a BUGbase (which is a full-fledged Linux box on an ARM processor), combine it with a variety of BUGmodules to add various hardware capabilities (like LCD screens, video cameras, GPS devices, accelerometers and the like), and snap it all together to do something interesting. Or, make your own hardware to their spec, and use their software stack. Or, run a different software stack on their hardware. Or, create your own BUGmodule hardware. It’s all open. Knock yourself out.

While I find the hardware interesting, I think the truly exciting part of the business is the software components and the dynamic nature that binds it all together.

Yes, it’s got OSGi at it’s core, including a version of the Concierge runtime!

I think that was a very smart, and bold move. This company may be doing some of the most practical and interesting work in the OSGi space.

This will be a fun company to watch.

spark-capital They are good guys.

Bug Labs is a Spark Capital portfolio company (shout out to Bijan Sabet!).

Microsoft Open Source Software Lab at EclipseCon 2008

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 19, 2008
in Open Source, Software and Technology
. 0 Comments

521 At EclipseCon 2008, Sam Ramji of Microsoft Open Source Lab presented the Keynote on Day 2. Check out Port 25 for more about the Microsoft OSS Lab.

The slides showed Sam’s title as "Director, Platform Technology Strategy"

I have to say that the Keynote was not very good. Of course, to be fair to Sam, he did not have a lot to work with. It’s clear that Microsoft is not spending what they should spend on interacting with the Open Source community. Their budget is only $5M annually for his group (see below).

I liked Sam. He’s gotta be frustrated at Microsoft. Again, to be fair, Sam has been at this for the last 3 years, so he has had adequate time to effect change. And, I think he has. But, still, my take away was that Microsoft is really only giving Open Source a passing glance. As we suspected. Now well confirmed.

Sam outlined some of the current projects and ways that Microsoft is interacting with the OSS community:

  • Linux hypervisor (Xen) interoperability with Microsoft hypervisor (HyperV)
  • WS-Management collaboration
  • Mozilla - Open Source Firefox plugin for Windows Media Player 11
  • Apache Software Foundation - Tuning apache on Windows Server
  • Helping CollabNET with Subversion on Windows.
  • Getting MySQL to run better on Windows Server
  • Getting PHP to run better on Windows Server
  • Samba - Providing support and license modifications to enable Samba development
  • Higgins & CardSpace work
  • SWT on Windows Presentation Framework (for native Windows Vista controls written in Java).

A couple of the Q&A Questions:

  • When will Microsoft become a member of the Eclipse Foundation? Response was, literally, a joke: "I thought we were doing that when we acquired you"? Ha. Ha. Ha. (Ugh). Nothing more added.
  • What other Eclipse projects look good? Response was perhaps something where Eclipse could author Silverlight apps. There are others, but not willing to discuss them with us.
  • Will Microsoft have Eclipse committers to do the SWT/WPF integration? Response is no. Microsoft would work with the committers and provide support and resources.
  • I asked a question about the Microsoft OSS Lab budget now, and how it will grow in the future (given that Microsoft revenue is currently $50B). Response was that the Lab alone has a budget of $5M, but they work across the company to assess the strategy and work with the OSS organizations. So, the Microsoft OSS Lab is a change agent. Sam followed up with a shameless plug. The Lab’s resources will increase if we tell Microsoft that their work is valuable.
  • Why did Microsoft define new Open Source licenses instead of using current ones, like EPL? Response was that Microsoft is positive on Open Source. Made that clear with their Codeplex initiative (which nobody in the audience knew about). Microsoft wanted explicit treatment of how patents and intellectual property is handled.

There was very little "strategy" discussed in the keynote presentation. Lots of words, not much action. Nothing at all in the way of a Roadmap for the future. I think Sam missed an opportunity here.

FolderShare, Dropbox, Syncplicity, Oh My…

Published
by
on March 18, 2008
in Software, Startups and Venture Capital
. 9 Comments

foldershareI’ve been a user of FolderShare on my multiple Mac computers for quite a few months now. FolderShare is a FREE application that is provided by Microsoft (they acquired the FolderShare company in November, 2005). It does run on a Mac, but the Mac version is very old (not a Universal Binary, so it has to run in PowerPC emulation mode), and showing its age a bit.

OK, it’s really called Windows Liver FolderShare (beta).

FolderShare mostly works, though. And, when it works, it works very well. It’s a peer-to-peer way to synchronize your folders across multiple computers. What that means is that Microsoft never owns a copy of your files - they flow directly between your own computers, using 256-bit AES encryption (good enough). They limit each "share" to 10,000 files, which is a limit that I have absolutely run into. And it was not pretty unraveling the mess that was made by blasting through it (likely user error, but it was not entirely obvious how to recover from it).

I am bold enough to use FolderShare to even synchronize the active source code that I am editing across my desktop and laptop. This is a bit scary, but all my stuff is backed up by Subversion and Time Machine, so it’s all good.

dropbox Enter Dropbox.

Dropbox is still in Beta and, unfortunately, I don’t have an invite yet. However, the video demonstration looks very slick. It’s different from FolderShare in that it does store your files "in the cloud". By storing your files centrally, it also adds the ability to version your files - basically providing a backup service along with a synchronizing service.

It appears that you have to place files within a "Dropbox" folder in order for the product to work. That’s different than FolderShare, as FolderShare can work in whatever existing folder you specify. Since Dropbox is in Beta, and I really haven’t seen it, who knows how it actually works. Stay tuned for more later (when I get my Dropbox invite, that is).

Dropbox has received a ton of press coverage, including articles in TechCrunch and the GigaOm Network.

SyncplicityLogo Enter Syncplicity.

Also in Beta, and currently only available for Windows, I haven’t had a chance to kick the tires on Syncplicity either. But I know the founder well, and have had numerous long talks with him about the product, the product philosophy, the target customer, the market, the competition, and where Syncplicity wants to go.

At this point, Syncplicity feels like the perfect combination of FolderShare and Dropbox. Like FolderShare, Syncplicity allows you to work within any folder - you don’t have to specify a side folder to do your backup/synchronization. Like Dropbox, Syncplicity integrates tightly with the Explorer/Finder to work the way you want to work, and also provides a cloud-based, secured version of your  files (and the requisite benefits of having that).

I look forward to watching how these products evolve. There is a definite need for something like this, and I do think the need goes way beyond the tech crowd.

Google Summer of Code 2008

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 18, 2008
in Open Source and Software
. 0 Comments

logo_gsoc

Now is the time to nominate projects for the Google Summer of Code 2008. In particular, what SOC projects would be great for Eclipse? Basically, anything that you would like a student to work on for 3 months in and around Eclipse toolset.

You can volunteer as a mentor to help your project through (or not). But mentoring is a very lightweight way to help facilitate the project this summer. Also, Google graciously pays for all the development cost (and supports the Open Source community).

If your project gets selected, it will be assigned the resource. Brainstorm session during the conference included such ideas as:

  • XQuery Editor
  • Custom display of classes in CDT Debugger
  • Support for J2SE Security Editors for Policy Files (integrated with OSGi model instead of Sun security model)
  • RELAX NG Compact Form Editor
  • Better code obfuscation configurator
  • Support for Maven

There is a wiki here. Edit away!

Fake Steve at EclipseCon 2008

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on March 18, 2008
in Blogging, Entertainment, Mac OS X, Open Source and Technology
. 0 Comments

  

Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, won the keynote slot at EclipseCon and, as expected, gave a very entertaining keynote address. Excellent choice. Refreshingly irreverent.

Dan takes no prisoners. Every big tech company is fair game, and he calls it like he sees it. Something that he cannot do at Forbes. The Fake Steve blog now generates a nice 1 Million pageviews per month.

Some snippets that caught my funny bone:

  • "Mainstream media is like the COBOL programmers…"
  • "I’m a Mac fan. Here with my MacBook Air, that’s didn’t work - that’s why I love Apple. But, it’s so beautiful… and only 3 pounds!"
  • Dan likens Apple to a cult rather than a product company. He says, "If the Church of Scientology made computer products, they would be Apple."
  • "You look up narcissist in the dictionary and there he (Steve Jobs) is."
  • Great photos of Uncle Ballster and Dr. Stevil (which I can’t find to link to right now).
  • Lots of Sun and Jonathan Schwartz bashing (I spent 7 years at Sun Microsystems, so I could certainly relate). Such as, "There’s always some new line of bullshit from Sun."
  • On IBM: "They’re the worst company in the world to deal with as a reporter."

Anyway. Tune into his blog for more laughs.