The iPhone now has most of the functions of the BlackBerry: Over-the-air push and sync of Exchange email, contacts, and calendars! This guide is intended as a concise walkthrough of how to get up and running with an iPhone and Microsoft Exchange server.
Posted by Stephen in Personal on 28. Jan, 2010 | Comments
J. D. Salinger passed away January 27, 2010; he was 91. The famously-secretive author rose to prominence in the 1950’s for The Catcher in the Rye, a book that has resonated with every generation of youth since. He is more celebrated in literary circles for his shorter stories, many of which centered on the Glass and Caulfield families and explored deeper religious and philosophical territory than his sole novel.
Two stupidly-cool fonts in action: My normal DEC VT220-like terminal and a super-large terminal with super-tiny Tom Thumb displaying Hamlet. All of Hamlet. No kidding.
What does it mean for the community when independent bloggers go to work for vendors? The Internet has changed the old game of leveraging publications for PR. Can you still trust what you read?
The Mini DisplayPort connector on the 27″ iMac is bi-directional, so you can connect another device to its gorgeous monitor! I was eager to try this out, and sure enough my 2009 Mac Mini had no trouble taking over the iMac’s display using a $30 Belkin cable. But actually using the iMac in this configuration has not been pleasant.
Personal computer hard disk drive access methods have been repeatedly forced to adapt to ever-expanding capacity. But Western Digital is leading the change to larger 4 kilobyte hard disk blocks. Although this new “Advanced Format” includes mechanisms for backwards compatibility, buyers should be wary of these new drives for the time being.
Last week I bought my third (modern) Mac, a new Core i5-powered 27″ iMac desktop. My new iMac has become a video editing workstation, running Apple’s Final Cut Studio software to process the video footage from Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day. The massive display and speedy quad-core CPU and graphics continue to impress: This new iMac is a keeper!
Data Robotics has doubled the size of their product line, adding two new Drobo storage devices alongside the existing Drobo (version 2) and DroboPro, which I’ve previously written about.
Championing “open” and calling for standards has become the first stalling action by late-movers in technology spaces. They see opportunity passing by and try to hold back progress and FUD the market by yelling about proprietary solutions, vendor lock-in, and a lack of standards. Many well-intentioned IT folks follow along: After all, who doesn’t want openness, standardization, and interoperability?
Although the Drobo “storage robot”, essentially a friendly home RAID enclosure, has long impressed me, it never fit my laptop-oriented lifestyle. But my home network has changed with the addition of a 2009 Mac Mini server, so it was time for me to pick up a Drobo of my own!
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage on 03. Feb, 2010 | Comments
In this video, I present the shortcomings of traditional tiered storage and propose a solution: Although merely using different disk types will never deliver the goods, adding flash and cloud to an integrated, automated solution will be truly revolutionary. I look forward to the day when all of today’s buzz-worthy technologies (flash, cloud, thin provisioning, automated tiering, post-RAID) are mixed together to form a really revolutionary storage system.
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Personal on 01. Feb, 2010 | Comments
With my Cardo Scala abandoned in a New York taxi and my Motorola H800 falling apart, I decided it was time to pick up a new BlueTooth headset. As luck would have it, I decided to buy on the very day that Aliph released their next-generation Jawbone headset, the ICON.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 01. Feb, 2010 | Comments
Only mature technologies are taken seriously and granted equal status when enterprise architectures are defined. That’s why I’m pleased to see today’s announcement that CommVault has completely integrated API-driven public cloud storage with Simpana, their impressive data protection and archiving suite. Now there are three equal backup targets: Tape, disk, and cloud.
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home on 28. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Drobo is adding support for 4K-sector “Advanced Format” drives across their product line, but others do not seem as responsive.
Posted by Stephen in Apple on 27. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Apple introduced their “magical” iPad today, demonstrating impressive updates to iWork but focusing on home and consumer applications. The company never mentioned business applications beyond Keynote presentations, leaving a question as to whether they support Exchange ActiveSync like the iPhone family.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 21. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Concluding my series on vendor bloggers, I present my own experiences wearing multiple hats and trying to remain credible.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 20. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Biased content isn’t just found on blogs – it’s much more likely to be found in other areas like Twitter and discussion forums. When does discussion become Astroturf?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 19. Jan, 2010 | Comments
There is a spectrum of vendor-oriented blogging in various IT infrastructure areas: Some are more or less open about where they work, some focus on common technology, and others work in marketing. Bloggers are wise to keep these in mind as they move to new companies!
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 15. Jan, 2010 | Comments
Using system memory for storage is something of a lost art these days. But many of today’s I/O intensive tasks can still benefit from the untouchable quickness provided by a ramdisk. Happily, most operating systems are still capable of creating and using ramdisks.
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 14. Jan, 2010 | Comments
In March, Microsoft and Intel demonstrated that the combination of Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Xeon 5500 could saturate a 10 GbE, pushing data throughput to wire speed. Today, they showed that this same combination can deliver an astonishing million I/O operations per second, too.
© 2009 Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat. All Rights Reserved.
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