Posts Tagged ‘networking’

1995 – The Federal Networking council officially coins the term Internet: Check out the Wiki on the Internet

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Other Day in Tech History items.

• Apple 10.3
• Sober Worm is detected
• Microsoft $240 Million into Facebook

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:52 — 4.5MB)

Well, whereas most people were getting on planes and shuffling home to their families, some of us stayed the extra days to enjoy the sites, sounds and warm weather. That, and it was a special deal if I left on Tuesday instead of Sunday.

The day started at 10 am as I woke up from a very hard sleep. I shuffled downstairs for a little while because the local fox affiliate had the Giants game on. Of course, I wanted to watch a bit of the Packer game.

By halftime, I knew this game was done, so I went back up to my room to nap and work. It’s an interesting multitasking function for you need mad skills to do it. Nonetheless, I finished uploading pictures and blog posts from the previous day.

The afternoon was mostly sight seeing. I walked down the main strip and back. It’s amazing how heat with little humidity can not make you sweat as much.

I got back to the room after dinner and started to get some more work done. That is when I found out, via Twitter,  a group of people were still around and wanted to get together for dinner. I already ate, but could use some desert. Therefore, I headed over to the Hilton for a little networking.

We deemed it the “unofficial Post blogworld tweetup”. It consisted of Zane from Zaneology, Wayne Sutton, Edward Morita, Kate Buck jr, Jen Wojcik and Nichole Simon. We talked about Blogging, Tweeting, Bumping (the iPhone Application, that is), Tattoos and SXSW.

The reason why on Tattoos is because Ed has a Wordpress Tattoo on his arm. He had a few, but this one was the coolest, in my opinion. And unlike the Zune guy, he’s not going to get rid of his tattoo.

We finished our drinks, the staff kicked us out of the Buffet, and that brought me back to the Hotel. I found out that the A/C – which I haven’t used all week – actually doesn’t work too well. It’s kinda loud. It wasn’t really hot in the room, but slightly uncomfortable. I ran it for about an hour, then everything was fine.

What a great day it turned out to be. I met some great people, learned a few more tricks and got work done. One more day, then I close the books on #BWE09.

Over at Scientific Blogging, Barry Leiba comments on cloud computing. The story is here. He says, in part,

What I think is interesting about the emphasis on cloud computing, and putting your data and services “in the cloud”, is that we’ve come close to completing a circle. In the 1970s, we used “dumb terminals” that talked to “mainframe computers”, behemoths that sat in large data centers.

Rant follows.

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You might remember the products. You might remember the hype. Then, you are tooling down highway 41 years later and all of a sudden you think to yourself – “Hey, whatever happened to…”

Failed ideas. Maybe it was a great idea, but wasn’t made right, or design errors brought it down. Maybe it was just a bad product. Well, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and see if we cannot repeat these errors again.

Oh yeah, why 16? Well because we could.

The Computer Watch: Whether it was the Ruputer, the MSN Direct ‘Smart’ Watches, the Timex Data Link Watch or another gadget watch – BTW – I remember having a “Transformers watch”. It was awesome!

Still, the Dick Tracey style communication watches, the “Computer on a wrist”, never really hit it off. I even remember a watch that gave you directions. You would put in the paper tape and turn a little dial to indicate where you are and where you are going.

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Contest has closed. Thanks to all participants.

This month we are giving away an Epson Artisan 700 printer. This is a wireless printer /scanner with CD/DVD printing capability. Here are all the options:

• 4 in 1 Print / Copy / Scan / Ultra Hi-Def Photo
• Up to 38 ppm, photos in as fast as 10 sec1
• Auto Photo Correction; preview on LCD
• Professional quality CD/DVD printing
• Wi-Fi and Ethernet networking
• Scan and restore faded photos
• Ultra Hi-Definition photos last 4x longer than photo lab prints
• Print personal note paper & greeting cards

There are three parts to this contest.

• Follow on Twitter – @geekazine
• Comment below with your twitter name
• In the next few weeks, during the Quickcast – Week in Tech History podcast (published on Mondays), I will announce the third requirement.
  • Check out the latest quickcast on this – we give you the 3rd step – a codeword to enter in twitter. #geekazine rocks.

On June 30th, we will draw a winner from all the names recieved (randomizer on the comment list). We will have other prizes as well, to be announced later.

Good Luck!

Video explaination:

Press release here: http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200905/1243448369.html

The latest answer, the latest of many, to the question of “earth, the universe, and everything” in computerdom seems to be cloud computing, in which users’ applications and data exist not on their local machines, but up there, somewhere, in the “cloud.”

(Aside: In the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, it was called “networking,” but “networking” is not a new, marketable term, so the marketeers disdain it.)

I am as skeptical of this as I was of doing grocery shopping via the internet.

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Bloomberg reports that Cisco Systems has released its first server for use in corporate data center environments. Read the full story here.

According to the story, Cisco is banking on having designed a box that is easier to administer and manage in a network environment. Two excerpts:

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As a little explanation, I specify Gnome in the title because, with other Linux desktops, there can be other file managers. They all do pretty much the same thing, but they can look different.

Fun Fact: Google runs on Linux.

If you have never used Linux, I think you will find browsing your files and home network looks a lot like what you are used to. In a Linux interface, as in Windows, there can be several ways to start a program. To keep this simple, I will show only one.

File Browsing with Nautilus:

The Gnome file manager is called “Nautilus,” I think because it goes under the surface.

To start Nautilus on Debian, go to Applications–>System Tools–>File Manager.

The File Manager will open to your home folder (a folder and a directory are the same thing. The word “folder” came into use because it described the function of a directory and was less intimidating to new users).

(The only files in my “home” folder are some screenshots I took for this series of posts.)

The home folder is similar to the C:Documents and Settings[username] folder in Windows. Unlike Windows, it does not contain pre-configured subfolders such as “My Documents,” “My Pictures,” and the like. The only pre-configured subfolder is “Desktop.” It is a blank slate for you to set up as you wish.

It also contains a number of hidden files and folders. In Linux, a file or folder is hidden by putting a period in front of the its name. “Docs” is open; “.Docs” is hidden. These folders store your preferences, menus, email database, and so on. Generally, there is a hidden folder every program you use, whether you run it from the menu or it runs automatically in the background. Hidden files perform functions like “locking” your login and user privileges.

Here’s a shot of the same folder with “Show Hidden Files” enabled under the “View” menu item:

You can

1. double-click on a folder to view its contents,
2. double-click on a file to open it in the default application, or
3. right-click on a file or folder to view a pop-up context menu.

The navigation panel on the left and the arrow buttons on top allow navigation about the computer. Here’s what I saw when I clicked on “File System” on the left:

This is where even the most expert Windows user is on foreign territory. The folders and files in a Unix or Linux system are arranged in a way completely different from how they are arranged in a DOS/Windows world. I am not going into this subject now, save to mention that the only folders that a home Linux user is ever likely to have to look at, besides the home folders, are /etc, /usr, and possibly opt. (Fun fact: Folder names are preceded by a forward slash, not a backslash. This is why internet addresses start with forward slashes. The internet began as a Unix thing.)

There is a good introduction to the Linux file structure here.

Network Browsing:

Browsing the network is similar.

Remember that Debian asked me to configure my network settings at time of install, so the network connection was already configured at the time of the initial reboot. In this case, we are browsing using Samba, which enables Linux and Windows computers to talk with each other.

Start the network browser by going to Places–>Network Servers:

The Network Browser opens to a list of “servers.” You can open a “server” by double clicking it. Same for a folder that’s shared over the network and for a file.

The picture shows

1. The first network browser window, showing the list of computers available on the network.
2. The list of shared folders in server “mackeral” (this laptop I’m typing on right now).
3. The list folders and files in the “//mackeral/docs” subfolder.
4. The list of documents in the “//mackeral/docs/manuals” subfolder.

Depending on the permissions granted on the various servers, I can delete, copy, open, edit, and move files. When I finished taking the screenshots for this post, I used the Network Browser to drag them from //swordfish/home/frankbell to //Interlock-3/blah-blah-blah/pix, where I edited them, then I dragged them from Interlock-3 to my server. (You can see a slightly-outdated diagram of the network here.)

While I was editing this post, I realized that some of the screenshots and pictures needed more work (that’s a fancy way of saying I saw that I blew it), so I opened them over the network on this here laptop, recropped them or added the captions or edited them, then saved them back to the server.

Just for grins and giggles, here is the Network Browser using the list view, rather than the icon view:

And that’s a quick intro to file and network browsing with Debian Linux and Gnome.

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All Show Notes are also on Delicious

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (23.8MB)

Wow. It was about a year ago I asked for people to send in thoughts as to what to expect in 2008. I also made some Technology predictions. But the real question was – How far off was I?

This is actually part 1 of a 2-part story. This first part reviews the predictions I made last year and how far off I was. Part 2 will have this years predictions, including predictions from CEO’s CTO’s TechPodcasters and even a Psychic.

So without any further ado, let’s pick apart my idiocy from last year:

OLPC will have some growing pains. The first part of OLPC will be the easiest. Maintaining the machines will be the trick. Microsoft coming onboard will muddy the water, but they might be able to do things like offer a better support network to third world countries.

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I saw you back in Comdex in 83 – You were a exciting new technology – a marvel to me with a touchscreen.

Ohhhh, ohhh

But times have changed and you are now put to the side – the integration with the phone makes it real nice – and you get tossed in the scrap pile to die.

Ohhh, ohhh

I used your applications

ohhh, ohhh

And all your revelations….

Earlier in the week I read the article “5 things the Smartphone Killed“. While I am not in total agreeance of the list just yet, I do agree on a lot of their items and I can see the Smartphone can totally engulf all the item replacements. Read the rest of this entry »