Author: Kyle Cordes

BlackBerry tether with Ubuntu 9.10

There are many pages out there about how to use a tethered BlackBerry internet connection with Ubuntu 9.10. Here is one that actually works. It uses Barry, BlackBerry support software generously provided by Net Direct Inc.

I’ve found this quite useful with an Ubuntu based netbook. There is Wifi a lot of places, but not even close to “everywhere”.

My BlackBerry is on the T-Mobile network, which (nicely) includes tethering at no extra cost, but (not so nicely) offers only EDGE (not 3G) in most of the US. Still, in a pinch an EDGE connection is far better than no connection, and is quite suitable for occasional use at zero incremental cost. For heavy mobile wireless tethering users, I suggest Verizon or Sprint service with their respective USB dongles.

StartupToDo.com Scholarships for St. Louis Startups

A few weeks ago I met Bob Walsh, well known MicroISV guru (he wrote the book on it). He has a startup-acceleration company called StartupToDo.com; which he persuaded me to take a look at. The site offers a pile of information, for a fee, to help startups “cut to the chase” as they get moving. I was initially skeptical, because there is such a vast amount of such information for free online.

Then I thought about it a while, and thought about various potential and actual founders I’ve met, and thought about how much time a person can spend browsing around for information, and looked through the guides on StartupToDo… and it now appears to be a worthwhile resource for first-time founders to use (and pay for). Speed is everything, StartupToDo could save a founder some hours.

At the same time, I’ve been looking for ways to help boost the nascent St. Louis startup and software-company community.

Putting those two things together, Oasis Digital (my firm) is going to sponsor (that is, pay for) a StartupToDo membership, for up to 10 St. Louis area startup companies. The rules are simple:

  • Must be a software product / service or related startup company (not consultant)
  • Must be located within 50 miles of St. Louis, MO
  • Either starting in the near future or in the last year
  • First 10 that meet these requirements, “win”
  • Act fast – you must “apply” by the end of December 2009.

Read the official details on Bob’s site, and follow his directions to “apply”.

While you’re at it, consider getting involved with ITEN-STL if you aren’t already. ITEN offers assistance of various kinds to St. Louis area startup firms, and I am an ITEN mentor.

Book Giveaway at Lambda Lounge, Dec. 3

This Thursday is the next meeting of the Lambda Lounge, I’m giving away another stack of books:

Kyle is giving away these books

I love books. I love them so much that my house became crowded with them. Then I realized that The World is My Warehouse.

Please take a book, free. There are some excellent books in this pile, most notably the “Generative Programming” book and Bitter EJB.

Update: All but a couple of the books were snapped up at the meeting.

Massive Parallelism and Microslices

I just read James Hamilton’s comments on “Microslice” servers, which are very low-power, but high CPU-to-wattage ratio servers. As he explains in detail, at scale the economics of this design are compelling. In some ways, of course, this is the opposite of another big trend going on, which is consolidation through virtualization. I reconcile these forces like so:

  1. For enterprises with a high ratio of emloyees-per-server-CPU, the cost factors tend to drive cost as a function of the number of boxes / racks /etc. This makes virtualization on to a few big servers a win.
  2. But for enterprises with a low ratio (lots of computing work, small team), the pure economics of the microserver approach makes it the winner.

The microserver approach demands:

  • better automated system adminstration, you must get to essentially zero marginal sysadmin hours per box.
  • better decompisition of the computing work in to parallelizable chunks
  • very low software cost per server (you’re going to run a lot of them), favoring zero-incremental-cost operating systems (Linux)

My advice to companies who make software to harness a cloud of tiny machines: find a way to price it so your customer pays you a similar amount to divide their work among 1000 microservers, as they would amount 250 heavier servers; otherwise if they move to microservers they may find a reason to leave you behind.

On a personal note, I find this broadening trend toward parallelization to be a very good thing – because my firm offers services to help companies through these challenges!

Is your work getting better?

We’ve all heard that life / business / progress are moving faster “these days” than ever before. This feels true to me (in the positive sense, I am no Luddite), but I am also leery of how easily each generation becomes convinced that it invented newness, change, and youth.

On the topic of technical design innovation, though, we are obviously living in an era of very rapid progress. Here is a great example:

nano-2005-2008

The question this raises for me, and that it should raise for you, if you are a field which is at all technical and competitive, is whether you are keeping up with the pace of the world around you. Compared to three years ago, is your work product (code, process, design, attention to detail, vigor) obviously better? How about the next three years?

I Went In a Boy, I Came Out a Man

Apple Store large logo sign

Not really, it just seemed like the sort of over-the-top thing a rabid Mac fan might say.

But I did replace my main Windows PC with a MacBook Pro. I’ve used Apple products occasionally over the decades, going all the way back to the Apple II, IIe, IIgs, and orignal 1984 Macintosh. I’m not “switching”, but rather adding; our client projects at Oasis Digital continue to run primarily on Windows or Linux. Our Java work runs with little extra effort on all three platforms.

Here are some thoughts from my first days on this machine and OSX:

  • The MacBook Pro case is very nice. I didn’t see any Windows-equipped hardware with anything similar. The high-tech metal construction is an expensive (and thus meaningful) signal that Apple sends: Apple equipment is high end. The case also has the great practical benefit of acting as a very large heat sink.
  • The MPB keyboard is a bit disappointing; I miss a real Delete key (in addition to Backspace), Home, End, PageUp, PageDown. At my desk I continue to use a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, so this is only a nuisance on the road.
  • I bought a Magic Mouse for the full Apple experience; but I’ll stick with a more normal mouse (and its clickable middle wheel-button) for most use. I find wireless mice too heavy, because of their batteries.
  • Apple’s offerings comprise a fairly complete solution for common end user computing needs; for example, Apple computers, running Time Machine for backup, storing on a Time Capsule. I didn’t go this route, but it is great to see it offered.
  • Printing is very easy to set up, particularly compared to other Unix variants.
  • VMWare Fusion is fantastic, and amply sufficient to use this machine for my Windows work. Oddly, my old Windows software running inside seems slightly more responsive than the native Mac GUI outside (!).
  • I need something like UltraMon; the built in multi-monitor support is trivial to get working, but the user experience is not as seamless as Windows+UltraMon. For example, where is my hotkey to move windows between screens, resizing automatically to account for their different sizes?
  • Windows has a notion of Cut and Paste of files in Explorer. It is conceptually a bit ugly (the files stay there when you Cut them, until Pasted), but extremely convenient. OSX Finder doesn’t do this, as discussed at length on many web pages.
  • I would like to configure the Apple Remote to launch iTunes instead of Front Row, but haven’t found a way to do so yet. No, Mr. Jobs, I do not wish to use my multi-thousand-dollar computer in a dedicated mode as an overgrown iPod. Ever.
  • The 85W MagSafe power adapter, while stylish and effective, is heavy. I’d much prefer a lighter aftermarket one, even if it was inferior in a dozen ways, but apparently Apple’s patent on the connector prevent this. I’d actually be happy to pay Apple an extra $50 for a lightweight power adapter, if they made such a thing.
  • This MBP is much larger, heavier, and more expensive than the tiny Toshiba notebook PC it replaces; yet it is not necessarily any better for web browsing, by far the most common end user computer activity in 2009. This is not a commentary on Apple, it merely points out why low-spec, small, cheap netbooks are so enormously popular.