FluxHQ - Rambings of Beings from a Parallel Universe

GMail just started rolling out free IMAP access to GMail accounts to their users. You can configure it through your ‘Settings’ menu in GMail, you should see a IMAP Acess tab there when it is rolled out to your account. This lets users access GMail through multiple clients while still being able to keep in sync all the email. Cool stuff. Check out the Google release here.

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Just wanted to share a TIP for GMail on the Blackberry. If you want to read your emails which have been archived and labeled you can do the following:

1) Open up GMail on your Blackberry
2) Hit the menu button
3) Select ‘More…’
4) Then in the menu that comes up select ‘More Labels’
5) Place a check mark next to the Labels you’d like to read on the road
6) Save and Exit
7) Now when you want to read email from your labels which have been archived and miss your inbox, you hit menu when you are in GMail and select ‘More…’, you will be presented with a menu with the Labels you have chosen, select a label and be transferred to the Label Mailbox.

Voilà!

My next post will deal with how to sync Gmail contacts with your Blackberry, keeping your Apple address book synced at the same time.

toodles!

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Everybody and their grandmother is looking to cut costs these days and one of the first stops they make in that process is their telephone bill. I’ve been one of the “earlier” adopters of low cost telephony solutions as they trickled into the US market over the years and yet, I still find myself looking for the utopian device with a utopian plan. What I’ve found out should come as no surprise to anyone, perfection in this world is non-existent. But if you think about it, with the way things stand in the US telephony market today, there has to be a way to make this happen, and that’s why I set out on my “quest”, tired of teeny bopper types and their flash, my prerogative was productivity and low cost.

So my journey began with the iPhone. After listening to Señor Jobs in his keynote I began to think that this quest of mine would be pretty meaningless and rather short. But unfortunately for me that wasn’t the case. The commercial availability of the iPhone brought with it a major problem, for me. AT&T. Not my top choice for carrier and definitely not the carrier with the most cost effective plans. Why Apple chose them over, T-Mobile for instance, puzzles me. I figured, well for the utopian device I would be willing to sacrifice the carrier choice part. That was not to be either. Apple did not allow third party apps on their phone and I just couldn’t get over typing on a touch screen interface. The rest of the offering though is stellar, the web browser, mapping, music player, tight software integration and of course all the gimmicks, including my favorite, the pinch zoom. So since the application offerings are slim and the fact that it wouldn’t work on a carrier of my choosing, I decided I was going to pass on the iPhone and wait for iteration 2 or 3 of the product to maybe find that utopian phone of mine.

Moving on, the rest of the offerings could now be classified as Windows Mobile devices, Symbian devices, Palms or Blackberries. I was skeptical about running windows on my mobile device, when I did not trust windows on my computer. Nonetheless, I persevered and gave it a shot. The beginning wasn’t too pleasant, and after a few lock-ups I started using the device. The user interface is a little too nested and finding something turns out to be a pretty tedious task. The other issue I had with WM6 was shoddy power management on the software end. Then there’s the usual windows problems, memory leaks, sudden crashes and suspect memory intensive applications. The positive side of this is that the platform does have a ton of applications written for it, including skype, MS Office documents can be created as well as read and there are quite a few nifty devices running this OS. The bad outweighs the good here so this were a no go.

The Symbian OS started out really promising, people raved about it’s stability as an OS, it’s long feature list and it’s intuitive user interface. The one major flaw of Symbian is that it is designed with smartphones in mind and does provide a solid foundation for them, but it does not offer much for a general computing device. Since I wasn’t looking for a clamshell that could do email and browse the internet, this wasn’t meant to be either. Additionally the device choices are rather slim here in the US.

Palm was one of the pioneers in this space, but gross mismanagement and piss poor product development have created a laggard in this space. Garnet felt slow and clunky in addition to the fact that multi-tasking is a chore and brings the machine almost to it’s, well, knees. The Palm device choices are also not very aesthetically appealing and leaves much to be desired. Chalk up a major disappointment here.

Well, that left me with the Blackberry line from Research In Motion. I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. On the software side, though the OS is a bit flaky, the applications are solid and fast. The push email feature is speedy and very functional, the applications work really well with the device and it’s physical limitations. Multi-tasking, call quality and battery life were all above acceptable standards. The only thing that left a little to be desired was the internet browser, the native browser was ho-hum and Opera on the Blackberry offered rich text internet browsing but that still does not hold a candle to Safari on the iPhone. The included mapping application is good, though you can download Google Maps for the device along with a slew of other Google Applications. On the hardware end, the 8820 and the 8320 impressed me the most, the latter with GPS. They are also UMA capable phones which work with T-Mobile’s Hotspot @ home service. Apart from that they are quad band phones with WiFi, big screens, very nice keyboards and great styling. It’s easy to see why users get addicted to their Blackberries, hence the name ‘Crackberry’, but despite the sounds of it, it’s not the device’s fault that it’s good at what it does, users need to moderate and set limits for their usage, if they find it to be addictive.

So the choice was made, and since I am a big fan of T-Mobile and their cost effective yet very functional calling plans with data & blackberry access, it is the Blackberry for now. The 8820 if you’ve got a few bills to get an unlocked phone or an almost free 8320 from T-mobile.

The quest though hasn’t ended, the perfect device is ever so close, now if someone would just get it together and make one. The other thing I would like to see happen more is VoIP on mobile phones, and I don’t mean a service like jajah or eko.

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Django & Me

It’s been a while since I’ve been using the python web framework named after the Jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, Django. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for quite a while now, but lack of time and laziness have prevailed. Django is still relatively unknown when compared to one of it’s rival* frameworks, Rails. Rails has been the darling of web 2.0 and is a framework for Ruby based web application development. A couple of years ago I was confronted with a project that required rapid development, relatively complex data handling, robust interface development and an administrative side. The time constraints placed on the project took me on the hunt for a suitable framework which would enable us to achieve our goals. I came across both Rails and Django along with a host of other frameworks. These were the two that stood out though. Django for it’s brilliant website and example application (Chicagocrime.org), and Rails for the people behind it and the applications they had created from it. Both communities seemed friendly and active, as well as the active involvement of the actual founders of both projects. Familiarity with python, the killer Django Admin interface, the fact that Django was created for a newsroom with different data handling needs, the fact that the scalability of Django at production was already proven and the loose coupling provided by Django, made the choice for me pretty simple. Though I still think there are instances where Rails is a better choice, for me picking Django was almost a no-brainer.

Starting Out

Django makes it pretty easy for newbies to get their feet wet. They have a good four part tutorial on their website, and they also have a book coming out, the book can also be viewed online currently, until it gets published. Other solid places to go for help, are the mailing lists, the wiki and on IRC. Usually your question gets answered pretty quickly by someone knowledgeable in the matter. A simple google search will also bring up a list of blogs and other websites offering tips and good info. Recently there has also been a glut of “middleware” applications for Django, apps you can plug into your app, which can be found on Google Code.

*rival in terms of Web Application Frameworks, not Python Frameworks.

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I caught a snippet the other day about a Silicon Valley startup, Data Robotics, on the BBC, and upon further investigation, I came across their product, Drobo. It’s essentially an external disk storage system, which makes all the configuration of multiple disk systems completely trivial to the user. All the user has to do is plug in Drobo to the USB port and plug some disks into the system. Disk removal and upgrades are also made completely trivial. I absolutely love the concept of not having to fuss with RAID settings, stripe size etc. Some of the other factors I like are the fact that there is no need for homogenity in disk sizes, mixing & matching is ok. Add to that the fact that there is no client software required to run this device makes it a win. Real-time swapping of disks without causing any downtime is also a cool feature. Data Robotics has a demo of the entire working of the Drobo on their website and for more in depth information check out the Arstechnica review.

One of the downsides is the relatively high price, $500 for just the unit sans any drives makes it a little out of the average consumer’s reach. I would also like to see other interfaces such as Firewire or eSata be an option. USB2.0 does not really make me want to run out and get one. But future iterations of the product are something I will look forward to.

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So the other day at WWDC, Stevo showed off some of Leopard’s new features. I’m impressed, but one thing stood out. A lot of apps now have an iTunes-like interface. Safari’s new Web Inspector which was released a couple days back, also sports the same look. I began to ponder, maybe this was because the iTunes interface is the greatest interface ever. No, that can’t be the case, it’s a good interface I’ll admit, but it has it’s shortcomings. It’s a pretty brilliant move by Apple and the developers of the various apps, the iPod is now so ubiquitous, that everyone who has one has come in contact with iTunes at some point. Making interfaces common across the board, reduces the learning curve significantly, especially when an iTunes-like interface can accomplish similar things across the board. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple roll out the next version of iPhoto with an interface more similar to iTunes. Whether this strategy will translate into dollars for Apple remains to be seen. The other factor to also consider is whether this homogenization of interfaces will take it’s toll on usability.

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My heart goes out to all those affected by the shootings at VaTech. I don’t know any of you, but this has touched me nonetheless. Be in peace.

photo courtesy of flickr user Claudia1967

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This is a follow up to my post about my experiences with Asterisk, the other day.

So there we were armed with a freshly pressed TrixBox 2.0 CD and a carafe full of coffee, the latter just in case. After reading through docs on the TrixBox website we were skeptical at best of their promises of having everything installed and configured within an hour. Just to prove to ourselves and to justify the hype, we decided to time ourselves. The CD went in the tray and we booted the server up, a few keystrokes and about 30 minutes later I was configuring FreePBX with extensions and whatnot. About 20 minutes later, we had setup 5 extensions, with their requisite Linksys IP phones, configured our IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menu complete with custom recordings, added & configured all the incoming and outgoing routes and barely made it through one cup of coffee. We then got around to testing the lines and having people call us to test out our various configs. 25 minutes later we were out the door, our job there being done.

Yup, the hype is REAL! and it’s well justified to boot. We now have a fully functioning PBX complete with IVR, DISA, Callback, Voicemail etc. configured to give us the lowest possible cost for routing a call. Incredible, that it took us just over an hour to get all this accomplished. To the Trixbox folks, thank you. You have made it infinitely easier to install, configure and use a wonderful product along with a whole bunch of other useful related products.

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So Apple has decided to delay the launch of Leopard until October and here I was all ready for a June Mac purchase. I guess I will save a few more pennies and wait until then. This is going to affect their second quarter mac sales figures, but I think it’s a wise choice especially since it was done so that the iPhone launch would not be delayed. The iPhone is much more anticipated and hyped, and considering most people who were waiting for a new OSX would have a reaction similar to mine anyway. An iPhone delay could mean a lot of other things,  including a big dip in the stock price, though in after hours trading AAPL has taken quite a dive since the Leopard delay announcement.

In other developments, I tried out VMWare for the first time the other day. Installed the latest version of Ubuntu and did a little server virtualization. I haven’t actually had time to measure performance but I’ll take wildbill’s & greenfly’s word for it, they use it very successfully with HP Blades at their work. So far I’m very impressed with the ease of use, install and setup. I need to investigate this more thoroughly and maybe have it talk to a few SANs and have it actually do some work, then I can measure performance and potential cost savings.

The other thing I’ve been tinkering with apart from my regular workload is Asterisk, no thanks to Samir, my long postponed interest in asterisk has been rekindled. So last weekend we got to work installing and configuring the sucker, but woe is us and we did not compile asterisk with the required zaptel modules(we didn’t know that then) and so we were stuck for a several hours trying to figure out why it wouldn’t work, all the time reading everything that was out there on asterisk. But clearly fatigue had gotten hold of us and we missed the part where it mentioned asterisk and zaptel together, we had them working fine individually though… Ah well, lesson learned. We also, in our quest for asterisk knowledge, came across Trixbox(formerly called Asterisk@Home), and we are going to give it a whirl tomorrow night, while the rest of our peers drink beer and party. Needless to say I will keep y’all posted. The other cool resource I must point to you is Asterisk Tutorials, they have great little screen-casts about what asterisk can do for you and how to setup the various features. Let me tell you, I’m very very impressed by what this piece of software can do, I’ve seen several thousand dollars being spent on proprietary hardware/software that do 50% of what this does. Anyway, a full description of our Trixbox saga coming up soon.

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Well, I tried to depart Chicago’s O’Hare to catch a flight to Miami, earlier today. I had been at the airport since 8am and around 11:30pm AA informed me that we were not going anywhere that night. This after we boarded the aircraft twice and the crew secured all doors, and the second time around we almost made it all the way through the movie “Marie Antoinette”. Trying to get home was no easy task, the taxi lines were 4-5 lines wide and it was freezing outside, so yours truly sans coat wasn’t about to freeze outside. The el was the next option, when I got there, no trains were running, “ice on the tracks and there are crews out there scraping the ice off the tracks” is what the platform agent told me. Great. About an hour later, another train shows up and an announcement was made that all of us needed to board that train. Finally around 1:30am I made it back home, just in time to find that the heat was busted and my place had turned into an icebox. Yippeee!

While at the terminal, I actually called the Platinum desk and got through to a human operator after about 45 mins on hold, not too bad, who re-booked me for a flight via Nashville the next morning. By the time I had reached home, that flight had been cancelled too and another call to AA confirmed my fears and got me a re-booking on a flight via Washington Reagan the next afternoon. When I awakened the next morning, the first thing I did was check the weather forecasts everywhere, good thing I did, since they were anticipating Reagan to be under a winter storm advisory later on that afternoon. I got back on the horn with AA and got myself on yet another flight, this time via New Orleans.

It was pretty bad when I got to O’Hare, not as bad as last night, I ran into some of the other passengers from my flight yesterday, who were still stuck there trying to get out and get on their cruise in the Caribbean. My flight to New Orleans went off without a hitch, but when I got there I learned that my flight to Miami was further delayed by an hour. Well all said and done, I finally made it on that flight and reached Miami at 9:30pm.

Just a schooch over 36 hours for what was initially a 3 hour flight.

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