iPad Mania

The iPad has at this point generated probably almost as much if not more hype than the iPhone. However the difference is in the quality of hype. When the iPhone was coming out, almost everyone I knew either wanted one or at least was aware of it. This iPad buzz is an entirely different phenomenon. I have a few friends and relatives that I use as my test points when I am curious about how far an industry meme has penetrated into mainstream userdom.
None of them have heard of it. When I decribe it they all have had the same reaction.
So it's a really frickin big phone? Ewwww. This is a fascinating product to those in the blogosphere and in the tech press. Outside of our rarified world nobody cares. Ipods are great because they are smaller than a cd walkman and you can take them with you everywhere in your pocket. Obviously, the ipad isn't that!

I don't want to join the chorus of naysayers that predict doom and obscurity for Apple and it's latest product. But let me just say, this product is doomed for failure and will be the undoing of Apple. (I said I didn't want to, not that I wouldn't!)


I have been saying for a while, "gosh I wish I had a device that bridged the capabilities of a notebook and a cell phone." Something I can use for google maps, excel spreadsheets, email and web. This device seems to fit the bill but it utterly fails in a couple of places for me. That is why I will keep searching, or settle for a lesser device. It also has one or two major points in its favor.
The Failure Bowl

• iBook store. I don't have to go to a different store to buy books, CDs or Mp3s on Amazon. But then maybe this is something to do with different content provider types.
  
• No keyboard, sure you can hook one up via the dock port, or I assume bluetooth, but it really puts a cramp in portable as soon as you have more than one thing and cables involved.
  
• Proprietary processor. I can't believe Apple acquired a chip designer and had their own chips made. Supposedly very fast, but if memory serves me correct Apple just got out of the chip business not too long ago for speed reasons.
  
• No USB without Dock adapter. I use so many USB devices. Thumb drives, cameras, audio recorders and so on. USB is very necessary.
  
• No SD card slot. I have a lot of these and they have started to become kind of the standard (finally!) for memory cards. This would be a killer in-field photo review box if it had an SD card slot. Field audio or video editor?
  
• The apparent requirement of a host computer for iTunes? Am I reading the tech specs right? Do we need to have host machine to download apps/books/tunes to this guy?
  
• The economy is in a dumpster. Not a good time to come out with a premium version of one of your more successful products.
• Awfully big for an iPod.
  

The Success Bowl

• The cheap data plan. AT&T will be offering two data plans apparently. One is $14.99 for 250MB of data a month. The other is $29.99 for unlimited download. All 3G iPads will be unlocked, meaning they can be used on other carriers. Also, these plans are month-to-month. No contract! This is really the killer app on this box that no-one is talking about. I am looking at you. How much do YOU pay right now for your puny cellphone's data plan? $40 a month? $480 a year? They must have really twisted AT&T's arm!
  
• It already has all the App store apps to get it off the ground. Supposedly 99% will run. That 1% is a sliver of doubt though.
  
• great size/form factor, nice light weight for a netbook.
  
• Screen resolution of 1024x768. That's my 15" laptops screen resolution! On a 9" screen!
• It is very Star Trek.

What it boils down to is Apple needs to decide whether this is a sub-notebook or a big-ass iPod. It seems to have features of both but is leaning towards the latter. I don't know if it is wise of them to revisit the path of micro-segmented product line. That was one of the often pointed out problems of the Jobs-less Apple that was remedied when he came back.
Look at how many iPods they have out now? Four seperate product lines with various memory tiers within each. With the iPad that makes 5. It also has a very small amount of storage in my opinion. 16, 32 or 64 gigs? really? For this to be the "one ring" of netbooks meets e-readers I would have thought triple digit storage capacity (or an SD slot!) would be crucial. Like many Apple products this may take another product cycle or two to reach its potential.
You could also say that they are finally making a sub-notebook at half the price of the white macbook. I know some kids will be trying to convince their parents with that argument!

Me, I plan on picking up a netbook, by Asus. I really need USB and SD card slots. Being an old goofball with stubby fingers I really need keys as well. I was hoping that Apple would pull off some amazing slider type device that has a thin metal keyboard (like the current bluetooth keyboard) that tucks away when not in use. Well it was nice knowing you Apple.
Expect a brisk early adopter sales frenzy followed by a long decline.

BINGberry =bitter pie

Verizon Wireless pushed out a new app to it's RIM Blackberry users on December 16th. Some of you may have noticed an orange bing logo on your handsets desktop. This wasn't actually the new app, but an installer for a new app. Once you click on it Bing is installed on your device promising powerful search features and mapping content.
I figured why not. Microsoft has been batting 1000 lately so I will give it a chance.
Now having had the Bing app for a month it has to go.
It looks very nice. Wonderful job done in the UI side of things. Very Stylish.
the searches provide very nice results and are helpful and relevant to what I am looking for.
Reasons it has to go;

1. Slow to the point of pain- It takes too long for Bing to find and display search results. when one of the search results is a location and a map is going to be displayed you may as well order a refill of that coffee.
   
2. Crashes badly- When you try to just say screw it and exit to the blackberry desktop before it finishes fetching content (maybe to get a faster result from google?) Bing just folds in on its self like the house at the end of Poltergeist. Usually necessitating the blackberry equivalent of the 3 finger salute; depress silver button, slide back cover up, pull battery down and out, re-insert battery, wait for your berry to finish re-booting.
   
3. Maps are not any better than Google-The splash screen graphics are pretty and follow the same graphic conventions as bing.com. which is stupid. This is a mobile device! Even at 3G speeds this is too much data to be fetching. Especially when I am trying to find the Caltrain stop in South San Francisco (which is pretty well hidden!). The Google maps app on my Blackberry is easily 10 times faster. Google maps satellite view displays much better and is easier to navigate by.
   
4. Can't get rid of the Bing Icon-So the affair is over. Or should I say fling? Bing is a pig, hogs the covers and flirts with my roomates. I go to the uninstall page and yank that sucker out of there. Fleeing back to the waiting arms of google. Go back to the desktop to be greeted by...the same Bing icon. Even after it is uninstalled, the Bing installer will still hang out on your desktop. You can not remove it. All that you can do is "hide" it. It will still be there later on when you click"show all". Ready to be re-installed as if you had never had this awful experience.
   

XML

I have been doing some web work for a friend of mine. While I am not a hot shot web designer by any means, I am familiar with most of the technologies involved and have put together a few websites. Though I am not nearly artistic enough to 'design' a site nor crafty enough to put together all those fancy clever scripts and such that coders use to coerce the DOM into doing what it should in the first place.
This website was interesting to me as it is based on Flash. Flash is used in those annoying animated ads you see on your webmail page, as well as in those design-ey websites. It is also how more than a little 2D animation gets done these days. South Park being a well known example of Flash being used for broadcast production. I am under the impression that much of what is done over at Williams Street is based in Flash as well.
At first I thought I had an onerous Flash website task in front of me, so I downloaded the whole site to my drive and dug around looking for some FLA files.
Nothing! If you are going to design a site for someone it is only common courtesy to give them the source code of any live deliverables in case future updates need to be made. Sure they could come back to you for future jobs but guess what, you may be dead, had your laptop stolen or switched careers by then.
After further tinkering with the local copy of the site I deduced that even though it is based in Flash, the content is configured in a few XML files. This is fairly clever as editing Flash requires a copy of Flash CS4 be installed on your computer, while editing XML can in theory be done with the simplest text editor you can imagine, like Notepad or Simpletext.

I mapped out the directories and dug around in the HTML to figure out which directories were live. This was not easy. Some images appeared in multiple directories. The HTML basically only shows that a Javascript is pushing out the Flash content.

I ended up viewing "page info" in firefox to ascertain which flash files were active in which HTML pages.
I changed the name of the image directories until a name change broke the code and made the Flash literally draw a blank.

Then I was looking at the XML directory's files thinking that it might belong to the webhost's site control panel. Maybe it will give me a site map? I already unsuccessfully tried mapping the site manually into an Excel table. What can I say I like organizing things in Excel. All that did was waste a day and point out that a previous webmaster had been backdooring the site to host their (or a friends) resume!
Turns out the XML files pointed to the directories I had already sussed as likely the correct picture repositories.
So then I do the responsible thing and make a safe copy of the XML files. Then I start monkeying with them. Looks like I am on to something! I change the name in the XML. The name changes in the Flash! Well it works for the text. For images I have to clear my browser cache and restart the browser before I see changes.

Well I got all the pretty pictures up, but the text, which I thought was the easy part, is not cooperating. It shows up properly in the right place and time. However for some reason when I duplicate the syntax as it appears in the old version I get double spaced line breaks. The original is somehow able to get single spaced line breaks without resorting to any XML properties that I can see. Okay, well maybe the problem is that I am not seeing all of the XML attributes properly when I open it in Notepad. I think I need to try an XML editor? So I make the big mistake of downloading and installing Microsoft's XML Notepad 2007. Not a good idea. Completely hosed all the XML that I had already edited! Do not download XML Notepad 2007. Do not install it. Do not open work that you only have one copy of and edit it!
The edited work has a bunch of escape characters everyplace I inserted whitespace or tabbed things into place. This has the effect of breaking the XML and causing the Flash viewer to parse it as garbage.
So do I go back to my saved version and edit out the garbage or re-do it?
I am a lazy man so this is quite a conundrum.
I drink more coffee and do it all over again.
As of this writing I havent solved the double line space problem. It looks alright, but not as tight. I think I may need to edit it on a mac?

Cisco Switch fun!

I recently was called out to swap a new switch for a failing switch. I was very excited about this job. I have mostly done desktop and server moves lately with very little "hard" networking involved.
I was going to be on my own for this project. No safety net!
It is a simple job;

1. Label all patch cables to insure they get plugged back in to the same ports.
2. Unbox the new Cisco switch.
   
3. log into the new switch via Hyperterminal using a console cable.
4. Configure an IP address for the switch's management Vlan. Make sure that it is on the same subnet as your computer.
5. Use TFTP to transfer the config file to the switch (copy tftp start).
   
6. Check to be sure the config copied over and there are no garbage characters. (Show start)
7. Yank the old switch and swap its rack ears over to the new switch.
8. Reconnect all the patch cables to the correct numbered ports, as well as the fiber interfaces and cables.
9. Power up and you should be gold!

Labeling the cables was a cinch. One of my relatives gave me a Brother P-Touch label printer for my birthday about a month ago. So I printed out all 48 ports on one long strip. If I had printed them out one at a time I would have a bunch of little stickers I could lose. Also the P-Touch always advances and cuts off 3/4ths of an inch or so before it prints out. I would have thrown away about 3 feet of tape!
Logging in via Hyperterminal was a task. It normally is a walk in the park initiating a console session from Hyperterminal. Two obstacles came up.

1. My laptop does not have a serial port
   
2. Windows 7 does not have Hyperterminal

I dug around on the internet and found Hyperterminal on the website of the original developer. It is kind of expensive, but there is a free trial version. I suppose if I get more Cisco jobs I can buy it. Or I can probably use another terminal program like Putty.
The second problem was more trouble. I already have a USB to Serial box but it was not working with Windows 7 for some reason. I had re-installed it and gone up and down the registry several times. I emailed the manufacturer and got the latest "win 7 compatible" driver. No dice. I went to Central Computer and bought a different brand USB-Serial adapter. No luck, same chip. Same driver. Returned that one for a refund and went across town to Sweet Memory.
It's already 5pm and I needed to be onsite at 6pm! I headed around the corner to Subway and got a 6" veggie, anticipating a long night without any breaks. Once fed I whipped out the new serial adapter and my Leatherman, cut open the clamshell packaging and fished out the disk.
Ran the install disk and...its the same chip! On a hunch I checked the device manager and delete the "Blackberry virtual com port" device. Then I plugged the serial adapter in and bingo! the driver loads and starts! I could have saved 2 hours of stress and $20 if I had done this last night.
I finished my sandwich, run around the corner to the jobsite and...waited in the security office until exactly 6pm so they can sign me in (dorks).

Now the fun part, I connect the blue Cisco console cable to the new switch and power on. Awesome, I see the bootloader and POST messages! So at least I know that the software I installed last night and the adapter I bought one hour ago both work.
I logged in with the default Cisco password. (hint it rhymes with 'Frisco). Got to the configure terminal prompt, add an IP address to the management Vlan. Then I Telnet into the switch to be sure its up and do some pings back and forth. Then I open the Solarwinds TFTP server on my laptop to transfer the config file which one of the techs had emailed to me. Balls of fire, it worked! In case anyone is wondering you grab the file off of the TFTP server by typing copy tftp start, then you are prompted for the name or address of the server and name of file. There may be some cool way to push it from the server side but I am not aware.
I exited from the config terminal prompt to the enable prompt. I typed show run to see the current (modified default) configuration, then type show start to see the new configuration.
I then power cycle the switch to be sure it will start with the correct config. Of course I had previously taken the precaution of rooting through the new config to find the IP address of the management VLan and the enable password and VTY password. The telnet password of course is using service encryption so it is unreadable.

Now the boring part, de-racking the old switch, yanking the hardware off of it and installing the ears on the new one.
After I get off the phone with the tech at corporate headquarters I yank all the cables and pull the rack bolts. The switch barely moves?! Turns out they had installed the ears with the roundhead machine screws that come on the chassis instead of the flathead screws which you are supposed to use. when you add the height of the ears to the height of the roundhead screws they just dont fit inside a standard 2 post relay rack.
I ended up having to yank the cable management installed beneath the switch so that I can twist it sideways and remove it.
Ears swapped.
Switch bolted in.
Cable management bolted in.
Cables re-plugged.
The tech at corporate says he cant see the switch.
WTF?
I console in and everything looks fine?
I list all the interfaces and those are all up if they are plugged in. By the way if you do a straight show interface on a switch it can take forever! You may want to use show interface e 0/4 for example to see a specific ethernet interface or show ip interface brief so you don't have to scroll so much! Then it ocurrs to me to check the Vlans with show vlan. The vlans of interest (the ones which are supposed to be trunking to the router) do not exist? They are in the config but apparently this is not enough. So I create the vlans Set Vlan 666. That was all that was needed?! The new Vlans picked up the configs for each of the appropriate numbered vlans in the config. Crazy. After that it was just a little cable management and boxing up the old dud switch for RMA to Cisco.
Only took 4 and a half hours.