port7 – co – uk

Probably a number of you reading this will now have seen the announcement at Google I/O about the new product from the makers of Google Maps, what they are calling Google Wave.

What Google Wave is attempting to do its effectively re-invent E-mail, they asked themselves, what would E-Mail look like if it was invented today? The answer is something that looks like the lovechild of Gmail, Wiki, SubEthaEdit, Twitter, and Sharepoint. I think it could catch on.

As someone who makes his daily bread in the very conservative world of corporate IT, I can’t see it making inroads here (which is a shame), though the fact that Google are releasing the code and allowing people to host their own web-servers might make that interesting, especially with the federation aspect of the protocol.

I for one can’t wait to give it a test go, and I may even deploy it in some of my clients, if it grows in maturity.

Well done Google (again)

So yesterday I received a sales call, not a surprise as I get lots of them each day. But this time I was pleasantly surprised to discover that is was from Sirius IT, for those that don’t know Sirius are probably one of the more successful FOSS consultancy firms here in the UK. Having been around the Linux community since 1996 I have been aware of the good work they have done, and the growth they have enjoyed.

Unfortunately I couldn’t give them much work, as my current client is pretty much well served by a big outsourcing deal with Capgemini. Though I was pleased to tell the chap that they already use a significant amount of FOSS in the IT estate, and find it works very well thank you.

What encouraged me about this call was just that it indicated Sirius IT was growing into a serious contender in the UK IT industry. They have obviously started this cold-calling strategy to win business, and I hope it works from them. It certainly makes a change to hear a company calling and specifically mentioning Open Source software. In the current climate, I really think FOSS has a lot to offer business in the UK, and hopefully initiatives like this from Sirius will do a lot to make that happen.

So well done Sirius IT, I hope to send some business your way in the future, maybe not with the current client but maybe another one.

OK not posted for ages, blame life, kids, work and apathy!

Recently I needed to install Windows (XP) on my main laptop an IBM x60s, as I needed to use a program that to my knowledge has no Free software equivalent on any platform. The program is Mixmeister Express, and I use it for creating various mixes for various shows that Julie is involved in.

Now the main reason for this post is not to moan about the lack of a Free Software Mixmeister (though if you know of one let me know!), but I just want to list my favourite Free Software for Windows programs.

Now and then I get asked to help setup someone computer, or even in for my own reasons install Windows. I find myself installing the same set of standard applications, all Free. So if you *have* to use Windows, have a look at this list, there should be no surprises there.

• Openoffice.org – http://www.openoffice.org/
• Firefox – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
• Foxyproxy – http:// foxyproxy.mozdev.org/
• Gmail Manager – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1320
• Foxmarks – http://www.foxmarks.com/
• ClamWin – http://www.clamwin.com/
• Spyboy S&D – http://www.safer-networking.org/
• InfraRecorder – http://www. infrarecorder.org/
• VLC – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
• Putty – http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
• Winscp – http://www. winscp.net/
• Audiograbber – http:// www.audiograbber.com-us.net/
• Pidgin IM – http:// www.pidgin.im/
• WinVi – http:// www.winvi.de/en

So that’s my standard lot for making Windows a more comfortable place, a lot of those are also available in portable format, so you can run them from a USB stick. I also realize that a few of those are not Free as in Freedom, but at least you are not having to shell out.

Landing Place, Tarasaigh

Originally uploaded by Sgeir Mhor

Came accross this picture of a place that I have visited several times. This is the amazing Taransay in the Outer Hebrides.

You would be forgiven in mistaking this for the Carribian or some other Tropical paradise

So this weekend has been one of thinking about refreshing some of my technical kit. First we had a visit to the Trafford Centre on Saturday and I took the opportunity to have a look at the G1 Google Phone in the T-Mobile Shop.

Was I impressed, to be honest on a touchy feely point of view, not much! From a UI angle, I still think the iPhone has the edge. In particular the finger gestures, pinch to zoom in etc. What I do like is the ability to sync Google Calenders, Contacts, Mail over-the-air. But I knew that without seeing one in the flesh. I was not that impressed with handset, if you can get a HTC Kaiser with Android then that would be my ideal. So despite all that, I will be moving to a Google phone, though when my iPhone contract expires, hopefully by that point there will be a few more handsets to choose from and any current bugs have been ironed out.

Then on Sunday evening, i decided to have some surfing time on the Macbook. And when I opened it the right hand 1/3 of the screen was all garbled. It looks like someone has stood on the laptop and broken the screen at that point. It still fires up and you can see some of the screen but from a usability point of view it is buggered. As to the culprit, we have our suspicions….

As Julie tends to use that one during the day she is now without a laptop. I don’t want to shell out for a new MacBook, as the next Mac I want is a PowerMac. But I think we will get some sort of netbook, prefrably with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. The current favorite is a MSI Wind, though that may change if there is one with an OEM Ubuntu.

So an expensive weekend, though both purchases can wait for a few months, and they are arguably optional.

Just got a mail from Visa, asking me to put my card details in to verify security!

The website is verified-byvisa.com, and the owner is a Mr Robert Thornton.

A more obvious phishing attempt could not be done! What a plank if he thinks people would fall for this.

Anyway if you want to send this guy some abuse here are his details

Registrant Name …………….. Robert Thornton
Registrant Organization ……… Robert Thornton
Registrant Address ………….. 539 Buffalo Creek Road
Registrant City …………….. Nashville
Registrant Province/State ……. TN
Registrant Postal Code ………. 37214
Registrant Country Code ……… US
Registrant Phone Number ……… +1.6158171380 –
Registrant Fax ……………… +1.6158171380 –
Registrant Email ……………. robert.thornton@interlayer.net

Had a very bizarre dream last night.

I was half-awake and really struggling with the problem of how to interface my crying daughter to an e-commerce platform for order dispatch confirmations.

Does that mean that I see my daughter as a software system or do I see my software systems as 2yr old’s who keep me awake at night?

So having a number of chats with various people about what we would like to see in a corporate twit platform.

Following from a blog post by friend and colleague Mr K, I have been thinking, could we build something?

That naturally progresses to, what do we want to build, how would we build it, and with what would we build it?

Addressing the first question, could we build it? The answer is of course yes, it’s just software and assuming we have a sensible set of requirements and some clever bod’s anything is possible.

The second question is what do we want to build, is possibly the tricky one. Why not just use Twiter? Well essentially my problem with that is that it is a hosted service, and for any corporate having potentially private and sensitive company info hosted on a server outside it’s control is just simply a no-go. Also on the privacy aspect, your company tweets could appear in the public tweet list.

So what do we want?:

• Ability to ‘follow people’
• Ability to create groups, and also to follow groups
• Ability to search posts, both all and people you are following
• Options for backend auth (LDAP, AD, OpenID)
• Logging, so all posts can be logged
• Ability to post and read by various means, IM, Web, SMS, etc
• Scalability, this should be able to scale to corporations of 100,000+ users

So with with what should we build it, given the requirements above, could this be done with the LAMP stack? Or do we need a proper daemon written in C? Not being a developer, I don’t know these things. My guess is that LAMP could do all the above, though the scalability requirement might be tricky (or not!)

Anyway I am throwing these thoughts out to the ether, feel free to comment, volunteer to do it, or just shoot me down

So there is a requirement with my current client to print barcodes from an application on HPUX. The current way this application prints is to simply output an ASCII text file and send that to the printer with a couple of control codes to set landscape / portrait mode etc.

So I had a look round the web and found a few solutions, that allow you to print barcodes from UNIX systems. They essentially involve a program that sits in the lpd print filter system and looks for various codes in the print stream, and then interprets them as barcodes. Reading the implementation guides for these systems, it seemed that they were assuming you were printing Postscript print jobs, but we wern’t, they were simple ASCII print jobs. When I was trying to find out about the print jobs, I did ask the team if they printed in Postscript or PCL, I just got a lot of blank states, and comments like ‘I don’t know anything about that techie sh*$e‘

So I had come to the conclusion that the application team are going to have to learn Postscript and start outputting reports in that. Which is not a bad thing as it will give them a lot more flexibility in their report formatting, and produce nicer looking stuff.

I then came across this project, which simply uses Postscript to draw barcodes based on variables that you stick in the Postscript print job.

You just have a Postscript report template that includes a bunch of stuff that will allow it to correctly interpret the codes you give it into working barcodes. After a hour or two of furtleing about, which included a long drawn out hunt for someone who knew what type of barcodes we use, I managed to create a print that duplicated a working current barcode.

So it seems like we have a winner, an Open Source project that will give us barcode capability from a key application, and will also move us towards using Postscript, which is not a bad thing.

Top Stuff!!

Mushrooms

Originally uploaded by portseven_uk

Found this in the garden, today, can anyone identify it? Magic, Poisionous, Edible?