IBM Accelerates Desktop Customer Choice With Support for Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell Software

announced that it will offer an integrated Open Collaboration Client Solution with support for Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system from Canonical Ltd. that is especially popular for desktops, laptops and thin clients.

Showing strong momentum around its IBM Lotus Notes 8 and IBM Lotus Symphony-based Open Collaboration Client Solution, IBM also announced a new agreement working with Red Hat targeting small and medium-sized enterprises, and momentum in the Open Collaboration Client Solution powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell that was announced in August 2007. The announcements were made at the opening of Lotusphere in Orlando.

IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution is a set of software products designed to help customers in all industries increase collaboration among employees, improve their productivity, and lower the total cost of information technology ownership. It is personal computing software that is based on open standards, providing businesses with a cost-effective and security-rich alternative to Microsoft desktops. Moving away from an entirely proprietary approach to computing to a platform based on open standards gives businesses the freedom to select the proper mix of software for their organization, based on user segmentation, in a heterogeneous environment, helping move them toward the desktops of the future.

"Today's announcements will help to accelerate the adoption of IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution, and further address customer demands around choice," said Inna Kuznetsova, cross-IBM executive for Linux. "Effective desktop management is of critical importance to businesses today. By providing an alternative to the proprietary desktop model through one based on open standards, businesses now have the freedom to select the proper mix of software to help improve collaboration, increase end-user productivity, and reduce total cost of ownership."

Red Hat
IBM today announced a new marketing initiative with Red Hat, targeted at small and medium-sized businesses, that combines Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop, IBM Lotus Notes client with Lotus Symphony and IBM Lotus Domino server.

Business partners that are Red Hat Advanced Business Partners and Lotus-authorized IBM Business Partners may sell the Red Hat and IBM Lotus products with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform Premium subscription and a six-month Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop trial. In addition, Red Hat will be providing a value-added services offer to qualified Red Hat Advanced Business Partners to provide end customers with implementation services for rapid, easy solution deployment. Jumpstart services and desktop/application migration services are provided by IBM Regional Systems Integrators such as CSSCorp.

"Red Hat is proud of our joint work with IBM to reduce the complexity of deploying and operating messaging and collaboration solutions," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Enterprise Linux Business at Red Hat. "This initiative is further evidence of our commitment to not only reduce our customer's acquisition costs, but to reduce their yearly operating expenses, while greatly increasing the security of their information."

Ubuntu
By combining the innovative user experience of the Ubuntu platform with the re-designed Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Symphony, customers will experience greater ease-of-use and comprehensive management of the desktop. Full support for Ubuntu within Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony is planned with Lotus Notes 8.5 in the second half of 2008. The Lotus Symphony office productivity suite is included with Lotus Notes 8 and is available as a separate download, at no additional charge. Ubuntu is released on a regular six-month cycle in more than 50 languages, and is backed with commercial support from Canonical.

"IBM's plans to deliver the IBM Open Collaboration Client Solution with Lotus Notes on the Ubuntu platform is a win for customers everywhere," said Mark Murphy, vice president of alliances, Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu. "Canonical is committed to bringing the best available productivity tools to its users on an open platform. Ubuntu users will now have an outstanding choice with Lotus Notes, while businesses will have a great choice with Lotus Domino. From a technical viewpoint, we are impressed how Lotus leverages the Eclipse platform to build and deliver rich client applications. This is an exciting development for Ubuntu users, too."

The Open Collaboration Client Solution includes advanced email and calendar capabilities, proven unified communication and collaboration functionality and lightweight yet powerful word processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities with Open Document Format (ODF) support. Because the Open Collaboration Client Solution is built on Lotus Expeditor, which is based on the open source Eclipse Rich Client Platform, business-ready social networking, team collaboration and portal technologies can easily be added to a Linux PC user's desktop.

Novell
IBM also announced strong momentum behind its Open Collaboration Client Solution powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell that was announced last August. Novell was the first distributor to integrate with IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution by offering a single click install process for SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell and IBM's Open Collaboration Client Solution, as well as migration and integration services provided by Value Added Distributors (VADs) around the Open Collaboration Client Solution. More than a dozen VADs worldwide have signed up, enabled, and are promoting the solution, including Arrow in the United States, driving demand for their top resellers and Avnet in Italy focused on public sector business and government customers.

"The rapid uptake of the Open Collaboration Client Solution by business partners is a clear indicator of its value to the market," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "These partners are seeking ways to help their customers increase productivity, strengthen desktop security and reduce total cost of ownership. Novell is excited to advance innovation in client computing and end-user collaboration by working with IBM."

"Today's announcements show the growing importance of openness and choice in the computing environments of our customers and partners," said Jeff Smith, vice president of open source and Linux in IBM Software Group. "IBM's market insight shows that collaboration is key to driving innovation in day-to-day business. These offerings combine IBM's strengths in collaboration, SOA, and Web 2.0 with our partners' strengths in open operating environments."

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Windows Internet Explorer 7 Forced update via WSUS February 12, 2008

For all of those systems administrators out there who have dealt with this beautiful situation before, Microsoft has once again decided that it will force IE7 onto its customers via WSUS. So, if you have blacklisted the 'upgrade' to your servers and desktops thus far, you will need to intervene yet again to stop it.

The official Microsoft KB article is here: KB 946202

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Using Google to power your business - Part 1

Because small and medium sized businesses power America, I thought it apt to share how Google can help grow and power your business. From now on I will refer to small and medium sized businesses as SMBs to cut down on unnecessary typing. There are a myriad of services that Google offers which can be used by SMBs, but today I will only focus on two of those: Blogger.com and Gmail.

Let's start with the fact that you're reading this post on blogger.com. Blogger.com is one of Google's many free services available to the aspiring internet entrepreneur. On blogger, you can create a blog, post to it regularly, share pictures and ideas, allow people to comment on your posts and even write about your business. A blog is an excellent place to post news about your business and talk about your business in general. This can also be a great place for attracting potential new customers who happen to run across your business blog while searching the internet. If your business blog talks about environmental issues then people searching for environmental issues may happen across your blog and see that you are in the business of providing environmental news, tips or services. This can be a great boost to your customer base and also give you a free advertising platform moving forward.

Most modern businesses rely on email for day to day communication. Email can be a great internal communication tool as well as a great advertising tool if your customer base signs up for a mailing list from your company. This allows you to email special news, deals and promotions to your customers. Google offers a free email service called Gmail. You can sign up for a Gmail account at http://www.gmail.com Gmail is by far one of the best and most flexible email services out there. It is primarily web-based meaning that you sign in on the internet and send and receive mail from there. It is also very easy to setup an email client like Microsoft Outlook, Eudora or Mozilla Thunderbird to send and receive mail. The one caveat to using Gmail is that by default you will have an '@gmail.com' email address i.e. smbtechadvice@gmail.com. If you want to change that, you can purchase a domain name from GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com) and tie that domain to your Gmail account pretty easily. Google provides easy tutorials for that, and I'm sure the nice people at GoDaddy would be glad to help if you need it.

I would also like to note here that you should sign up for a Gmail account first because your Gmail login becomes your login for all other Google services that you may want to use. This makes life extremely pleasant with only one username and password to remember for all of Google's services. With that said, I will dive into some other services that Google offers in future posts.

Good Luck!

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AOL to adopt XMPP (Jabber) as IM protocol

After a quick glance over the jabber.org site, it seems that AOL has now opened up their IM infrastructure to use the XMPP protocol. XMPP, also known as Jabber, is an open-source XML based protocol already in use for IM by internet giant Google.

The XMPP/Jabber platform has several advantages over proprietary protocols (like those of MSN and Yahoo!) The protocols are free, open, public and easily understandable. They are also standard, proven, decentralized (so that no one entity controls them,) secure and extensible. Code libraries are readily available to add or improve functionality, and both client and server versions are available if one wants to setup their own XMPP/Jabber server.

The host server specified for the new AIM over XMPP is:

xmpp.oscar.aol.com : 5222


From wiki.jabber.org:

How to Connect

1. JIDs like uin@aol.com or username@aol.com

2. Host: xmpp.oscar.aol.com : 5222

3. Allow SASL PLAIN

4. Turn on StartTLS

5. Make sure there is no '@' in the resource (bug in the service). Some clients by default add a resource with an @ in it. So you have to overwrite this.

Psi info

For Psi users: My Account -> Connection -> Encrypt connection: "Never"

Coccinella instructions

• Contact ID: AIMscreenname@xmpp.oscar.aol.com/blabla or UIN@xmpp.oscar.aol.com/blabla
• Click on More--> Connection-->enable "Use secure connection" and select "Use TLS and SASL"

Working Clients/Libraries

In general any XMPP compatible client/library.

• Exodus (http://code.google.com/p/exodus/)
• gloox (http://camaya.net/gloox)
• Psi (http://psi-im.org/)
• sleekxmpp (http://code.google.com/p/sleekxmpp/)
• Coccinella (http://coccinella.im/)
• Gajim (http://www.gajim.org/) (0.11.4 and svn)
• SAPO Messenger Mac (http://trac.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/sapo_msg_mac) (Version 1.0 (683) Dev Release)
• Smack (http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/smack/index.jsp)
• Spark (http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp)
• Miranda IM

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VMWare Server - A free introduction to VMWare and Virtualization

VMware is a software company that specializes in desktop and server virtualization. The most popular VMWare products are VMWare workstation (a desktop based virtualization software) and ESX Server (a server virtualization product.) ESX server is part of the Virtual Infrastructure 3 suite of enterprise virtualization products. For those who do not want to pay for an enterprise license before becoming more educated in virtualization, or who want to tinker with virtualization as a hobby (without incurring a cost,) VMWare server is the perfect option.

VMWare Server is the free virtualization product for Windows and Linux servers. You can download VMWare Server for free at http://www.vmware.com/download/server/. Note that Windows Server (and the accompanying license) is required to run VMWare Server on top of a Windows platform, while just about any distribution of Linux counts as a 'server' and can run VMWare server on top without licensing issues. VMWare Server allows companies to partition a physical server into multiple virtual machines to start experiencing the benefits of virtualization. Hobbyists can also accomplish the same on a reasonably powered desktop.

With the introduction out of the way, lets talk about what you can actually do with VMWare Server. Most IT departments have servers in production that are very under-utilized. Print servers, many web servers, one-off application servers and even some file servers are on physical hardware that is capable of running much more demanding applications. VMWare Server allows you to turn many of these physical servers into virtual machines that reside on one physical server. This will better utilize the resources of the single physical server. This also has the net effect of reducing the amount of hardware that a data center needs. Less hardware means less electricity for power and cooling. It's a win:win situation for IT.

For the hobbyist, VMWare server allows a person to tinker with other operating systems while maintaining a favorite OS to work on. On my personal desktop, for instance, I run Ubuntu 7.10 x64 as my main OS. The machine has a dual-core 3.0 GHz 64 bit AMD processor, 4 GB of RAM and an array of hard drives. Because I want to be able to use all 4GB of RAM, I chose to use the 64 bit version of Ubuntu. There are a multitude of Windows applications that I need to use on a daily basis while consulting for clients who run the Microsoft Windows platform. I use VMWare server to run several virtual machines (VMs) with Server 2003/2008, Exchange Server 2003/2007, SQL Server 2005, Terminal Server, SharePoint Server 2007, IIS, SCOM, etc. Without VMWare Server, I would need to have many individual PCs on my network imitating the various server operating systems and enterprise applications. Now, I can deploy, run, test, break, fix, etc., any of these operating systems and enterprise applications on a single machine. The best part is that I can do all of this without modifying the underlying base operating system on my machine. I can also save the VMs in various states for further testing or to archive for another project.

Hopefully, by now you can see how great of a technology virtualization is. VMWare server will allow you to test and tinker with this technology without modifying your main operating system and without a cost. If you want more information on virtualization or VMWare, leave a comment and I will answer your questions in new posts on this blog. You can also email me directly with questions. My email address is in the 'About Me' section on the main page.

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Static DNS with DHCP in Ubuntu

If you've ever found yourself in the position where you DHCP within a network, but want to use different DNS servers than the default network DNS servers, this tip might be for you. With Ubuntu in roaming mode, it will grab the first DHCP server it can find and the default DNS server for that network. Regardless of what DNS servers you list in your resolv.conf, if you have roaming mode enabled, Ubuntu dynamically re-creates resolv.conf on the fly for whatever network you are on. This is the way it's supposed to work. Often, however, you will find yourself on a network where you need to DHCP to get an IP, but you want to use a different DNS server than the default one (like OpenDNS.)

In order to do this, you will need to modify the dhclient.conf located in /etc/dhcp3/

$ sudo nano /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf

Inside of that file, you will want to prepend DNS servers to the resolve.conf. Prepending means that your specified DNS servers will be added to the beginning of the resolv.conf file (before the regular DNS servers,) resolving requests through your chosen DNS servers before any others. You can prepend your chosen DNS servers by adding the following line:

prepend domain-name-servers 123.123.123.123;

where 123.123.123.123 is the IP address of the DNS server that you want to use.
Note the semi-colon at the end of the line. In addition, you can specify multiple DNS servers by using a comma separated list such as:

prepend domain-name-servers 123.123.123.123,222.222.222.222;

where 123.123.123.123 is one DNS server and 222.222.222.222 is the other.


If you wish to supersede the normal DNS servers entirely, use:

supersede domain-name-servers 123.123.123.123;

Go ahead and write out the file (CTRL-O) and exit (CTRL-X) then restart your networking services:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

(or disable/enable from the GUI)

You should be on your way to non-DHCP force-fed DNS servers!

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Oracle buys BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion

Following my earlier post about the greatest day in Tech for 2008 (thus far at least,) the industry was also graced by the news that Oracle has agreed to purchase BEA systems for approximately $8.5 Billion USD. Oracle which is best known for its enterprise database and BEA which is best known for its middle ware platform have been in discussions about acquisitions for over a month now. Billionaire investor Carl Ichan hinted to the pending deal a while back when he complained that BEA had rejected a previous buyout offer from Oracle. This purchase will allow Oracle to move into a lucrative place in the market which involves tying together key business processes, business process management, and tightly integrated SOA. BEA's product is a direct competitor to IBM's WebSphere and SAP's NetWeaver.

You can find out more about Oracle at: http://www.oracle.com
You can find out more about BEA at: http://www.bea.com

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SUN Microsystems buys Open-Source Database MySQL for $1 Billion

In what has turned out to be a great day in Tech (the best day in 2008 so far if you ask me,) Sun Microsystems announced a deal to buy MySQL for $1 Billion USD. This bolsters SUN's position within the open-source world by bringing an open-source database application into a product portfolio that already includes the popular open-source JAVA platform. This is a great investment for SUN since MySQL drives some of the world's largest websites.

You can read more about SUN at: http://www.sun.com

You can read more about MySQL at: http://www.mysql.com

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Dell Optiplex GX620 ATI Radeon X600 - Ubuntu 7.10 Dual Screen

This post is for those that have a Dell Optiplex GX620 with the ATI Radeon X600 graphics card and molex dual monitor splitter. If you want to have true dual monitor use instead of the mirrored screen setup that Ubuntu 7.10 defaults to, make sure that the proprietary ATI driver is installed and enabled via the Restricted Drivers Manager.

Reboot the machine after the driver is installed and make a copy of your xorg.conf file.

$ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak

Then copy the text below into a file and name it xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier     "Default Layout"
Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice    "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice    "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice    "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# path to defoma fonts
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
FontPath     "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load  "i2c"
Load  "bitmap"
Load  "ddc"
Load  "dri"
Load  "extmod"
Load  "freetype"
Load  "glx"
Load  "int10"
Load  "vbe"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option     "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
Driver      "kbd"
Option     "CoreKeyboard"
Option     "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option     "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option     "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
Driver      "mouse"
Option     "CorePointer"
Option     "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option     "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option     "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option     "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "stylus"
Driver      "wacom"
Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option     "Type" "stylus"
Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"  # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "eraser"
Driver      "wacom"
Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option     "Type" "eraser"
Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"  # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "cursor"
Driver      "wacom"
Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option     "Type" "cursor"
Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"  # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier   "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync    28.0 - 57.0
VertRefresh  43.0 - 60.0
Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Option     "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option     "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option     "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
Option     "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option     "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option     "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier  "ATI Technologies Inc RV380 [Radeon X600 (PCIE)]"
Driver      "ati"
Option     "MonitorLayout" "LCD, CRT"
Option     "CRT2Position" "RightOf"
Option     "MetaModes" "1024x768-1024x768"
# Option     "MergedXinerama" "on"
Option     "MergedNonRectangular" "true"
Option     "MergedFB" "true"
BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver      "fglrx"
Option     "DesktopSetup" "horizontal"
Option     "OverlayOnCRTC2" "1"
Option     "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option     "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]"
Driver      "fglrx"
BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen      1
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device     "ATI Technologies Inc RV380 [Radeon X600 (PCIE)]"
Monitor    "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth     24
SubSection "Display"
 Depth     1
 Modes    "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
 Depth     4
 Modes    "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
 Depth     8
 Modes    "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
 Depth     15
 Modes    "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
 Depth     16
 Modes    "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
 Depth     24
 Modes    "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
DefaultDepth     24
SubSection "Display"
 Viewport   0 0
 Depth     24
 Modes    "1280x1024" "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]"
Device     "aticonfig-Device[1]"
Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
DefaultDepth     24
SubSection "Display"
 Viewport   0 0
 Depth     24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode         0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option     "Composite"

EndSection

Then copy the new xorg.conf file you just made into your /etc/X11 folder.

$ sudo cp /home/your_username/Desktop/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reboot the machine again and you should be golden.

Hope this helps out. If you have any questions, leave me a comment.

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Sustainable IT - Ways to make and keep your business Green

Sustainable IT

With the Green Revolution in full effect, organizations are looking for ways to grow their business in sustainable ways. IT is a great place to begin your mini green revolution within your enterprise. Server virtualization via products like VMWare allows you to consolidate many physical servers onto fewer physical servers by converting servers into virtual machines. This not only reduces the overall cost of hardware in your data center, but also reduces the amount of electricity required to power and cool your data center. This is a very green way to save money and grow your business responsibly.

Yet another way to help green your business is to install Linux or keep Windows XP on your workstations in lieu of installing Vista. Vista is a known resource hog that almost always requires new hardware to use. Not only that, but the business benefits of switching from XP to Vista are ZERO. Replacing all or most of your enterprise desktops for a Vista upgrade that offers no tangible business benefits to your company is a lose:lose situation all around. You will waste valuable capital to make the upgrade that will not help business. You will waste employee time (and salary with it) during and after the upgrade process. In addition, every desktop that you replace will have to be recycled or disposed of in some way. This is the biggest waste of resources a company could possibly endure for no tangible benefit. For the mean time (and the foreseeable future) it is more fiscally and environmentally responsible to keep Windows XP or switch to Linux for the corporate desktop. You will save money, increase value for your share holders, and most importantly, save the environment from a seriously unwarranted negative impact.

You can find out more about VMWare at: http://www.vmware.com

You can sign a "Keep XP" petition at: http://www.savexp.com

You can find out more about Ubuntu Linux at: http://www.ubuntu.com

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DRM is DEAD - Amazon.com now offering DRM free music from the BIG 4

This is just a quick blurb to let everyone know that DRM as we know it has finally died. Amazon.com recently announced that they would be offering DRM free music downloads of music from the Sony BMG record label. Sony BMG was the last of the BIG 4 labels clinging onto DRM and the old business model. It took a very long time for the BIG 4 record labels to realize that DRM was only harming their paying customers. A recent move by artists such as Radiohead to offer their music online free, or at a price the customer determined fair, finally broke the will and the backs of the BIG 4. As a proponent of fair use rights and an opponent of DRM in any form, I was elated to hear that artists and consumers brought the record industry to their knees. I expect the same to follow with the movie industry very soon. In the mean time, there are still a few online music download vendors that still use DRM in some fashion - Apple's iTunes and Best Buy's Rhapsody service are two that come to mind.

The DRM-free music format from Amazon.com works with all MP3 players to include Apple's iPod. I urge everyone to stop purchasing from iTunes or Rhapsody until they drop all DRM as well. Everyone should head on over to Amazon.com and purchase all of their music downloads from them. This shows support for a company who fought for the cause of the consumer and refused to allow the record labels to dictate the market. For decades the music industry has ripped off both artists and consumers, and now it's time to recognize those who fought hard for us as consumers. Any company who still uses DRM is supporting the old model of artist and consumer neglect.

Please support Amazon.com and all those who have made great strides toward this great day when music is finally available as it should be. You can find the Amazon.com MP3 download section but going to Amazon.com and selecting 'Digital Downloads' then 'MP3 Downloads' from the main page, or via this direct link: http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b/ref=sa_menu_dmusic1?ie=UTF8&node=163856011&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=16VF1V61APVXTDHP7HFK

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Microsoft Office Format as ISO Standard - I hope not.

One of the things I absolutely hate about the business of IT is vendor lock-in. While it is often in the vendor's interest to lock a customer into their technology, nothing is more frustrating to an IT manager than trying to switch vendors or technologies and facing an uphill battle fighting data inconsistencies and proprietary formats. While many image formats (such as jpg, gif & png) are open standards and the same across all operating systems, many document formats (such as Microsoft's doc, xls & ppt) are not open standards and do not work the same across operating systems let along office suite applications. This is a major point of frustration for organizations wishing to abandon applications that they no longer want to use in favor of alternate suites.

I'm sure most people remember the headache that came when trying to convert from the old Word Perfect format (wpd) to Microsoft Office Document (doc) format. Although many alternative office suites like Open Office, Star Office, iWork and Lotus Symphony are able to read and modify Microsoft Office formats, there are compatibility issues with the Microsoft formats that may cause the document to look different (at best) or not open at all (at worst.) Since the Microsoft Office formats are not based on open standards, no alternative office suites can reach 100% compatibility in every aspect of these formats. This has enraged many people and organizations, and efforts are underway to ensure that any file formats used in the future will be open standards based. Microsoft has relied on this form of vendor lock-in to maintain their monopoly over the software industry. Now that their position is threatened, they are making an attempt to have their new office format (OOXML) made into an ISO standard. After looking over their proposition to the ISO, I can only say that I disagree with allowing their OOXML format to become an ISO standard. The noooxml.org website most accurately summarizes the various reasons for this.

Their petition states:

"I ask the national members of ISO to vote "NO" in the ballot of ISO DIS 29500 (Office OpenXML or OOXML format) for the following reasons:

1. There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format (ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry, government and citizens;
2. There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification: Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file format which complies with the OOXML specification;
3. There is information missing from the specification document, for example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;
4. More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard do not validate as XML;
5. There is no guarantee that anybody can write software that fully or partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to patent lawsuits or patent license fees by Microsoft;
6. This format conflicts with existing ISO standards, such as ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3 (cryptographic hash);
7. There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids any date before the year 1900: such bugs affect the OOXML specification as well as software applications like Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007.
8. This standard proposal was not created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft alone."

I ask everyone to consider every single one of these eight points and consider if it would be in everyones' interest to continue what has been happening thus far in the software industry, or it is better to force Microsoft to adhere to true open standards that are already in place. Understand that adherence to true open standards means that people and businesses will be empowered to change software vendors at will if they feel the need to. This means that if a competitor to Microsoft offers an office suite that meets your business needs at a cheaper price, you can change suites and your business data will be read and modified exactly the same as it was before. Not only that, but if you feel that a software vendor is no longer meeting your needs or taking advantage of your business, you may switch to another vendor just as easily. In my eyes, this is the way all business should be. No company should be allowed to have a monopoly or force organizations to do business with them against the organizations' will. No software vendor should be able to stand in the way of innovation or progress through underhanded means such as vendor lock-in. If you feel the same way, I urge you to click on over to NoOOXML.org and sign their petition.

You can reach the petition at http://www.noooxml.org/petition

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Python and Django - A match made in web development heaven.

Over the my years as a systems administrator, engineer and architect, I have run into may situations where scripting a solution to a problem was necessary. The majority of the time, I turn to Python to get things done. I have been using Python for as long as I can remember, and since it is a multi-platform tool, it really helps me by consolidating my effort to one language that will work across all of the operating systems that I work with. Python is a very powerful and flexible language, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a novice to programming or veterans who want to extend their skill set and develop more rapidly. You can find out more about Python by visiting http://www.python.org

Recently, I came across a project that involved some web development, and being the Python user that I am, I wanted to see if I could use Python instead of PHP or Perl. I was elated to find out that there were indeed some nice frameworks available for web development using Python.

I have been involved in the 'web' part of IT for longer than a decade now, and I almost always used LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) to bring dynamic websites online. As much as I like PHP, I wanted to develop more rapidly, and I knew a few colleagues who were using Ruby via Ruby on Rails to rapidly develop large scalable websites and web-based applications. After reading through some Ruby documentation, I saw many similarities between Ruby and Python. This led me to search for a Python based web framework similar to Rails.

I found two frameworks that seem to be vying for the top spot - TurboGears and Django. Each have their advantages and disadvantages, but after all was said and done, I decided to go with Django. Django has more documentation readily available, and it seems like the Django project is moving along quite well. This was important to me because I did not want to implement a project on a framework that would become obsolete next month. This is not to detract anything from TurboGears, I just felt that Django fit my style better.

I have been using Python/Django now for a few weeks and I am really impressed with it. I love how all of the SQL calls and mundane coding tasks that I had to do with PHP have been abstracted away, leaving the 'fun' part of development all to me. I highly recommend the Python/Django stack to anyone who wants to rapidly develop web applications. You can find out more about Django at http://www.djangoproject.com/

Being that Python and Django are both cross-platform and that Apache and MySQL are also cross-platform, everyone can use these tools, regardless of operating system. True multi-platform availability is the greatest advantage of any development framework as far as I am concerned. Being that I work with Linux and Windows environments most of the time, I am glad that I can apply solutions across each without worrying about compatibility.

After talking to my colleagues about Ruby on Rails, I will probably be tinkering around with RoR over the next few weeks. I'll be sure to talk about my experiences with RoR on here as soon as I get a chance. If you have any information that may be helpful to others regarding Python/Django, please leave comments.

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Canonical Releases Version 1.0 of Bazaar Version Control Tool for Efficient Developer Collaboration

Decentralised version control system eases management of Distributed, out-sourced or open source development projects

LONDON, December 14, 2007 -- Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu and Bazaar projects, today announced the general availability of Bazaar 1.0, a version control system enabling multiple, distributed developers to contribute to software projects independently in a controlled, managed way.

"Bazaar is designed for global teams of collaborating developers," said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project. "A large open source project like Ubuntu requires an extremely intuitive, robust and flexible version control system to accommodate hundreds of people working on shared code. But distributed software engineering is not limited to the open source world: corporate and proprietary software development is increasingly done by teams that span companies, continents and timezones and need the ability to manage their work in an efficient distributed fashion."

Traditional centralised version control systems are designed for closed development teams that have local network access to the main code base and can be managed centrally. This model does not work well for outsourced software development, or for development that is spread across multiple locations within the same company. Bazaar supports a more distributed, disconnected style of development, with teams working at their own pace sharing their changes and integrating the work of other teams spread around the world. Bazaar has been used successfully by commercial projects with hundreds of developers spanning multiple continents. The benefits of distributed version control can also apply to small teams as well as teams that are co-located - Bazaar can eliminate the need to manage a central version control server for small workgroups.

Bazaar is available under the GPL, or commercial terms for integration into third-party commercial products. Canonical also provides support for companies that adopt the tool.

Bazaar is distinguished by being:

• Easy to learn and use: Software developers become productive quickly with Bazaar, regardless of previous experience. Bazaar provides a straightforward command-line UI, a graphical interface, and integration with popular developer tools such as Eclipse.
• Extensible: More than 20 Bazaar plugins extend it with new commands and features, connect it to other systems, through a stable Python API.
• Easily deployable: No dedicated server is needed, just FTP access to a web server. Bazaar also supports traditional centralised development for teams that prefer that style of collaboration.
• Fast: Developers can commit their code locally any time so they are less dependent on coordination with the central code base. Bazaar encourages development of features and fixes in independent branches which can be merged into the main line of development at any time.
• Robust: Renaming of files and directories (vital to the the development process) is handled perfectly. Text or naming conflicts are flagged and resolved without data loss.
• Adaptive: Bazaar adapts to fit the needs and work patterns of a team, whether they are working closely or as distributed individuals. Bazaar facilitates agile practices including pairing, code review, and continuous integration.
• Supported: Support for Bazaar is available from Canonical's highly rated commercial support service, and from the Bazaar community itself. Bazaar is compatible with GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OS X or any system which runs Python 2.4 or above.

There are already more than 50 open source projects using Bazaar in its pre-release version. There are also numerous large private development projects that are using Bazaar in distributed projects.
Projects can host public Bazaar branches in Launchpad, Canonical's free code hosting service.

“Bazaar is designed to support models of collaboration that have emerged since the Internet came to dominate software development practices,” said Martin Pool, project leader of Bazaar. “We set ourselves the challenge of creating a tool that open source developers will love to use, and have been delighted with the reception Bazaar is getting in both the commercial and free software communities.”

Availability

Bazaar is available for download from http://bazaar-vcs.org/Download.

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Ubuntu for Virtual Appliances - JeOS

VMWORLD/SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – September 11, 2007 – Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, today announced the availability of its Ubuntu JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) edition.

Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced "Juice") is an efficient variant of the popular desktop and server operating system, configured specifically for virtual appliances.

"The efficiencies inherent in an operating system that is built for a virtualised world mean that ISVs looking to deploy their applications in this lucrative and growing market have an obvious deployment target in the Ubuntu JeOS Edition," said Stephen O'Grady, analyst at RedMonk. "As the delivery platforms and economics of licensing continue to change, the flexibility and reach of the Ubuntu operating system make it an increasingly popular choice for far sighted ISVs."

ISVs looking to develop virtual appliances will have a compelling platform in Ubuntu JeOS, an OS optimised for virtualisation that greatly reduces the complexity and maintenance overhead normally associated with general purpose operating systems. Ubuntu JeOS Edition has been tuned to take advantage of key performance technologies of the latest virtualisation products from VMware. This combination of reduced size and optimized performance ensures that Ubuntu JeOS Edition delivers a highly efficient use of server resources in large virtual deployments.

"Canonical has produced a robust virtualised OS core in the Ubuntu JeOS Edition that is optimized for virtual appliances," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. "Virtual Appliances are fundamentally changing how software is developed and deployed, with ISVs now including a thin and highly optimized OS along with their application in a ready-to-run virtual machine. We are excited that Canonical is providing Ubuntu JeOS for vendors interested in building VMware virtual appliances."

Business Objects today unveiled a virtual appliance based on Ubuntu JeOS that is being demonstrated at VMworld.

"Ubuntu fits naturally into the place where computing is happening today," said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Project. "Virtualisation is the key driver of data center restructuring at present, and Ubuntu's popularity with developers makes it an excellent choice for the next generation of virtualized environments. We have worked with VMware to deliver a version of Ubuntu that complements its exceptional virtualisation capabilities, providing a solution for the ISVs building virtual appliances and for the enterprises planning to deploy them."

Find JeOS at: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/jeos

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