Somewhere out there!

This is pretty clever: Running Windows on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud with Qemu and Linux.

Technorati Tags: ec, qemu, windows

rPath is some thing I’ve been meaning to learn about for a while. I particularly like their view on the future of software and virtualisation, which is similar to my view of software appliances.

Linux.com | Talking virtualization with rPath
Another trend that Adams expects to become clearer by the end of 2007 is a concern about how to manage virtual applications. As virtual applications come into wider use, Adams suggests, “the normal cycle of supply and demand will actually result in everyone consuming more software.” If that happens, then the question becomes, “What sort of characteristics does a virtual appliance need to be more maintainable, more manageable?”

Traditionally, software vendors have assumed that management of their products is the customers’ concerns. However, as virtualization takes hold, Adams expects to see vendors as starting to offer managed services. “One of our hypotheses about what virtual appliances can do is freeing the end user from worrying about the IT stack, operating system, and other issues, because they’re essentially black box and having the software provide all that, which shifts responsibility and control” Adams says. “Now, [if that happens] you have to ask: ‘If I were a software vendor, what would I need?'”

Manageability is one of the aspects that I think will drive the uptake of Software Appliances. Virtualisations creates the platform to allow the outsourcing of application management to those best suited to handle, while allowing the client to retain ownership of their data and enviroment.

Technorati Tags: virtualisation, software appliances, rpath

From GANB.

Since wordpress.com wasn’t an option due to the CNAME issues, I’ve shifted the blog to Dreamhost. I’ve got a Dreamhost account for other things, but it will serve well enough for this blog allowing me to retire one of my virtual machines.

My old theme was using some old functions which are now broken, so I’m temporarily using the default WordPress theme. However it seems to be broken for the index page. I’ve been meaning to update my theme for a while, but never find the time.  Probably have to sort it out later, seems to be a bug in the sidebar.php.

I’m thinking of moving to wordpress.com so I can ignore the monthly hassle of upgrading WordPress avoid any security issues. Particularily when I’m out of town this is a PITA.

Had an issue with nod32 not updating on one of my computers today. The c:\temp\ directory was missing. Nod32 was in silent mode and it seems that this error is not sufficiently urgent enough to warn the user. The it was refusing to download the latest dat files, probably because it was trying to unrar the update.ver file into the non-existent c:\temp\.

Technorati Tags: nod32, anti-virus, bug-fix

Also discovered Scrybe, the online/offline calendar and organizer from TechCrunch, it looks very cool. It would be interesting to know if it can sync with my Nokia E61.

Check the demo video on the Scrybe site, it has been put together very well.

Technorati Tags: calendering

From Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect:

Google quietly added a small feature to Gmail this week called Mail Fetcher. When that feature launched, Gmail became perfect.

Mail Fetcher allows users to access non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. If you have a Yahoo email account, and a work email account, etc., you can simply access that email from within Gmail, using POP settings. Gmail will now work in a very similar way as Outlook does on the PC desktop.

Although savvy users are already ‘forward’ their mail, this feature will likely make Gmail much easier to use for the other set of users.

Technorati Tags: gmail, pop, email

Streamlined is a framework, on top of Rails, that allows you to quickly generate interfaces for your ActiveRecord models. It started as a way to generate Administrative backends, but has become more general purpose over time.

Check the screencasts, it seems very functional.

Technorati Tags: rails

Thanks to José Canelas a link to Puppet which is an interesting new config management system. Plus some videos of the author describing his system.

As a bonus it is ruby based.

Technorati Tags: config, management, sysadmin