Archive for the ‘News’ Category

BlackBerry = Single Point of Failure?

RIM/BlackBerry is starting to make me angry. We’re now in the midst of the second multi-hour outage in a week. Last week we lost (BIS) email in North America. In fact, it was for most of the morning and spilled into the afternoon in my timezone. Today, apparently mail hasn’t been delivered for some time and I only noticed when my email seemed suspiciously quiet. This time, however, it’s everything. Phone calls and text messages seem to go in and out with no problem, but anything using the BlackBerry data services seem to be hosed.

Now, I understand that large systems like the BlackBerry Internet and Enterprise Services are complicated and eventually go down. Really, I do get it. What goes up must come down. However, the whole thing is starting to get frustrating to me and I’m ready to give up.

First, there’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with outages. For me, a majority of the frustration could be alleviated with a simple notification or a way to know that something is up. During these outages, there was nothing on BlackBerry or my wireless carrier’s websites, no automated text messages, no nothing. I simply had to realize that email was quieter than normal and check out crackberry.com (an unofficial, yet useful site). Not exactly confidence-instilling. After the incident we got a bit of a “my bad” (I still have yet to find the official statement) from RIM, but just crickets to the public during the outage. At least when Gmail had a system-wide outage earlier this year they were up-front about the issues.

Second, the outages happened all over North America. Yes, multiple several-hour-long outages affecting an entire continent within a week. The sad part is, we come to expect it. Something needs to be done. I can understand that with an IT system this large there will likely always be issues, but something needs to be done to segment pieces from one another. A single issue may cause a system-wide outage occasionally, but not three times in two months is unacceptable.

These outages, of course, come along with having a centralized message delivery system like the BIS/BES. I’m ready to give up and now am on the brink of going on the market for a non-BlackBerry smartphone that will connect directly to my mail servers (the others are mocking us..). It’s a sad day that it’s come to this. I really do have quite a love-hate relationship with my BlackBerry (Tour). It’s a solid phone, a great interface, and great management features. I just can’t constantly think of it as a single point of failure that I have no way of knowing whether or not it works except by sending stupid test emails.

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Filed under News : Comments (2) : Dec 23rd, 2009

So Simple, A Caveman Could Run Your Next Data Center?

I really enjoy reading about redesigns in data centers and this one at Iron Mountain certainly is no exception. According to the report, the company is working on an experimental data center approximately 22 stories underground in a cave. The data center uses its massive limestone exterior as a kind of heat sink, literally allowing the rock walls around it absorb the heat. It also can feed off an underground lake as liquid cooling for the air conditioners when necessary.

The experiment is a clever, yet incredibly simple idea. It’s about as far away from Google’s alleged experiments with data centers on the ocean that we read about last year as one can get. Feeding off the rock walls around it for cooling, these certainly seem a bit more sturdy and safer to me than a floating data center, but they would definitely be inconvenient to get to (though, I suppose having to hop on a boat or helicopter would be fairly inconvenient as well :) ).

There are plenty of other areas and environments where we can feed off the environment for keeping data centers cool. For instance, in the area where I live we have pretty cold winters. If we would simply pull in cool air from outside, it could cut down on unnecessary resource consumption for cooling quite a bit. Of course, in the winter we have to watch that the humidity doesn’t drop too far, but it would certainly help.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Dec 15th, 2009

Want Faster Browsing? Google FTW!

Well, Google is at it again. I am now relying on yet another set of Google products..

This week was a big week for non-Windows users waiting for the Chrome browser. Earlier this week they released the beta of Chrome for Linux and Mac. I actually held out a bit on using many of the pre-release version of Chrome on Linux/Mac, mostly because I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands, but also because I didn’t realize just how much faster it really was than the browsers I’d been using. But, it wasn’t just Chrome that has sped up my browsing experience this week either.

Last week Google announced the general availability of its new public DNS service, touting it  as a speed booster(?). DNS typically isn’t something that we give a ton of thought to when chasing after faster browsing speeds, but I was pleasantly surprised by a bit snappier browsing experience. Of course, my download speeds really aren’t any faster, but the initial connection to my favorite websites (and non-favorite I suppose..) has sped up a bit. Just how much faster did this new DNS service make my little network go? Well, I really don’t have any numbers. If you haven’t tried it, it’s definitely worth a shot.

All’s not entirely well in my new Google world since Chrome is still in beta. I have to close the browser on occasion because things start acting up and some of my saved passwords are acting a bit weird, but overall the experience has been great. I still have to rely on a combination of Firefox and Safari for things that Chrome is buggy at (or can’t do like my Zimbra admin :( ), but that’s to be expected with a beta.

If you are running a Mac or Linux machine as a desktop, I’d encourage you to check out the new Chrome beta. I guess even more of my data are now belong to Google..

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Filed under How-Tos / Tips, News : Comments (0) : Dec 10th, 2009

Google Adds Push Mail to Sync for iPhone, Windows Mobile

In a blog post from the Google Enterprise Apps team, Google has announced that syncing iPhones and Windows Mobile phones with Gmail via ActiveSync now allows users to sync mail as a push account. Until now, users had to use ActiveSync (or Google Sync as Google likes to call it on the server-side) for calendars and contacts and exclude mail from syncing. Then the user had to setup their Gmail account as a separate IMAP account on the iPhone/Win Mo to get their email. It appears that push email is available to both the Enterprise and free personal account customers.

As far as I’m aware, we still have no word on whether Gmail will support some of the more advanced features of ActiveSync the way that Exchange (and now Zimbra 6.0) can. So far, Exchange competitor Zimbra can do things like initiate wipes to mobile devices, lock devices when an incorrect password is entered, and pause (and resume) syncing to the device.

Gmail has differentiated itself from the market, however, as being the only free email provider (that I’ve heard of) that offers push mail, contacts, and calendars via ActiveSync (or other similar way to your choice of device). Others (like Hotmail) aren’t even offering IMAP access to external mail clients to free customers.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Sep 22nd, 2009

Never Deal with Phone Menus Again

I just read through LifeHacker’s 2009 top ten list of the web’s most under-hyped apps and just can’t get over number 2: Fonolo. Most of the other applications are just web apps that perform the same function as desktop applications, but Fonolo seems to stand out among the rest as one of the more innovative and useful applications I’ve seen in a while. The application is really simple (something that seems to make the good ones stand out), but it allows users to call common businesses that utilize phone menus and display the menu visually. Once the services gets through the menus, it connects to the users’ phone to pick up.

In a world where most things are available to us online, there’s a surprising amount of things that one still has to pick up the phone for and this allows consumers to have the convenience of browsing, much like the web, but still be able to get to talk to a real-life person. I can see Fonolo being ripe for the picking from the likes of Google to add to Google Voice as a wonderful time-saving feature. Hopefully we’re not too far from the day where businesses offer such a service right from their website as well, but I’m sure we’re a long way from that day..

Filed under News : Comments (0) : Sep 21st, 2009

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