Join us (in Boston or online) for Tech Field Day 6 in two weeks!

Most of my readers know that I run the blogger co-op called Gestalt IT and organize the Tech Field Day event series. I see these activities as an example of “doing well by doing good” since they are incredibly popular with IT companies that present as well as the independent thought leaders who attend. A few weeks from now, I will head off to Boston for a special event focused entirely on server virtualization. Tech Field Day 6 brings together so many great things that it’s hard for me to summarize it!

Like all previous Tech Field Day events, the backstage work starts a few days before the presentations begin. I will arrive in Boston on Tuesday, June 7 to begin getting everything ready, and the delegates will join me on Wednesday, June 8. This is when some of the most important, and overlooked, elements of Tech Field Day really come together. If the event is all about community, then the preevent work is all about building the foundations that let community happen. We will gather Wednesday night to get to know each other, and I will also have a chance to make sure that everyone understands what Tech Field Day is all about.

The delegates will spend all day Thursday and Friday, June 9 and 10, meeting with key companies in the server virtualization space. We have Tech Field Day veterans like Symantec, SolarWinds, and VKernel presenting, as well as Embotics and a brand-new company still in stealth mode. We are also very excited that VMware will finally have their own presentation time Thursday afternoon. Although they have been involved in many of our events, this is the first time that VMware will present on their own.

Every Tech Field Day event includes a party, but we’re doing something much more exciting this time around: In association with VMunderground and the New England Area VMware Users Group, we have decided to bring a large number of local virtualization enthusiasts together at Fenway Park on Thursday night. Tickets are free, but space is limited, so reserve yours today. This promises to be a great evening of socializing and talking tech, even though the Red Sox will be at new Yankee Stadium that night.

All Tech Field Day presentations will be streamed as video live over the Internet, so tune in on June 9 and 10 at TechFieldDay.com, and follow the #TechFieldDay hashtag on twitter. We also have groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, if that’s your thing, and will be collecting posts and other articles on our Tech Field Day 6 links page. Then there’s Flickr, Vimeo, and even Digg!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Tech Field Day Boston: Virtualization and Baseball
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I'm a Microsoft MVP!

The news just came in from Redmond: I’m a Microsoft MVP again for 2009! I felt great last year, when I received the award for the first time, but this is even better since I now really understand what it’s all about and how I can use it to help the enterprise storage community!

Reading this blog, one might think that I’m some kind of Apple fanboy. Read some of my Windows storage posts and you might think I was a Microsoft apologist. Talk to me for ten minutes and you’ll see that I’m a long-time UNIX nerd. Or maybe I’m an EMC bigot. Or Sun. Or NetApp.

The truth is I’m not really an anything fanboy: I’m a fan of what works. Mac OS X has become my default desktop OS because it works for me, especially its UNIX underpinnings. Windows Server has awesome storage features. EMC and NetApp make some good storage kit. So do Sun and HDS. See the trend here?

I’m neither a Microsoft apologist or hater. They do some good stuff and they do some bad stuff. I’ll go out of my way to evalgelize the good (the iSCSI initiator, MPIO, VSS, PowerShell, FSRM, Windows Server and Storage Server 2008 R2) and I’ll let other people argue about the rest. And Microsoft folks are apparently wise enough to look past the MacBook and iPhone while I’m on campus!

So I sincerely thank Microsoft for the second MVP award. The access it has given me over the last year has been a huge help to me professionally and to those I work with. I look forward to another productive year!

PS: If you didn’t know, Dustin Pedroia is the best all around baseball player out there. He gives his all for my beloved Red Sox every day, and got his own MVP award last year as thanks!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Dustin Pedroia And I Have Two Things In Common!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Check it out! How To Keep Your Family Activities In Sync With A Shared Google Calendar

For the most up-to-date information, see my iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide!

This post is part of my series focused on integrating the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync:

• iPhone OS 3.0 information:
  1. First Look: iPhone 3.0 And Exchange ActiveSync Integration
  2. How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0
  3. How To Access LDAP Directories In iPhone OS 3.0
  4. iPhone 3.0 Exchange ActiveSync: Better But Not Perfect
• How To Set Up iPhone Exchange ActiveSync
1. A Few iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Gotchas
2. Can the iPhone Sync With Multiple Exchange Servers?

This is really a major advancement for the iPhone platform. With 3.0, you have many different calendar synchronization options and can mix and match, using all or none as you see fit:

How to Subscribe to a CalDAV Server (Like Google Calendar)

CalDAV is a powerful open protocol for calendar event synchronization. Lots of services support it, including Google’s free Calendar application, which is part of gmail and Google Apps. It’s a mash-up of WebDAV and ICS and supports two-way synchronization, notes, alerts, and such. iPhone OS 3.0 includes CalDAV as a supported protocol for over-the-air subscription and synchronization, so it can seamlessly synchronize your Google calendar with your phone calendar. Unlike ICS, however, you can create and edit CalDAV entries on the phone and the changes will quickly show up in your Google calendar.

iPhone 3.0 includes direct over-the-air use of CalDAV, ICS, and LDAP servers

Setting up CalDAV, though hidden, is pretty slick. Follow these steps:

1. On the iPhone, select “Settings”
2. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
3. Select”Add Account…” under “Accounts”
4. Select “Other” at the bottom
5. Select “Add CalDAV Account”
6. Enter “www.google.com” for “Server” – the iPhone will automatically identify this as a google CalDAV server!
7. Enter your gmail user name (e.g. “sfoskett”) or full google apps username and domain (e.g. “stephen@fosketts.net”) for “User”
8. Enter your password for “Password”
9. Optionally modify the description
10. Select “Next” and you’re done!

The iPhone recognizes Google Calendar – it’s smart enough to “know” that when you enter “www.google.com” as the CalDAV server it needs to correctly format the URL for Google. Other CalDAV server types might need some tweaking, which you can do in the Advanced tab of the CalDAV’s account in Settings.

All CalDAV calendars are bi-directional, meaning you can create or edit entries and they will (eventually) synchronize on both the phone and calendar server. In my tests, items modified on the iPhone showed up almost immediately, while changes made on Google’s calendar server took a few minutes to show up.

Two notes on CalDAV:

1. Although the documentation says it’s read-only, my Google Calendar absolutely, definitely, is read/write: I can create and modify appointments in the Google Calendar on the iPhone and it shows up online.
2. The “Sync events x weeks back” limit in settings does not apply to CalDAV or ICS! Large numbers of events will cause Calendar to be very, very slow. Beware!

Other popular apps also support CalDAV, including Apple Leopard Server’s iCal Server, Yahoo Calendar, and Zimbra.

I use this capability as a shared family activities calendar. What ideas do you have?

How to Subscribe to an iCalendar Server/.ICS feed

iCalendar is an older calendar subscription format, and many servers offer .ICS feeds of calendar entries. I particularly love TripIt‘s free travel itinerary service, which is available as an ICS feed. iPhone OS 3.0 also includes iCal as a supported protocol for over-the-air subscription, so you can view your ICS feeds right in your phone calendar. Note that iCalendar is read-only, like an RSS feed, so you cannot create or edit items on the phone.

Tap a link to a .ics file and the iPhone will ask to subscribe

The simplest way to subscribe to an ICS feed is simply to email the link to yourself. The iPhone interprets any URL ending in “.ics” as a iCalendar feed and asks if you want to subscribe. This ensures that the link is typed correctly.

Note: This no longer works in iOS 4.2! Now you have to add it in Settings. See Apple Breaks ICS Calendar Auto-Subscription In iOS 4.2.

If you need to manually set up an iCalendar feed, it’s very similar to CalDAV. Follow these steps:

1. Locate the calendar feed you want to use and copy it using OS 3.0′s new copy and paste features
   1. If you use TripIt, log into your account in the iPhone Safari browser
   2. Select the “iCal Feed” icon in your main page
   3. In the popup, select “Subscribe to calendar feed”
   4. Tap and hold the resulting URL (which begins with “webcal://”) until the “Copy” box appears
   5. Tap “Copy”
2. Go back to the hope screen and select “Settings”
3. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
4. Select”Add Account…” under “Accounts”
5. Select “Other” at the bottom
6. Select “Add Subscribed Calendar”
7. Select the “Server” box and tap “Paste”
8. Select “Next”
9. Optionally modify the description

Updates to the iCalendar feed will now show up in your calendar. These are read only, of course, but it’s awfully nice to be able to subscribe to a TripIt or Dopplr feed or the Red Sox schedule on your phone!

One more time: The “Sync events x weeks back” limit in settings does not apply to CalDAV or ICS! Large numbers of events will cause Calendar to be very, very slow. Beware!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I hope you, or a representative from your company, will join me and the folks from Nirvanix and my friends like W. Curtis Preston and Marc Staimer, Charles Curran and Dan Gordon from Valhalla, and just about everyone else in the industry for Greg Duplessie’s Business Development event in Boston.

This is strictly an industry insider event – no end users, exibitors, tchochkes, or contests, just serious networking and business development. The kind of stuff that has always been going on behind closed doors and in the lobbies at Storage Networking World and Storage Decisions, but without the distraction of the actual conference!

If you are going, and are interested in discussing public managed storage in the cloud (or happen to have Red Sox tickets for June 8, 9, or 10) drop me a line. Let’s meet up in Boston!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | All Business Development All The Time!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

What Red Sox fan wouldn't want to open this gift?

What is the perfect gift for someone obsessed with Lego bricks and the Boston Red Sox? It would be easy to assume I was describing myself, but this time I’m talking about my 9 year old son. But both of us enjoyed his big birthday gift this year, a Lego model of Fenway Park!

No, the Lego Company hasn’t licensed the famous ballpark. But they do offer something almost as good – a build-to-order service called Lego Factory, which allows you to design your own Lego set on a PC or Mac and have it delivered to your door!

So, with equal parts enthusiasm and foolishness, I sat down this fall with my Mac, a copy of the Lego Digital Designer software, and numerous photos of my favorite landmark and started working.

Although the software is really excellent, it still took a month of evenings to get the park modeled to my satisfaction. It only offers a subset of a few hundred brick types to choose from, but the software let me snap, copy, rotate, and place the pieces with ease.

I had planned to build the whole darn park, inside and out, but reality got in the way. Luckily I started with the diamond, the famous Green Monster, and the unique field shape so I ended up with a recognizable and rewarding model. I did construct much of the Yawkey Way facade, but that will have to wait for next birthday!

Lego Digital Designer allowed me to select from a good assortment of pieces and build my model

Once I had my model built in the LDD software, I submitted it to the Lego Factory. I held my breath while waiting for a price, knowing Lego’s notoriously high pricing, but it wasn’t too bad: Around 750 pieces in a custom box, shipped for $88.34.

Delivery took the better part of a month, and no wonder: The stickers on the box indicate that it traveled through Poland, Hong Kong, Denmark, and JFK (via American Airlines) before arriving at my door in Ohio!

The custom box left something to be desired – it merely held a paper printout of the model behind a clear plastic window. And I was surprised to find all of the bricks in a single large plastic bag. In fact, the bag barely fit inside the box, and I think I was brushing against the upper size limit for Lego Factory orders!

Sadly, Lego’s software failed when it came to creating an instruction booklet. I imagine it could have handled a simpler model, but my default directions were bizarrely complicated, instructing me to put a single piece here and there over hundreds of steps.

My Lego Fenway Park is ready - Play ball

Instead, I had to export the model in the open LDraw format, which only Lego Digital Designer for Windows is apparently capable of. From there, I was able to open it in the solid freeware MLCad application and put together my own instruction booklet. All of this required Windows, but my Mac has VMware Fusion and Boot Camp, so that was no problem at all!

After a satisfyingly excited birthday-morning gift-opening session, we set about constructing “our” ballpark. Astonishingly, Lego included every piece required to build the model and not a single extra! It took a few evenings, but our playroom now holds a fairly large and detailed model of the Red Sox playing field and its surroundings.

Want your own copy of my model? Lego’s Factory web site lets you buy a model designed by someone else. So if you look around, you might find a model called “Ballpark 2″ and that’s mine. But I couldn’t find it. If you’re interested, I’ll email the model to you – get my address from the “About” page.

We are also planning on continuing to add to this model. My son is already planning how to build the club, and I’ve got Yawkey Way under way. I’ll post here when we progress further!

This is what a Lego minifigure on Landsdowne Street sees!

Update! By popular demand, here are the links for the sources for the field section pictured here. Note that Lego changes parts availability all the time. If Lego Digital Designer complains that it can’t be priced, just try again in a few days.

• Lego Digital Designer model file: Ballpark 2.LXF
• Instructions: Ballpark 2.PDF

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Lego Fenway Park: Reverse the Curse at Home
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Off to See the Sox
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.