It looks as if all of my stories covering the O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference have been posted to the PC Magazine world... Here's a recap:
Marc Andreessen talks about what it was like in the early days of creating the browser at the University of Illinois then Netscape and what he is currently doing with the white label social networking site Ning. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2288828,00.asp
Gear Log picked my story on Dash, the in-car GPS with WiFi and cellular wide area networking connectivity. It's got the whole "crowdsourcing" automatic web2.0 thing figured out! http://www.gearlog.com/2008/04/dash_gps_owners_search_for_sta.php
Finally, my buddy David Spark did a little Q&A with yours truly and I pontificate on what the future of social networking will become. Hint, it is already a time-waster, but does not let you play scrabulous, but spamulous... http://www.sparkminute.com/?p=333
P.S. I need a hair cut.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
2008 O'Reilly Web2.0 Stories Part I
Ok, so I'm a new tech guy in an old media (dead trees and analog broadcast) world. Until now, ya see. Last week was pivotal for me. A magazine that I normally write for in print emailed me right before the W2E event and asked me to blog on it. Coolio I think (but that means I need to leave the parties at a decent hour to edit) and I neglected to remember this: when you are used to long lead times in print and lots of back-and-forth conversations with an editor on "what your worlds meant" versus blog posts which need to be up quickly and succinctly.
That on top of a content management system that was trashing (removing/deleting/zero-daying?) my stories made things a little tricky, but alas that dilemma is being worked on by coders much smarter than myself.
Here's a quick rundown of the first bit that are posted:
Tim O'Reilly, conference organizer does a "Radar" event at most of his events - they are a favorite of mine since he has a bunch of Alpha-geeks (myself included-yeah!) that he watches to see what we are hacking on. This lead to the creation of Make Magazine (I'm lucky enough to be a founding contributor) and Foo camp in 2003. Check out what I caught from his speech here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2286997,00.asp
The Chairwoman of Mozilla foundation, creators of Firefox, Micthell Baker had mobile browsing on her mind. Good timing on this one as iPhone's WebKit and Nokia platforms are going to go head to head with advanced and high-speed capabilities as the Treo works its way out of pockets. I still have another year contract left on my 755p. Read about here vision for the browser here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2287824,00.asp
MySpace VP Steve Peerman says that we can learn from our users (how Web2.0 of him!) by giving them advanced looks at interfaces or features and actually (gasp!) take their criticism. Find out if you want to have Tom as your friend again (you did delete him right?) by reading here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2287877,00.asp
Wrapping up this overview post is a story from Google's Matt Cutts, who was talking about Spam, no not the food or what ends up in your email in-box (despite GMail's bad ass filters) but comment and web page spam. Solutions for this double yickyness can be found here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2287888,00.asp
More to come as their content management system at PC Magazine dawt com gets corrected!
That on top of a content management system that was trashing (removing/deleting/zero-daying?) my stories made things a little tricky, but alas that dilemma is being worked on by coders much smarter than myself.
Here's a quick rundown of the first bit that are posted:
Tim O'Reilly, conference organizer does a "Radar" event at most of his events - they are a favorite of mine since he has a bunch of Alpha-geeks (myself included-yeah!) that he watches to see what we are hacking on. This lead to the creation of Make Magazine (I'm lucky enough to be a founding contributor) and Foo camp in 2003. Check out what I caught from his speech here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2286997,00.asp
The Chairwoman of Mozilla foundation, creators of Firefox, Micthell Baker had mobile browsing on her mind. Good timing on this one as iPhone's WebKit and Nokia platforms are going to go head to head with advanced and high-speed capabilities as the Treo works its way out of pockets. I still have another year contract left on my 755p. Read about here vision for the browser here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2287824,00.asp
MySpace VP Steve Peerman says that we can learn from our users (how Web2.0 of him!) by giving them advanced looks at interfaces or features and actually (gasp!) take their criticism. Find out if you want to have Tom as your friend again (you did delete him right?) by reading here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2287877,00.asp
Wrapping up this overview post is a story from Google's Matt Cutts, who was talking about Spam, no not the food or what ends up in your email in-box (despite GMail's bad ass filters) but comment and web page spam. Solutions for this double yickyness can be found here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2287888,00.asp
More to come as their content management system at PC Magazine dawt com gets corrected!
Monday, March 24, 2008
Time Machine to Airport Extreme Router
I an effort to consume less power, I am turning off my terabyte RAID server, and other full PC's but still want to maintain my automatic backups and remote file or server-like storage while I am on the road. The Airport Extreme became my router of choice a few months ago, with its ability to host 802.11n connections to my MacBook Air and its NAS capability. From my testing in 2007, the Linksys NAS on its 802.11n products is abysmal and should never be trusted.
With the March 7.3.1 firmware for the Airport Extreme, we are now able to do a Time Machine backup from a Mac running 10.5.2 to any USB connected drive - as long as it is supporting the following:
1. HFS+ File System that is Journaled
2. File Sharing enabled with "AirPort Extreme Password"
3. You must connect to the drive with Finder before launching Time Machine to select the drive
In my case, after upgrading the operating system (I love the Mac's auto-update) and manually updating the base station (I avoided 7.2.1 due to other issues) I thought I would be ready to go. That was not the case.
For the 500GB low-power USB drive that I have hung from the Airport Extreme USB port, I used HFS+ without Journaling to get a little more speed - important for me as I steam videos and music from this to media appliances that do not have hard drives. To add Journaling, I "disconnected users" on the Airport configuration, connected this drive to my Mac and loaded disk utility. From here I highlighted the volume name and clicked the button in the tool bar that says "Enable Journaling." After a few minutes of drive activity, I removed it and reconnected it to my Airport Extreme base station, with 100 Megabit - this is fine as the Gigabit version cannot run NAT fast enough to justify those speeds.)
My next "problem" was that I enabled specific user accounts to keep my shared data and private storage isolated. That will not work with this current firmware, so I "downgraded" to a single user account. I am not a fan of this, but the importance of the backup outweighs my desire to keep private files, well, just that. Since I am a one-man user on my home network, this is not such a big deal. The password is different from my WPA2 WiFi signal however, so that adds a layer of obfuscation.
Next, I launched Finder, connected to my drive with my new credentials and launched Time Machine. My drive is now visible as an "approved" Time Machine backup volume. This means that my Air can truly work as it should - with only a wire for powering its battery, not for backing up. I really dig that all Macs on my network will auto-backup to my big shared volume.
Now if only Apple would make a feature to disable big backups while I am working. It seems that even with 802.11n, backing up 100MB of data while I am trying to use the web is slowing things down. Note that I am not running NAT on the Airport, due to its slowdown of network address translation (converting my single ISP provided IP address to my private range inside.) For my router with fail-over ISP connection, NAT and VPN tunneling and host modes, I use a Netgear business class router. More on what I am doing with that, later!
With the March 7.3.1 firmware for the Airport Extreme, we are now able to do a Time Machine backup from a Mac running 10.5.2 to any USB connected drive - as long as it is supporting the following:
1. HFS+ File System that is Journaled
2. File Sharing enabled with "AirPort Extreme Password"
3. You must connect to the drive with Finder before launching Time Machine to select the drive
In my case, after upgrading the operating system (I love the Mac's auto-update) and manually updating the base station (I avoided 7.2.1 due to other issues) I thought I would be ready to go. That was not the case.
For the 500GB low-power USB drive that I have hung from the Airport Extreme USB port, I used HFS+ without Journaling to get a little more speed - important for me as I steam videos and music from this to media appliances that do not have hard drives. To add Journaling, I "disconnected users" on the Airport configuration, connected this drive to my Mac and loaded disk utility. From here I highlighted the volume name and clicked the button in the tool bar that says "Enable Journaling." After a few minutes of drive activity, I removed it and reconnected it to my Airport Extreme base station, with 100 Megabit - this is fine as the Gigabit version cannot run NAT fast enough to justify those speeds.)
My next "problem" was that I enabled specific user accounts to keep my shared data and private storage isolated. That will not work with this current firmware, so I "downgraded" to a single user account. I am not a fan of this, but the importance of the backup outweighs my desire to keep private files, well, just that. Since I am a one-man user on my home network, this is not such a big deal. The password is different from my WPA2 WiFi signal however, so that adds a layer of obfuscation.
Next, I launched Finder, connected to my drive with my new credentials and launched Time Machine. My drive is now visible as an "approved" Time Machine backup volume. This means that my Air can truly work as it should - with only a wire for powering its battery, not for backing up. I really dig that all Macs on my network will auto-backup to my big shared volume.
Now if only Apple would make a feature to disable big backups while I am working. It seems that even with 802.11n, backing up 100MB of data while I am trying to use the web is slowing things down. Note that I am not running NAT on the Airport, due to its slowdown of network address translation (converting my single ISP provided IP address to my private range inside.) For my router with fail-over ISP connection, NAT and VPN tunneling and host modes, I use a Netgear business class router. More on what I am doing with that, later!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Geeking out with the Cranky Geeks
I will be a guest crank today on Cranky Geeks with my old friend John Dvorak - the head crank, today Wednesday the 27th. We go live to the web at 12:30pm PST and replays can be found here: Cranky Geeks Episode 105 - February 27th, 2008
Watch all of the crankyness if you are eating your desk for lunch today. :)
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Live CES 2008 Coverage on G4 TV with Dave Mathews
It's the first week of January and you know what that means! That's right, all of the electronics that you received for Christmas are now rendered obsolete thanks to the new product announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show.
This year I am working with the guys at G4 to bring you the latest in technology from the show floor. Tune in live January 7th and 8th at 4pm PST and 7pm Eastern on G4 TV (DirecTV 354) or tell your TiVo to record Consumer Electronics Show 2008 on both days to see what you will be looking for in your gadget future!
You can also keep up with us online at http://www.g4tv.com/CES/ and of course via my Flickr page by just clicking on the photo here.
This year I am working with the guys at G4 to bring you the latest in technology from the show floor. Tune in live January 7th and 8th at 4pm PST and 7pm Eastern on G4 TV (DirecTV 354) or tell your TiVo to record Consumer Electronics Show 2008 on both days to see what you will be looking for in your gadget future!
You can also keep up with us online at http://www.g4tv.com/CES/ and of course via my Flickr page by just clicking on the photo here.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Last Minute Gift Ideas for 2007
If you are up early in the Midwest, or chillin' in the cold Northeast; browse-into fm99.com on December 20th, 2007. I'll be a guest on Tommy & Rumble - on 99 FM - Hampton Virginia's rock station. This is my second time talking to the guys (but don't ask me which one of the guys is the Rumble) about gadgets and finally last minute holiday gifts for people who have everything. Like me. Tune in early - they are on from 5:30-10am Eastern time, and my segment will run a couple times... While I sleep in perpetual 60 degree California. Look, somebody's got to do it!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
PC Magazine Productivity Expo
It's time again for the PC Magazine Productivity Online Expo, which opens Thursday, October 25th (9:30AM - 6:00 ET/6:30AM - 3:00PM PT)
I'll be speaking on PC Magazine's online trade show, the Mobility Technology Online Expo. There will be a cast of other experts and characters speaking on how you can achieve excellence in the latest in mobile computing and connectivity.
My topics are: Productivity for Road Warriors: On-Demand ApplicationsFor low monthly fees, providers of on-demand applications keep small- and medium-size business from having to pay large up-front costs to keep mobile workers productive. And the good news is that the quality of on-demand applications has risen dramatically in recent years. In this interactive webcast, experts from PC Magazine and leaders from top on-demand application companies will show you how to optimize on-demand solutions for any kind of business.
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