Pre-Thanksgiving note and more switching

My laptop hard drive bit the dust yesterday, but I give pre-Thanksgiving thanks to the folks at Centerbeam who keep my laptop backed up every night via Connected.  Connected is really amazing.  It is truly freeing not to worry about whether or not your machine is being backed up, then being able to retrieve files yourself via a nice GUI over the Internet without asking your IT guys to get backup tapes.

On another note, I'm going to be switching from Radio Userland to Movable Type for weblog posting.  I'll probably keep Radio as my main aggregator, though I'm looking at web-based solutions like Bloglines and Oddpost.  We're already using Movable Type for TechWatch and I find that waiting while my Radio machine boots up sometimes kills my inspiration to post.  I'll be following these instructions to do it.  Hopefully, this weblog will be Movable Type-driven by the end of the Thanksgiving holidays -- stay tuned (I might not be posting as I make the transition).

Visit to the CRT graveyard

Last week, I took Thursday off to do some cleaning up around the house, and one item on the agenda was dumping an old 14-inch monitor.  It had been actually been functioning, but not knowing of anyone who would want such a thing, I took the old "put it out on the street and see if anyone takes it" approach.  Of course, a group of rambunctious neighborhood kids sensed the inherent lack of value in the old monitor and proceeded to raise it above their heads and drop it on the sidewalk, leaving me with a true toxic waste disposal problem.

To make a long story short, I had to pay the City of Berkeley $16 to take it off my hands, and there were piles and piles of 14 and 15-inch monitors stacked in the recycling area.  I felt just a little sullied for adding to it, but I'm glad they were at least recycling them.  (An aside: Berkeley residents feel guilty about many environmental issues.  There's always a traffic jam of CO2-emitting cars at the recycling center near my house).

I did a little research on the problem from a government policy standpoint and found that a bill was introduced (SB 1523) to deal with the issue back in August 2002, but was vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis the next month.  Fast forward to September 2003 and a bill was passed that will add on an additional $6-10 to monitors and televisions purchased by Californians to pay for their recycling.  I haven't researched the CRT recycling matter enough to have an opinion about all the different approaches, but you can follow those links and form your own.  Everyone does seem to agree that it's a problem.

Meanwhile, there are poor souls on eBay trying to sell 14-inch monitors for $14.99, plus $15 shipping.   As I write this, you only have 6 days and 4 hours to jump on that one.  Just be sure to save a little cash for when you have to dump it.

The improving IT economy

In this week's InfoWorld column, "The IT economy looks brighter," I take note of the seemingly improving economy and IT environment.  Everywhere I turn, optimism abounds.  On Friday, I gave a talk about the Test Center to a group of CTOs in LA, and the optimism in the room was palpable.  There was talk of hiring and larger budgets.  It's a little too early to tell if things are really turning around this time, but here's hoping.

Wireless electricity

I was in a vendor meeting earlier this week when someone noted that the "last wire problem," i.e. wireless electricity, has actually been solved -- check out MobileWise.  Somehow I missed this.

This is one of the coolest things I've seen, enough for me to suggest that you actually sit through the Flash demo of the product (something I never do) -- just click on "view demo now" on the MobileWise home page.

I want it.

Building an enterprise data center

After reading my most recent column about the importance of HVAC and electrical power in IT operations, a reader wrote in to ask if I knew of any formal tools or materials to help in designing and building out a data center.  A few months ago, PJ Connolly of our Test Center showed me a copy of a book that goes into detail about data center design:  Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology, by Rob Snevely.  I wish I had grabbed a copy then, but you can view select pages from the book here.

Apple and wi-fi -- not simple enough

There's no question that Apple has been a wi-fi innovator and deserves recognition for helping bring it into the mainstream.  Apple also deserves recognition for ease-of-use, ease-of-configuration, and the "it just works" quality of their operating environment in general.  I'm growing fonder of the Mac every day -- after compiling apache with mod_perl from source on my Mac this weekend, I'm pretty amazed.

So why when I give a WEP key to a non-IT Mac user at InfoWorld does that person have to ask me: "Is the key 40-bit hex, 40-bit ASCII, 128-bit hex, 128-bit ASCII, or LEAP?"  Because that's what OS X asks in its interface.  C'mon, Apple, you can do better than that.  While I'm a big fan of OS X, the Windows XP interface for connecting to a wi-fi network is a lot more intuitive and doesn't involve discussions of hex vs. ASCII. 

My life is synchronized (finally)

Quick summary of my Bluetooth experiences:  Bluetooth rocks (despite all the talk out there about bluejacking), but managing basic data synchronization across devices is a massive pain -- but there is a truly elegant solution to this problem, and it comes from Apple's iSync (more on that later).

Now, more detail on my foray into Bluetooth.  Until a year ago, I was using Palm Desktop and an old Palm V to manage my calendar, contacts, and to do list.  I decided to check out the PocketPC, so I migrated all my data to MS Outlook syncing with the PocketPC via MS ActiveSync.  When I decided to get a Powerbook (on its way but not here yet), I realized that syncing with the PocketPC wouldn't work, or would at least involve a lot of aggravating hacks, so I decided to go back to Palm, buying a Tungsten T3 with Bluetooth.  Now all I had to do was get my Outlook data into the Palm and I would be all set.

The simple data migration turned out to be the hardest part.  I followed all the instructions to install Palm's HotSync and configured HotSync to "Desktop overwrites handheld" (my Palm was empty at that point and all my latest data was in Outlook on my desktop).  The first HotSync failed.  I did some searching and found that Palm had issued an update to fix some problems with Outlook and Tungsten T3 synchronization, so I downloaded it and installed it.  I ran a HotSync and it worked -- the only problem is that the HotSync update installation changed my preferences back to "Synchronize the files," and even worse, my Palm Desktop data files from a year ago (back when I was using the Palm V) were present on my computer, so HotSync synchronized all my old data onto the Palm.  Yuck.  A mess, but I had some many copies of my current data on so many devices that I knew I could recover somehow.

At that point, it got confusing and I lost track of exactly what was happening. . . somehow in the process the Palm synchronized back up to Outlook and blew away the current copy of my data with the old stuff.  Now I had two options:  get the completely up-to-date data on my PocketPC back into Outlook or restore my Outlook data from a 4-day-old backup.  Fortunately, I was able to do the former via MS ActiveSync, then the next HotSync from Outlook to the Palm worked.  I ended up with a dozen or so duplicated contacts out of close to 600, but it was manageable.  Still, why does it have to be this hard?

Well, it doesn't really.  With my new Palm in a good state data-wise, I decided it was time to see if I could reach the holy grail of synchronization across all these devices.  Kevin Railsback in our IT group had recently been singing the praises of iSync, so I decided to give that a try.  My old Mac at home didn't have Bluetooth, so I bought a Belkin Bluetooth USB adapter and plugged it into the Mac (incidentally, there were no Mac installation instructions, but I plugged it in and it worked instantly).  I registered all my devices (Sony Ericcson T616  - phone, Palm Tungsten T3, and the Mac) and -- voila! -- it worked.  My phone, Palm, and Mac were all in sync, and very seamlessly.  I also signed up for a .Mac account, which allowed me to synchronize any data I wanted up to a secure web-based service and access the data via the web from any OS, including Windows.  I have never had this information available in so many ways with no administrative overhead.  It's truly remarkable.

There were a few couple of mildly annoying problems:  1) even after you click on "sync now" in the iSync interface, you still have to manually press the HotSync button to include your Palm in the sync.  I'm sure there's a better way that I'm missing.  2) Although I had set my phone to update the time zone automatically, the calendar was somehow set to GMT, so the appointments on my phone seemed out of whack at first glance.  I don't think I'll be using the phone to track appointments anyway.

The Bluetooth interaction between the phone and the Palm is very cool.  Being able to look up a contact in my Palm, click the "Quick Connect" button in the Contacts interface, and have the Palm dial the number on my phone via Bluetooth is really handy (more about this here).  Connecting the Palm to the Internet via the Bluetooth phone and browsing the web using the Web Pro browser is a surprisingly good experience.  Last night, I was in my car waiting for a friend outside his office and I was able to read all the top stories on CNN.com.  Finally, the range of Bluetooth means that I can synchronize contact information to my cell phone from my desk without going into the living room to find the phone.  This is a very nice setup.