High speed is a moving target lately. What does it mean to have a “high speed” Internet connection at home anymore? A decade ago, if you had a 56k dial-up modem connection to the Internet, that was considered high speed. And even with that hardware, most people were only able to get speeds of about 33.6k due to the designs and limitations of some phone networks. But that was high speed.

Fast forward to 2007, we’ve had the luxury of FiOS/DSL/cable modem Internet access speeds well into the megabit per second range, along with some lower speed offerings such as ISDN, 2-way satellite, and cellular data network technologies such as EDGE and EVDO, and even some installations of city/county-wide 802.11 wireless access. There are plenty of options out there for high speed access to the Internet no matter where you live.

Recently there’s been an increase in news regarding the future of high speed access getting REALLY high speed in 2008. Verizon and Comcast both have announced recently that they have the capability to push their speeds up in the area of 100-150 Mbps…all thanks to the new DOCSIS 3.0 standard for cable modems, and improved FiOS technologies. DSL isn’t lagging behind too much either, with companies like Rim Semi saying they can push DSL up to 40 Mbps.

This is fantastic news for consumers. With speeds this high, there’s going to be a greater demand to get media content over the Internet. Improving the speeds will have a domino effect on a lot of other non-content-producing industries as well. For example, hard drive manufacturers will see an increase in sales due to the need for larger storage capacities on computers and other entertainment center devices like DVRs. Downloading more media over higher-speed lines means more storage requirements.

What does this mean for traditional media services? It could be very damaging, unless they’re able to adapt and change their business model. Television / movie companies will need to start shifting their energy away from traditional broadcast mediums and start to put more efforts into Internet delivery methods. Phone companies will start to see people leaving traditional copper phone service in greater numbers…being replaced with VoIP services like Vonage or Skype. Traditional radio broadcasts over AM/FM are taking a hit due to satellite radio from XM and Sirius. There could be another dent in AM/FM if WiMAX or higher speed cellular data networks are put in place. You may be able to listen to your streaming radio over WiMAX, or pop in your cell phone SIM card in your car’s head unit and get your radio content over the cellular network.

This is an exciting time for all things digital. Whether you get your content over copper lines, fiber-optic cables, radio frequencies, or from satellites; the gates are opening for a flood of 1’s and 0’s to come into your home at speeds and amounts that boggle the mind.

Technorati Tags: 2-way satellite, 56k, 56k dial-up, 802.11, cable modem, celluar network, comcast, copper, docsis, dsl, edge, ev-do, evdo, fiber, fiber optic, fios, isdn, mbps, music content, phone, Rim Semi, satellites, sim card, skype, verizon, video content, vonage, wimax

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It’s fairly common knowledge now that the Everex Cloudbook UMPC was delayed. The announcement came by way of a Computerworld article published the day of the scheduled release of the mini laptop. Much to everyone’s displeasure, there were two reasons given in that article that contributed to the delay of the release:

• Paul Kim, director of marketing at Everex, stated that “a couple of last-minute software tweaks” prevented them from releasing the product to the public.
• Another alleged email from someone else at Everex stated that the delay was also due in part to the Chinese/Taiwanese new year celebrations going on, and that most employees take off time from work to celebrate…implying a slowdown in production.

Various other blogs have speculated on hardware or driver issues. I tend to disagree with the hardware issue theory. This hardware already exists as the Packard Bell Easynote XS in Europe. It’s been out for a while already. In fact, Everex was showing off a “Cloudbook” at CES, which actually ended up being just a Easynote with an Everex label on it, and gOS Rocket 2.0 Beta. Packard Bell should already have worked out any hardware issues with the device. Everex shouldn’t have any excuses in the hardware arena. Which leads us to my theory….software issues.

SO, here’s the deal. We all know this UMPC is going to feature a fancy new OS created by 22-year old David Liu. An Ubuntu-based, Enlightenment-powered slim Linux distro that has a lot of Google and Web 2.0 flair to it. The original version of this OS (1.0.1) was released on November 1st, 2007 and came preinstalled on Everex Green PC’s sold at Walmart. That release has gained a lot of popularity in the low-cost desktop and laptop PC market, and you can now find it on many budget PC’s being sold all over.

On January 7th 2008 at CES, Good OS released a beta version of the next installment of the gOS distro. This one was dubbed “Rocket” and features some nice improvements to the interface, apps, and Google Gears which is supposed to allow some of Google’s application’s to function in an offline or synced state. We’ve already seen in pictures taken at CES this year and pictures of the Cloudbook on Everex’s website that show they fully intend to have Rocket on the Cloudbook (spec sheet even lists it). But, I highly doubt they’re going to release a beta version of an OS on the Cloudbook. The negative publicity alone on that would be highly-damaging even though the OS would for the most part probably run just fine.

So here’s MY theory. I think that David Liu and his team are running behind on squashing bugs with the latest release of gOS. The fact that their front page of the gOS website and all download sections still show that the OS is obviously not yet out of beta is enough of a reason for any company to delay releasing a product in my opinion. In addition to that, a lot of the news stories out there indicate that Everex is trying to customize the interface of the OS to work well on the Cloudbook’s 800×480 display size, and be as easy to use as Asus’s customized Xandros install is.

Combine that with the fact that gOS is supposed to include a new webcam application called gBooth, intended to work with Facebook. The Cloudbook comes with an integrated webcam, so I’m guessing that some drivers will need to be written to work with the device.

I’m sure there’s a whole list of other gOS-related items that have to be ironed out to work on the Cloudbook, but most of my theory on the reason for the delay revolves around the OS itself not being ready for release.

Ultimately, the part of all this that is most annoying for some people is the fact that a good portion of Cloudbook customers may not even use the factory supplied OS at all. Many people will probably wipe out the hard drive, and install a fresh copy of Windows XP on it. So all of this extra effort and delay is unnecessary for some customers. Everex could ship a “vanilla” Cloudbook now with nothing on it, and allow the customer to decide what OS they’d like to run; skip all the hassle of the delays and disappointed customers. I myself actually may fall into that group of people. (I haven’t yet decided if I like gOS yet. My testing in VM’s I’ve installed it in leaves me with somewhat of a “meh” response to the OS. )

So where does this leave us…well, waiting for another month for Everex to get the product out. If this delay is truly due to some OS-specific issues, I think they should still be manufacturing the hardware. I don’t know how they image the drives with the OS, but if they can be imaged after-the-fact, by all means production should not be slowed down on manufacturing the hardware. If Everex wants to compete with Asus in the US, they need to be pumping these things out of the factory as fast as they can. The Asus 2/4G’s have made their way into the US fairly well, but the 8G’s are still hard to find. One thing the Cloudbook has over the Eee is a lot more local storage. If they can grab the US market for people that want a UMPC with a decent amount of local storage, then Asus doesn’t stand a chance with their 8G’s.

Let’s hope that the issues with the Cloudbook are cleaned up quickly and the OS is as spiffy as they claim their trying to make it. I canceled my order for my Asus Eee 8G in black so I could get the Cloudbook right away. But this delay has left a bad taste in my mouth now. I’m on a pre-order list with ZaReason, so I should get one from the first batch of devices received. But sounds like that won’t be for quite a while.

Technorati Tags: asus, CES, cloudbook, Computerworld, David Liu, Easynote, Eee, everex, gBooth, Google, gOS, Linux, Packard Bell, Paul Kim, umpc

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Wordpress 2.3.2 was released about 26 days ago…and I finally did this update. I always hate doing these. They make it sound simple and easy all the time, but there’s always some “catch” to it. Typically these php-based installations are just a matter of untarring the new version right over the top of your existing version. Most of the data contained in the install is actually in the MySQL database associated with it. But of course, Wordpress is just as tricky as the rest of them.

• Back everything up first. Make a copy of your Wordpress folder somehow (I used cp -a blog blog.backup to get a complete archive copy). Use MyPHPAdmin to export a copy of your database. There’s instructions on the Wordpress site for this.
• Disable ALL of your plugins before updating.
• Pay attention to your wp-content/plugins and wp-content/themes folders. They claim you shouldn’t copy the folder itself over, but merely the contents. I think they’re worried about you doing a replacement of the folders, essentially wiping out your stuff with the stock folders. I just manually copied the files for each folder over, one subfolder at a time. Probably overkill, but I was just trying to be careful.
• Make sure you have a copy of your wp-config file. This file contains information that tells Wordpress how to connect to the database. It shouldn’t get overwritten, but doesn’t hurt to back it up.
• Don’t forget to re-enable all your plugins after your done. I didn’t initially and my site literally didn’t come up because the theme itself referenced some of the plugins (I customized the php code in the theme).

Technorati Tags: MyPHPAdmin, MySQL, plugins, themes, wordpress, wordpress 2.3.2, wp-config, wp-content

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Let’s try this again. Part 2 of my quest to obtain a Ultra Mobile PC begins today. I called up Dynamism and canceled my order for the Asus Eee 8G in Galaxy Black. They stated that they weren’t going to get any shipments from Asus until mid-March. That’s just too long to wait. It’d be 3 months since I ordered. Forget that, I’m not waiting that long.

Well, I heard through the grapevine (I guess they call that message boards on the Internet now-a-days) that another company here in the US was going to be releasing a very similar UMPC based off the specification that VIA created (the Nanobook). Everex decided to build off of this spec and created the Cloudbook. The original VIA specification was pretty loaded up with features. Even had a small module bay in the screen on the right that allowed for expansion devices to be plugged in.

Everex’s version of the Nanobook appears to have slimmed down on some of the features probably to reduce the price so it’s more comparable with what Asus is pushing out with the Eee 4G’s. There isn’t any bluetooth, less RAM (512MB), no expansion module, and it’s running gOS Linux instead of Windows. All of this brings down the price to $399 US. Very attractive price for this piece of hardware. It’s $100 less than the Asus Eee 8G. Has a little less RAM, but almost twice the processor speed and a 30GB internal hard drive.

So…I placed a pre-order with ZaReason.com. They listed the Cloudbook ahead of when it’s going to be available (the 25th of this month) on their website and offered pre-orders. Walmart and Newegg are supposed to be selling the Cloudbook as well, but probably won’t be showing it until the 25th. I sent ZaReason a lot of questions ahead of ordering and was greeted with very quick and detailed responses. They even have a tech at the company that was directly involved with development of the Cloudbook at Everex.

If things go as they should, the Cloudbook should be shipping out on the 25th by ground transportation. I’m figuring it’ll arrive in the Detroit area by probably the 29th or 30th. Now it’s time to play that fun “Waiting Game”.

Technorati Tags: 4g, 8g, asus, cloudbook, Dynamism, Dynamism.com, Eee, everex, nanobook, Ultra Mobile PC, umpc, via, ZaReason, zareason.com

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Logrotate for Windows…where is this software out there?? I couldn’t find anything that works the way I want it to. So I wrote one myself. Here’s a VBscript that will basically take a file you designate in the script, and bump it down through numbered copies each time it’s run. So if you have a file named mylog.txt that you’d like to rotate out weekly and keep a months worth, you set it up to keep 3 copies, and every time it’s run that file will get bumped to mylog.txt.1, then mylog.txt.2, then mylog.txt.3. Once that log gets to the last copy, it’ll get deleted off the end of the list the next time the script runs.

There’s some commented out “echo” commands that are there basically to do some troubleshooting if you need it. They can be removed or substituted with “writeline” commands to create a log file. I tried to build in some smarts in there for missing files and whatnot, but feel free to modify and build more for your own use. Sorry for the concatenation/line continuation stuff again, need to fit it in this blog one way or another. Enjoy!

' VBSRotate.vbs
' Christopher J. Miller - Jan 2008
' Script basically will rotate any file through a series of copies
' defined by "intCopies" Similar to *nix LOGROTATE command, but
' this will work with any file really. Good for logs, or
' point-in-time zip archives, or backups, or whatever changes
' frequently that you need a series of copies of over time.

Option Explicit

dim objFSO, strWorkingPath, strRotateFile
dim intCopies, intCurrentCopy
strWorkingPath = "g:\"
strRotateFile = "backup.7z"
intCopies = 1
intCurrentCopy = intCopies
set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

if objFSO.fileexists(strWorkingPath & strRotateFile) then
'  wscript.echo strRotateFile & " exists...rotating."
  do while intCurrentCopy > 0
'    wscript.echo "Checking for copy # " & intCurrentCopy
    if objFSO.fileexists(strWorkingPath & strRotateFile &_
       "." & intCurrentCopy) then
       if intCurrentCopy = intCopies then
'          wscript.echo "Last version #" & intCurrentCopy &_
       " falling off the rotation."
          objFSO.DeleteFile(strWorkingPath & strRotateFile &_
           "." & intCurrentCopy)
       else
'          wscript.echo "Moving copy #" & intCurrentCopy &_
            " to copy #" & intCurrentCopy + 1
          objFSO.MoveFile strWorkingPath & strRotateFile & "." &_
           intCurrentCopy  , strWorkingPath & strRotateFile & "." &_
           intCurrentCopy + 1
       end if
    end if
  intCurrentCopy = intCurrentCopy - 1
  loop
'  wscript.echo "Moving ORIGINAL copy to copy #1"
  objFSO.MoveFile strWorkingPath & strRotateFile , strWorkingPath &_
   strRotateFile & ".1"
'  else
'    wscript.echo "Original file " & strRotateFile &_
'    " not found! Nothing to do."
end if

Technorati Tags: file rotation, logrotate, logrotate for windows, logs, rotate, vbscript

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What happened Asus? Is your factory too busy making cutsy pink 2G Surf’s? No 8G’s in black available, huh? The flagship Eee, and you still haven’t managed to ship even a fraction of the amount that is in demand. And then you go and announce the next models that will replace the current ones you haven’t been able to ship yet.

I gave it three shots. Said I’d allow it to be delayed 3 times before I pulled my order. I ordered on December 31st…Dynamism quickly pushed expectations back to mid-January, then they pushed it to late January, and now things are so bad they’re saying mid-March they expect a shipment of Asus Eee 8G’s in Black. Do you honestly expect people to wait for them considering everyone knows now that by the time they actually do ship the next generation of Eee’s will be out? What was that Everex? Did you say something to me? Cloud-what? Available on the 25th of January at Walmart.com? A 5 hour battery life and 30 GB hard drive? Nice! Here’s my credit card information. Send it right over, thanks!

Technorati Tags: asus, cloudbook, Dynamism, Eee, everex, umpc

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