Addicted To 1’s and 0’s

Remember how I got that ipod shuffle from Startupschwag.com? Well, if you hurry and donate now in the charity drive that Brandon Barr has embarked upon, growing a Picasso mustache for the entire month of May, you could win that ipod shuffle! If at the end of May he reaches his goal of $1000, the ipod will be given away to a RANDOM donator. That means even if you only donate $5, you still have a chance to win the ipod!
Go checkout my post on brentter.com for more details or go directly to the donation site!

UPDATE 5/29/08:He’s reached his goal of $1000!! Thanks to everyone who donated, the drawing for the free ipod will occur on June 1st and we’ll contact the winner via email/phone.

Ok, well Open Blue Dragon officially was released 3 days ago, but who’s counting…. it’s the first freely available, enterprise level JAVA CFML server released under the GPLv3 open source project. They plan to release a pre-configured version for both VMWare and Amazon’s EC2’s service, however in the meantime you can head on over to their download page and grab the actual source files, the J2EE WAR distribution, or a pre-reconfigured jetty instance (easy install). There’s also already an instructional video on how to install it on your mac in their forums. Released by New Atlanta, this is a big move to keep Cold Fusion developers from having to learn a new language (let the flame war/hate mail begin)… although the way that they’re releasing it is pretty-cool. It’s designed to run seamlessly with even the ’soon to be released’ Windows Server 2008 ensuring those wanting to switch over to becoming a .net shop/provider, now don’t have to give up any cold fusion apps that might be in place. By the way, Blue Dragon is used to help host power-social-networking site myspace.com…. so this isn’t your small-time server engine.

Also released (today though), was the long awaited, much talked about Open Solaris enterprise server as well. Easily integrated with virtualization software like VMWare or VirtualBox or even installed by itself via the live-cd, you can find all the various methods of download on their site as well as you have the opportunity to get an official cd sent to you via mail (if you act fast that is). They do admit to leaving out a few install options that are present in the current Solaris 11 update, however they claim that might change in the near future. What they did not leave out of this release were the best parts (in my opinion) - The ZFS file system, DTrace as well as their patented Solaris Containers which make virtualization a breeze. I think they skipped out on the SPARC integration but last I checked I didn’t have any type of mainframes lying around here, so the versions provided work great on my machine!

It’s been a big week for open-source releases of once expensive server software. I get the feeling this can only make things harder for companies like Microsoft, who still haven’t released the latest Microsoft Server 2008 from beta yet, to compete when similar enterprise level resources are available at no cost. It’s only due time until they go open-source as well…. although I’d say it’d still be a few more years.

For the last year, I’ve been a subscriber to a new venture called www.startupschwag.com. For a nominal fee they send out a monthly mailing that is similar to any gift bag you’d get at your typical web related conference - tshirts, stickers, keychains, etc.. all from new companies trying to get their name out there to the masses in hopes of angel funding. Well, when the service was first offered I was one of the original people to sign-up, figuring in the least I’d get something “interesting” from time-to-time, however have up until now been rather disappointed. The shirts are hit-or-miss, the stickers have repeated themselves, and I’m pretty sure the first package had 10x more content than this last one. Included with each mailing is a sheet explaining the contents of your bag and a brief bio behind the company that provided each product.

This week however I opened the bag to find a nice little surprise. Along with the usual tshirt (for Pownce actually - making this one of the “good months”) was the sheet explaining the contents but also including a line that there was also a “little something extra for a few subscribers.” I guess I’m just that lucky because the extra piece of schwag that was found in the mailing bag was none-other than a brand-new iPod Shuffle.

If this was meant as a way to get me posting about your service, well……it worked.

If not - then I’m happy to see that the monthly fees for products you probably get for free has finally come back around and you were able to provide those of us who’ve shelled out enough of our money for a service (which adds up to a lot when you consider the # of months in service and compare it against the quality of merchandise that was sent in return) with something that is in fact, pretty f’in sweet schwag.

Kudos, and thanks for the ipod. I already have one, so am currently thinking of what kind of contest I could offer it up as the grand-prize that would creatively benefit a non-profit. So far I’m thinking along the lines of finding a charity that could use a light homepage refresh/logo redesign and offering up the ipod + other prizes in exchange for contest submissions…. any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, go check-out www.startupschwag.com (and thanks).

Pretty much everyone’s who has grown up in the United States and is at least 10 years old knows what the Encyclopedia Brittanica is. In fact, the older you are, the more familiar you probably are with the collection. Any type of research, especially if it took place while in elementary school, would usually start by rummaging through the library of books to find sources for your work. Even now, this 250 year old company still offers their yearly updated 32 volume set (with free shipping for only $1395!) and the digitized DVD/CD version (for a lesser $39.99, probably because it doesn’t involve shipping 90 pounds worth of books) via their website. Topics covered in the collection are written by leading experts in their field, including Nobel Peace Prize winners and authors with equally impressive backgrounds. For the last two centuries, Encyclopedia Britannica was the quinnesential source for knowledge for just about any topic….That is of course, until the arrival of wikipedia.

Now, searching wikipedia for definitions, articles, etc.. has taken the place that once was held by the shelf of encyclopedias that could be found at every single school and library. This put the publishing company up against a monsterous rival. How do you compete with something that is completely free? Books, DVD’s, enticing accomplished writers to submit articles all cost money, and Chris Anderson’s “Free” plan wouldn’t help them ensure a 2009 version of the series would be released, but they knew that something had to change.

What ended up changing was…… you guessed it…. their website. They’ve gone all web 2.0 on us. Now you can embed a variety of widgets, all via RSS feeds, into your own site ranging from specific topics of interest as well as neat little feeds that give you a Daily Quiz, Quote of the Day, Featured Contributer, Featured Media, On This Day In History, and much more. Specific topics and articles can be pulled from their massive online archives by signing up to a free new service they’re now calling WebShare. Using this service you can not only reference one of the premier authorities in subject matter directly on your website, but also interact with the company if you require something that isn’t already offered.

They’re giving fun, useful widgets away to the public for free, then are providing resources to authors, webmasters, and bloggers alike with hopes of enticing their readers to sign up for the online service.

For instance, If I was writing an article on one of our past presidents, I could pull a sample snippet from the massive presidential section of the Encyclopedia to accompany my article:

Users wanting more would then have the ability to sign up to learn everything there is to know about the man via Britannica’s subscription online version of their encyclopedia. Unlike wikipedia, you would know that the information you were reading was authentic, not to mention the fact that it would include more media/resources than your average wikipedia page.

Go checkout Britannica’s new website, as I said, they’ve revamped it to incorporate Flash, RSS feeds, widgets, and even now have an official Twitter account. So for all you twitter folks, feel free to add www.twitter.com/EBWebShare and tweet with some books from your childhood.

Well, apparently HP’s foray into the online storage market via a service appropriately named “Upline” has been rather short-lived. If you try to log-in or even attempt to create a new account you are greeted with a simple: “The HP Upline Service is temporarily unavailable” graphic (as pictured above). Also temporarily down is their online customer service “Chat” feature.

Going to the main website - www.upline.com would not make you think anything was wrong with the service, as there is no mention of it until you either click buy now or try to log in. I’m sure that only adds to the frustration of anyone who was using it as a backup service, especially if they find themselves desperately needing to perform any type of operating system re-install.

WebWorkerDaily reports that an email from HP was sent out two days ago stating that, “we fully anticipate that suspension of the Upline Service will be temporary and short in duration, and will notify you when the Upline Service is operational again.”
I am going to have to share their commentary on this one in saying that just how soon the service will be re-activated seems to be up to anyones guess.

As per my recent posting on this recent addition to the file-sharing service market, HP was attempting to enter a market already saturated with not only old CDN (Content Delivery Network) competitors, but also a gaggle of brand new ventures taking advantage of the recent “Cloud-Computing” trend.

No news yet on why the service is down, but it should serve as a lesson that it’s better to offer a product that is dependable than rush out a beta version with hopes of keeping up with the competition.