Decompiled

Today I learned that Google is testing a new Free Mapping Service that will enable mobile phone users to determine their approximate location and retrieve mapping information without the use of GPS. Google continues to amaze me with their new products, ideas and innovation.

The details of how this all works are still unknown to me, but it has been speculated that that “general” location or area will be determined based on the closest receiving cell tower. Google has referred to this “general” location as “neighborhood-level information”. Sure, you won’t be able to get specific long/lat location, but (and this is my own speculation) you can get close enough to determine what shops, restaurants, events, etc (read consumables) are in the “general” area, and maybe develop an ad service suggesting locations of interest based on the users profile, habits, etc.. You know the typical song and dance.

Heres another hook. For all this to work, the mobile user will be required to download and install Google’s Free software on their mobile phones to use the service. Now I don’t know about you, but this is screaming “ANDROID!!!” Android is Google’s ambitious open source call to a mobile phone operating system. If your not familiar with Android, see my earlier post.

Finally, take into account Google’s announcement to bid on on wireless spectrum in the 700MHz band in late January when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission begins auctioning that resource, and things start to add up. This isin’t much of a surprise because Google had dropped some nuggets of information in the recent past showing some interest in this, but it was always unclear as to why.

Heres my take. Google has the collective resources to feel the winds of change surrounding their core internet based services. Users are not tied to their computers anymore. We are sharing information and data, collaborating across devices and platforms, making phone calls from our computers and browsing the web on our phones. Google sees the opportunity here and wants a piece - The First Piece. Traditional service providers are scrambling to change their business models to adapt to the open exchange and this is where Google has the advantage and always has. Google has developed some strong strategic alliances on the internet and mobile playing fields, and now they (Google) are putting all the pieces together. Don’t get me wrong. It won’t be easy, and there is a long road ahead for them, and many who would love to see them stumble. Either way, Google is about to shake things up.

I have some new additions and apps that I wanted to integrate into our company web (the company I work for) but this required upgrading from ASP.Net 1.1 to ASP.Net 2.0. Seems simple enough, right? I wish..!!

The site uses the MySql .NET Connector (a native ADO connector for .Net) available from MySQL AB. This worked flawlessly under the .Net 1.1 framework. I set up the 2.0 framework on our dev server and started testing the site localy to make sure all existing features and functions would still work after the switch. I am happy to announce that everything was working as expected (on the dev server). Now it was time to request the upgrade through the host. After receiving the confirmation that the request was completed, I open a browser and hit the company web. Warning Warning Error Error Error. Oh no!! What happened?

With the release of .NET 2.0, Microsoft included a new security model using a greater level of restriction. The host that is hosting our web makes use of these restriction levels and as it turns out, the .Net connector that we were using violated some .Net security and triggered a Security Exception.

Exception Details: System.Security.SecurityException: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers.

I have to give Props to Microsoft for making the problem easy to identify. Looks like all I need to do is allow partially trusted calls from the MySql connector.

Here is where the Beauty of Open Source Software comes in.
Read the rest of this entry »

I recently tried to run some .Net 2.0 code on my testing web server (IIS 5). Now, my server has .Net Frameworks 1.1 and 2.0 installed, but when I tried to run some 2.0 code, I got a series of errors on the page with a small line at the bottom that said the page was executing under the .net 1.1 Framework.

I thought to myself, If the 2.0 Framework is installed, why won’t it just use that. So I open up the Internet Services Manager for IIS to see if there was anything there that could help me figure this little issue out. Well, as it turns out, you need to specify what framework a web uses to execute it’s code from within the IIS Manager console. These settings are found by right clicking on the target web site in the Manager console and selecting “properties”.

Now in the properties panel, select the ASP.Net tab. In this tab view you should see a form page containing a few fields and a couple buttons. The first field at the top of the form is labeled “ASP.Net Version” and has a drop down menu containing the available installed framework versions. Select the appropriate version you want to use to process asp.net pages for the web your working in and hit the “Apply” or “OK” button. That’s all there is to it! You can also specify different Frameworks for different webs that are hosted on the same server. One of the good things about the .Net Frameworks is that they install and run independently of each other.

ComputerWorld has a good article of what they consider the 8 most dangerous consumer technologies.

This is a topic I revisit often and a lot of good points are brought up in this article.

Scott Lowe has a good article here describing some of the obsticles he ran into while installing Microsoft Exchange 2007

This will be helpful if I decide to stick with Exchange and upgrade to the 2007 release.

By now you may have heard of Google’s new initiative known as “Android”. Android is Google’s new project set to bring an open source mobile platform based on the Linux OS to the cell phone market. So what does this mean for the cell phone and mobile markets? Google has created an alliance called the “Open Handset Alliance” including a selection of 34 market leading hardware, software and telecom companies.

Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, and Android project leader said the open-source strategy would encourage rapid innovation and lower the bar to entry in the highly competitive cellphone market, where software accounts for an increasing share of the cost of making a phone.

I believe most of the excitement surrounds the fact that this is, in some fashion, an “open” project which means more support from more providers, manufacturers, developers, and applications with lower costs. However, it is still unclear how “open” it will be and it is still possible that handset makers and operators will “lock” their own release and limit use to their own services or applications. Either way, this is in sharp contrast to Apple’s iPhone which is completely shut down, locked out and restricted to anyone outside Apple.

One thing to note is that there will not be an actual Google device (”gPhone”). Instead, the platform will be freely available to developers and manufacturers who will create the mobile devices to use the Android software.

Andy Rubin together with other members of the crew talk about the so-called Gphone.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out over the coming months and year(s).

A Quick Rant:

It is time to start planning for server upgrades at the company I work for. At the center of our network, we have an exchange 2000 server loaded with public folders. Public folders are crucial to our daily work and are used to organize all current publicity tours.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has planned to discontinue support of public folders after the Exchange 2007 release. From what I understand, they are available in the new release (2007), but not by default and will not be available in future releases. The system requirements also up the ante for an exchange upgrade, and our current hardware will need to be upgraded as well…which brings me to my dilemma.

I am leaning toward a recommendation for upgrading to Exchange 2007 and migrating to new server hardware required as well, …OR… do I consider the alternatives?

1) I have done some research on Exchange replacements and it seems that Scalix or Zimbra are as close as they come and they actually look pretty impressive. These run on linux based platforms and would run on existing hardware with public folder support. But this doesn’t come without it’s potential pitfalls.

The transition from Windows 2000 - Active Directory - Exchange combo to a Linux - LDAP - Scalix/Zimbra is not exactly an easy way out.

How does LDAP compare to AD for use with user/group authentication?
Can user and group accounts be transfered from AD to LDAP and maintain network permissions?
Can users be managed in the same way using LDAP as they are in AD?
Can I use Scalix/Zimbra with AD and forget the idea of needing LDAP? (after all, AD is pretty much just a modified LDAP).

2) Do I recommend the Exchange upgrade and try to find public folder replacement or develop a custom in-house replacement.

I like the idea of breaking the windows licensing trap and the potential savings, but at the same time, I am cautious about the support available with the alternatives, not to mention changes required make such a transition. I tend to think that the the second option is likely the easiest and more hassle-free of the two, however, I have yet to come across anything that works like public folders in a stand alone application.

So I have been working on setting up a fully integrated home automation system available from PlutoHome.com. If you are not aware, PlutoHome is home automation system available to the open source community with features to satisfy everyone from simple home controls, to advanced voip and media integration.

My latest venture into setting up a complete automation system is to integrate my voice network with the built-in Asterisk server installed with PlutoHome. The first step was to set up and configure two GrandStream Budget Tone 200 sip phones. Pluto’s plug and play detection picked up the phones as soon as I connected them to the network and installed the necessary software needed to work within the system. Some quick additional settings within each phone and I was able to make calls over my internal network from one phone to another.

The next step was to set up in and outbound calling from the PSTN.
I installed a X100P FXO card from x100p.com and this is where the trouble started.

After installing the card into an available PCI slot, my PlutoHome system did not seem to detect it even after rebooting. I tried some of the common commands from a terminal window, but had no success.

The solution it turns out was to compile and install the Zaptel drivers available from Digium. For what ever reason, PlutoHome does not include (at least as far as I could see) full zaptel support.

After installing and configuring zaptel, I was able set up inbound and outbound calling over the PSTN from my PlutoHome system.

In a later post, I will describe the process I used to install the zaptel drivers.

LG has announced that they will adopt ZigBee technology to power their HomNet System. LG, one of the leading providers of home appliances and entertainment equipment/devices is lending some much needed support to the ZigBee technology at a time when it’s reliability is being questioned.
I will not hide the fact that I am a fan of Zwave for no other reasons than I really like the protocol and it just works coupled with the recent disclosure of an “independant” study stating that other wireless networks sharing the 2.4-GHz band (wireless home networks /WLAN, microwaves, cordless phones, garage door openers), cause ZigBee signals to decay, and in some cases, fail completely.

As far as the studies go, I cannot say if there was any bias involved or support from other competitors (read: z-wave alliance <wink> ), but if there is any truth to the statements, then I for one will be seeking real data to contradict the statements.

References:
http://electronics.ihs.com/news/zwave-zigbee-wlan.htm
The whitepaper created from the study mentioned above.

I have been using PlutoHome as a home automation solution to control lighting, media (A/V), and my home phone network. LinuxMCE is a direct branch of PlutoHome originally ported to run on top of an Ubuntu Desktop. With the latest Beta of LinuxMCE, the desktop of choice is now Kubunu, the KDE version of Ubuntu. This change was made in order to overcome a limitation of Gnome’s X11 implementation that is not apparent in KDE.

To start things off, I downloaded 3 ISO files.

1. Kubuntu install disk
2. LinuxMCE Packages disk
3. LinuxMCE Cache Disk

The LinuxMCE Packages and Cache disk are available as a single torrent file.

After downloading the ISO files, they were burned to CD using Nero.

Installing Kubuntu:
The first step to the actual install is make sure the target system is able to boot from a CD. This can be set by accessing the system BIOS, and setting the CDRom as the first boot device in the boot sequence. Refer to you Motherboard’s BIOS information for instructions on setting this up. Read the rest of this entry »