Sun Blackbox

Sun just released Sun Blackbox, a new readymade data-center in a shipping container complete with 25 racks, 1.5PB storage, networking, cooling and shock absorbers. The idea is they ship you the whole container and you just power it up. A la data-center in a box.

How cool is that? Do you see whats happening here. Sun Microsystem is changing their whole business model. I remember a few years ago, Cemex, a cement manufacturer based in Mexico changed their business model from '$ per weight' to 'just-in-time' model. Cement manufacturing is a highly standardized business and the margins are too thin. So Cemex came up with a new idea. See, the problem is cement starts setting from the moment it leaves the factory, so you can't have it lying around. Also, sometimes the site is not ready or labours lying around too long waiting for the cement to arrive. Cemex identified these issues and told their customers that from now on, they will only pay for the right amount of cement at right time i.e., time is the business model. Customers phones the call-center to say when and how much cement they want and their ERP system optimizes and routes trucks in the field (fitted with GPS monitoring and comminicator) to the customer. Benefit for customer is they get right amount of cement at right time (usually within plus minus an hour). Benefit for Cemex is they bacame a multibillion dollar company and the 3rd largest cement manufacturer in the world. All by changing their business model to 'just-in-time'.

And this is what Sun Microsystem is doing. Shortening the time and effort for customers to set up a data-center. Sure you won't get the Blackbox within an hour of ordering. But even then, it will be there in a few days all set up and ready to go. Compare this with time taken to plan and build a data-center, from evaluating vendors to purchasing, building and testing infrastructure, etc.

My 43Things

I just signed up for 43things. I've been resisting the whole social networking movement for long. It simply takes too much time signing up and filling those forms. But it was only a matter of time. With 43Things, you select things/places/books/movie you did, doing or want to do. The site then tracks you against time and other people. The fun part's you get to read other people's experience who's in the same boat as you. You can read their blogs and 'cheer' them on while they too cheer you. You can see my 43Things on the right sidebar here.

The site is created using Ruby on Rails by a bunch of folks who worked at Amazon.com before. Recently they turned two and got funding from Amazon.com, so looks like they made it. Here are a few things a learnt along the way:

• Bring your own computer.


• Sit around one big table. Make communication easy.


• No discussions over mailing lists.


• Meetings take place at the pub, or as a standing meeting.


• Use paper and notecards instead of documents.


• Share the stereo.


• Walk or bike to work if you can.


• Eat lunch together. Play credit card roulette.


• Make it more fun than useful.


• Embrace constraints.


• Build something you’d use. Use what you build.


• Don’t overmonetize.


• Rely on the software in your head rather than try to replicate culture in features.


• Design as you build. Keep the cost of change low.


• Be in it to win it.

Bundle VS.NET With Vista

Visual Studio .NET Express should be a part of Windows Vista. Its offered for free as download from MSDN anyway, why not include it with OS?

All major OS except for Windows come with a programming tool. Mac OSX with AppleScript, Unix/Linux with gcc/perl/shell scripting.

The other reason for including it is to fuel the next generation of programmers. When I bought my first PC back in the Windows 3.1 days, it came with QBasic in DOS. I had a lot of fun times programming with it. It was amazing what a few lines of code could accomplish. Today, a novice user almost never sees a line of code and are becoming more and more of a passive user than active one.

To stop losing the next potential developer, bundle Visual Studio .NET with Vista.

Virtual Server 2005 for Free

Microsoft made Virtual Server 2005 R2 available for freenow. Why, not because its trying to compete with VMware, but because Vista server has builtin support for Virtualization Technology, so no point charging for it now.

I for one have grown used to Virtual PC 2004. I run Windows 2003 Server on Virtual PC on my laptop running also Windows 2003 Server. Why Windows 2003 inside Windows 2003? Well, I experiment with all sorts of applications... from DB or Applications Servers. Using virtual PC keeps my host laptop free of clutters.

Microsoft Oragami Project

Microsoft put up their Microsoft Oragami Project about 2 weeks ago with words it will release on March 9, 2006. The website plays a flash movie, saying "I am everywhere you are and never in the way... what am I? Find out March 9, 2006". The suspense for the last 2 weeks set the blogging world on fire. Its a perfect viral marketting.

Some says it will be a mp3 player to compete with iPod. Other says it will be a portable x-box 360. Yet other says it will be small tablet pc with wifi and mobile phone and everything changing the world of portable PC. No one knows what and Microsoft's not telling.

My guess, it will be all of the above. A device with phone, wifi, camera, mp3 player plus gaming device and most importantly GPS. After all, thats what oragami implies, transforming an object into something else.

Asterisk@Home - Oh The Genius Of It!

I've been reading up on Asterisk@Home lately. This year, I've to do my honors engineering thesis in order to graduate, but first I've got to get one of my professors agree to supervise my thesis. Its much easier to get their agreement if the topic is in one of their area of expertise or interest.

I've always dreamed of doing something different, something exceptional with my thesis, like build a better satellite navigational system or something. But then I found out my thesis becomes the property of the university once I complete it. No point trying to find the cure for cancer for someone else, so to speak.

One more thing I've realized is I really don't need a university to back my research. I can build something in my own home on my own time. Thats one good thing about Technology. Its such a commodity that you don't need a univeristy or major corporation to back your research as opposed to other areas like Physics, Chemistry or Medicine. Any guy in his garage can build the next Google, Dell or Microsoft.

Anyway, getting back to my story, one of the professors put up an idea on the course website to build an advanced application that uses Asterisk@Home. By this, he means he wants more than just configure Asterisk@Home. He wants us to come up with an idea to build a hardware or software that will use Asterisk@Home. I think I may choose this as my thesis. VOIP is a hot topic, plus the topic is already pre-approved by the professor AND it gives me enough freedom to do what I want as long as it uses Asterisk@Home somewhere.

One of my idea is to build a Security Alert System. Basically its an application that will monitor webcams around the house by means of video conferencing. When it notices anything (using MIT MARS PathFinder technology), it will send out an alarm by placing a VOIP call to you or the police. The video of couse will be recorded.

What I find most interesting about Asterisk@Home is the genius of it. I'm not talking about the PBX or VOIP. That technology's been available since before 2000. But what the software achieves. Digium initially build PCI cards to connect PSTN trunk lines to PC. There was no market for these cards since other VOIP PBX products were available from companies such as CISCO and Seimens.

So they wrote Asterisk@Home which natively supports their card and released it to the open source community who then ran with it. Asterisk@Home doesn't need Digium card to run, but buying one will let the owner take full advantage of the capabilities of Asterisk@Home by connecting it to phone lines. Digium simply created an artificial demand for their product by Asterisk@Home. Oh, the genius of it.

Kensington Repackaged Hynix RAM

Just bought two Hynix 512 DDR2700 SODIMM 333MHz RAM on ebay for AU$38 each, totaling AU$120 (incl. shipping/insurance). Talk about cheap.

Interesting thing about the RAM. The seller was selling the same spec RAM, one from Hynix for AU$38, and other from Kensington for AU$53. I heard of Kensington before, so I presume Kensington cost more because its better. But on zooming into the auction photo, the Kensington RAM is marked Hynix on the chip. What The?!?!?.

After some Googling, here's what I found. There are 4 major RAM manufacturers - Hynix (formarly Hyundai Electronics), Samsung, Infineon, and Micron. All other RAM manufacturer are not manufacturers. They buy their RAM from one of above 4, slap their sticker on it before putting it in a nice box, and sell it for twice the price. Why those bloody pirates!@#$%

Still I was doubtful. Maybe the Kensington's better because they test before packaging when a thought hit me. My laptop's Dell, which means Dell will go to the source to buy their parts. I opened the bottom panel covering the laptop's RAM and lo behold... it's Hynix!

So I got Hynix instead of the repackaged Hynix.

Pandora - Finally Something That Works

A while back, I tried the Yahoo! radio. It was new in the sense you listen to the songs rate each one on a scale of 1-5. The more you rate, the more Yahoo! radio will play songs according to your taste which it determines from your rating - just 3 words - "it does not work." Ok, 4 words :p

Today, I came across Pandora. It does the same thing, but this time it works. WOW. The Music Genome Project is such a natural thing that it's brilliant. Kudos to the folks behind it!

You begin by entering an artist or a song name. I said Good Charlotte. And it started pumping out music. I “educated” it a bit, telling it that I also like Metallica, Linkin Park and a few others. As it threw amazing tunes at me, I could give them thumbs up or thumbs down.

In less than an hour, this thing had me dialed. Here is a sampling of some of the music it picked for me that I had never heard of before:

• I Stay Awayby Alice In Chains
• Life Goes On by LeAnn Rimes
• Your Mistake by Sister Hazel
• When Love Was The Only Thing by Kin Fox
• No such thing by John Mayer

You can also do really cool things like click on a song and make a whole new station that is inspired by just that one song. At one point I selected the “Why did you play this song?” menu item. It said something like this:

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentional, major key tonality and acoustic rhythm guitars.

Another time, during a nice instrumental rock/metal tune, I asked again and it said:

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features basic rock song structures, a suble use of vocal harmoney, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation and a vocal-centric aesthetic.

Yup... now I know exactly what my music taste is. Its whatever's in the block quote above. Oh, and you can listen to stations that your friends create, if you know their email address.

iPod Video

Now I've done it. Long I've resisted going over to the dark side by buying an iPod and joining the mainstream. But when that bald Steve guy whipped out the thinner, smaller, black iPod with video, I succemded to the music.

Just got it in the mail today. I ordered it online at Apple Store and had it in my hand in less than 24 hours even though the website listed it shipping in 7-10 days. Apple just went up a notch in my book. You go, Apple.

What can I say... its black and simply gorgeous. Will post pics later.

XBox

Today morning my sister woke me up saying she is going to the mall with my parents to buy an XBox. It took a couple of minutes for my mind to work it out.

XBox... XBOX... did I miss something.... when did she convince my parents to buy her an XBox... How long have I been sleeping... what year is this?

Anyway, got up quicky and took a quick shower. Damn, I hadn't done much research on XBox. I am gonna walk in there blind. The sales staff is gonna have a field day.

Anyway, once in the store, there was no sales stuff in sight. We were standing there for half hour reading through the bouchure and looking at everything, and not a single sales staff came to ask us if we needed help. Thats Kmart for you.

Anyway, Ended up buying The Ultimate XBox Collection which comes with the console, one pad, Halo, Tennis game, game sampler, Halo2 CD case, 5 $20 game cash back voucher, and 2 month XBox Live trial. I also ended up buying Halo 2 and XBox DVD Kit to watch DVD movies.

Then we went and had KFC. My paycheck got deposited today so I was feeling reach.

Came back home and started playing Halo. Finished 2 levels by 1:30AM. Gonna continue tomorrow... damn... just when I was planning to work on my project :(