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Monday
Apr122010

CronniX: Fills a Hole in OS X

One feature missing from "The world's most advanced operating system", is the ability to schedule tasks.  This is, admittedly, not something most users would notice since most software designed to run on a schedule like backups, e-mail retreival and the like come with the ability to schedule themselves.  Windows has included a task scheduler since Windows 95.  Most users don't even know this for the same reason.  For us hardcore geeks, a tool for running tasks on a schedule is something we don't need that often, but we need one nonetheless. That's why I was very surprised to learn OS X doesn't include a scheduling utility.  I've been a Mac guy for almost three years and it took until a week ago to make this discovery.  It's just not something I need that often.
This all came about because I couldn't keep a Western Digital MyBook external hard disk from going to sleep.  WD includes this "feature" to spin down their disks after ten minutes of non-use to save power.  The problem is, none of my Macs would wake the silly thing back up.  This caused all sorts of problems with OS X.  When the WD would go to sleep, my iMac would "beachball" for one or two minutes, completely locking up Finder.  This would make my machine almost unusable until Finder timed-out and displayed an error message about not being able to find the external drive.  The machine would also hang on a reboot until I unplugged the firewire cable from the drive.  After an hour on WD's support site and searching forums I discovered there was no official fix from WD but there was a workaround to keep the disk from sleeping.

This is where it gets geeky.  To keep the disk from going to sleep, you have to access the device once within a ten minute period.  There's a handy UNIX command, "touch", to access a file and change its modification date.  It looks like this:


touch /Volumes/MYBOOK/filename

Where "MYBOOK" is the name of the WD drive and "filename" is a file on that disk.  I tested this manually using Terminal and sure enough, it kept the drive from sleeping.  This is when I went looking for a way to schedule this simple command to run automatically.  There is a built-in UNIX process called cron used by OS X to schedule tasks at given intervals or at specific times.  To add tasks to this process, the crontab (short for cron table) needs to be edited.  Doing this requires making the transition from geek to full-blown nerd if you want to tackle it from the command line.  That's when I went looking for a GUI tool to do this and found CronniX.  (If you want to know how to edit crontab from the Terminal there's a good quick-n-dirty how-to here.)
While not nearly as user-friendly as Windows' Task Scheduler, Cronnix will get the job done if you understand just a little about crontab's format.  It's not hard to figure out and Cronnix is absolutely free.  It presents you with a straight-forward interface to execute a command on a schedule you configure.

I scheduled the above "touch" command to run every five minutes and now my WD external drive doesn't go to sleep.  Its a shame to have to do this, but like many hardware vendors, Western Digital doesn't do Macs very well.  Cronnix, while not elegant by any measure, gets the scheduling job done in OS X without turning you into a complete nerd.

Tuesday
Mar092010

Cisco Announces CRS-3, 322Tbps Routing Technology

Cisco proves again that nobody can touch them when it comes to network performance.  Clocking in at 322Tbps (320,000,000,000,000 bits per second), the CRS-3 promises to provide the speed necessary to download the entire Library of Congress in one second.  Their projections indicate every user requiring high-def video, on-line gaming, movie downloads and the like will require 15 TB of data per month.  The obvious 800 pound gorilla in the list is the high-def video which consumes 13 of the 15 TB.  Sam Diaz of ZDNet attended the announcement:

Cisco made a significant announcement today in its effort to revamp the Internet as we know, launching a new networking router that has the power and the capacity to handle the demands of the next generation Internet.

The product is the Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System, which is designed to be the “foundation” of the next-generation Internet, one that can set the pace for video growth. The device promises to more than 12 times the traffic capacity of the closest competing system, with up to 322 terabits per second. How fast is that? The company said it enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second.

OK, that’s fast - but why do we need this sort of speed and capacity?

This is less about the Internet that connects Web surfers; This is about the Internet’s backbone - a beefed-up pipeline that exceeds the sort of power that we actually need today, but prepares us for the growth that will come from Internet as it relates to video and advanced communications.

The company also said that AT&T recently tested the CRS-3 in a successful completion of a field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology. The CRS-3 is currently in other field trials.

In a Webcast announcement, CEO John Chambers talked about how changing needs drive this demand. This is about meeting the needs of a future generation of users, today’s kids who already see video and communications as part of our connected lives,

This is also about verticals such as health care or education or government and their needs to not only connect to each other for enhanced communications but with their customers, as well. On a business front, this is about the technology that will change everything from virtualization to collaboration.

John Chambers says this is a step in Cisco moving away from being just the plumber of the Internet to being a business partner, and adviser on how to bring new life to new technologies. Chambers has long said that the network is at the core of the Internet.

Cisco stock (NASDAQ:CSCO) has been trading up significantly for the last couple of days in anticipation of today's announcement and as of this post is holding it's value at $26.03.  Investors tend to "sell on the news", but that hasn't happened yet.  Maybe this announcement is viewed as a business boon for Cisco.

For the rest of us this is great news.  Cisco's CEO, John Chambers says CRS-3 is the result of a $1.6 billion investment.  It's nice to see a company making this level of investment in new technology, especially one that will impact so many people.  As end users, we just want the bandwidth.  We don't care how it happens.  Google is dabbling in the ISP business and plans to wire a select few communities with 1Gbps internet service.  I don't know about you, but I'd be first in line to sign up if it were offered in my town.  Cisco seems to be providing the technology to make this sort of "super" high speed internet more than just wishful thinking.

 

Sunday
Feb142010

Reports of Macworld’s Death Were Greatly Exaggerated

A few weeks before Macworld 2009, Apple announced its intent to no longer participate in trade shows and that the ’09 Macworld would be its last.  With that, the ’09 Macworld took on a sort of funereal quality with lots of buzz about it being the last one.  Many, including myself were having a hard time visualizing a Macworld minus the object of everyone’s adoration.  IDG, having already committed to the 2010 event began registering ’09 attendees for free.  I gladly accepted the no-cost invitation having no idea whether I would again make the 1300 mile journey or not.  I talked to many others who’d done the same, so hearing IDG’s pronouncement earlier this month that over 40,000 people were registered for this year’s event meant very little.  I had doubts that free registration would translate to actual attendance.

There were fewer vendors than before and IDG confined the show to the north and west halls of the Moscone Center.  The west hall was for conference use only leaving only the north hall for the expo.  Last year, Apple consumed much of the south hall and without them I’m sure it wasn’t cost-effective for IDG to include it.  The consequence: The Expo floor was elbow-to-elbow whenever it was open.  I felt more crowded at this year’s event than at any one previous.  Maybe there weren’t enough vendors to justify use of the south hall, but there were certainly enough attendees.  There are probably lots of reasons vendors shied away from this year’s event: uncertainty about user attendance, Apple not showing or just a bad economy in general. If their reason was concern about attendance, they gravely miscalculated.  The loyal Mac community put to rest any doubts about whether they’d show up. I haven’t heard the final tally, but my observation is that this year’s Macworld was as crowded as ever.  The line to get into the David Pogue keynote was as long as the one for last year’s Apple keynote and the line for Kevin Smith’s performance was even longer.  The expo floor was uncomfortably crowded both days (Thursday & Friday) I went and the conference classes I attended were as full as last year’s.

For those who bet on Macworld ending with Apple’s withdrawal, “Sorry, no cigar.”  I honestly didn’t know how things would turn out.  The Mac fans have proven again that they are much more than your average fickle consumer.  It will take more than Apple pulling out to deter us Macheads.  Macworld is truly “our show”.

Monday
Feb082010

California, Here I Come!

Lots of tech journalists have already buried Macworld.  Apple’s decision a year ago to nix participation in all trade shows probably didn’t mean much to anybody except the Macworld organizers and those of us who make the annual pilgrimage.  Conventional thinking would seem to dictate that a conference and trade show devoted to the use of Apple products would suffer if Apple wasn’t there, but I’m not sure we Macheads bow to conventions.  It looks like the number of vendor participants is down a bit and this year’s attendance is still TBD, but I get the feeling all is well.  Sure, there’s no big keynote presentation to get everyone all worked up.  Apple made their splash last week with the big iPad event, so there certainly won’t be any earth-shattering press releases, but those things are really for the rest of the world.  While we really enjoyed being part of the big keynote announcements (as evidenced by the 4 AM queues), us Macworld attendees really enjoy being around each other.  NASCAR fans have Daytona, Harley-Davidson riders have Sturgis and we Apple geeks have Macworld.  We really are fans in the truest sense of the word.

I, for one think that IDG (the company that puts on Macworld Expo) has a real opportunity to make this expo all about us fans. In fact, it will be interesting to see just what type atmosphere they foster with no worries about offending Apple.  You know, when the cat’s away…

I’m traveling to San Francisco tomorrow (Monday) to attend the conference that begins two days before the expo opens.  I’m signed up for a couple of labs Tuesday and Wednesday and they look like the normal fair.  Maybe they’ll add a little extra to the curriculum like say, iPhone baseband modification or how to crack wireless encryption with an iPod Touch.  There’s no reason now to keep a lid on that type of thing.  What’s Apple going to do, boycott?  I for one would be first in line for a lab called “OS X on a Dell Mini 10” or “Running Snow Leopard on Your iPad”.  These are exaggerations, of course, but its not hard to imagine how constrained things can be with Apple looking over your shoulder.  In fact, I’m certain that not pissing off Mr. Jobs was high on IDG’s priority list for past expos.

The pre-expo buzz seems to be as prolific as ever, just minus the rumors and guesswork about what Apple may announce at the keynote.  For me, I’m OK with Apple having already shot their wad last week.  Now we can turn our attention to the rest of the show and not worry about Apple’s overshadowing.  The Apple portion of the expo was never much to see anyway.  They put on a few good presentations, but for the most part it amounted to little more than a great big Apple store staffed with employees who rarely knew as much about the products as the average expo attendee.  I’m sure the biggest hurt for IDG will be the absence of the check Apple used to write for renting almost half of the south hall.

Sorry, but no time to continue, gotta pack.  If this is the last Macworld Expo as many have predicted, I’m gonna get my money’s worth.  With Apple being more popular than ever, there must be a good number of hard-core zealots like myself to keep this train rolling.  I’m guessing there’ll be an Expo 2011.

Friday
Jan292010

And Now, A Real iPad Prediction...

I’ve spent the last couple of days combing through all the fuzz and digesting Wednesday’s iPad announcement.  I probably listened to 8 hours of punditry on top of watching the recording of the event itself.  I’ve read Mossberg, Pogue, Doctorow and the like to see what their vision of the iPad looked like.  My last post questioned whether or not Steve Jobs had another homer in his well-worn bat and after all this pondering I think I’ve come to a moment of clarity concerning the iPad.

This is rev 1 of a true game-changer!  The iPad is the device I think Mr. Jobs has always wanted to make.  It just took until now for the technology to catch up to his vision of a ubiquitous computing appliance.  Something powerful, something easy, something beautiful, something fun.  A computing device that is as comfortable on a coffee table as it is on a boardroom table.  A device that does 90% of what anyone would want it to do and as easy for my grandmother to use as it is for me.  In short, this is a device that will appeal to everyone.  People who would never consider sitting on a sofa with a laptop, people that can’t bear dragging out a computer while sitting in coach on an airplane, people that skip a step while making a new recipe because they didn’t want to stop and look up an ingredient list, people that prefer pen and paper to take notes in class because a laptop is too bulky, too distracting or just too inconvenient, people who are intimidated by computers in general plus people like me.  You know, geeks.  I can’t think of anyone who would not want an iPad, especially at $499!

For us geeks the realization of a truly functional device like the fictitious ones wielded by the Enterprise crew is almost a dream come true.  We would buy one just to fulfill our fantasies.  For Apple fans, all the iPad needs is the logo.  Done deal.  For everyone else, the iPad’s potential for practical use and unparalleled convenience will eventually win them over.  It may take a while, but sooner or later applications will be written that pull everyone’s particular chain.  The possibilities are truly limitless.

For all these reasons I predict iPad sales will make even the astronomical iPhone numbers pale by comparison.  Some day we will look back on January 27th, 2010 as the day everyone became part of the technological revolution.