Beginning November 22, 2011, we will end support for the Gmail App for Blackberry(installed native app). Over this past year, we’ve focused efforts on building a great Gmail experience in the mobile browser and will continue investing in this area.

Users may continue to use the app, if installed, however it will not be supported by Google, or available for download starting November 22. BlackBerry users can continue to access Gmail through the mobile web app at http://www.gmail.com in their BlackBerry web browser.

Anyone that has the app installed on their phones now will be able to continue using it. I wonder how long it will be before a system update to the Gmail service will break these unsupported apps? If you have to wipe your Blackberry after November 22nd (and let’s face it, we’ve all had to wipe our Blackberries before) you will no longer be able to install the application.

The best bet is to go ahead and start switching over to the mobile application now. I’ve always preferred to move to a new platform on my own time. Waiting until it breaks is a recipe for disaster. You’ll likely be stuck and waiting on the IT guys to return your call.

I can’t say that I am surprised by this. At work we have been encouraging our end users to migrate away from the Blackberry platform for a few years now. Most of our smart phone folks have moved to either the Android or iPhone platforms but there are still a few that like to use their Blackberries. I wonder which app will be the next to end support?

When I decided that it was time to take action I didn’t have any single device that could hold all of our short and long term storage needs. I also didn’t have any portable devices that could move this data around without breaking it up into small pieces first. This was becoming quite a problem. I needed to find a solid network storage device that was robust, redundant, easy to implement and relatively affordable.

One of the barriers to working in a smaller shop is always budget. There was a long list of storage devices that we simply couldn’t afford. Since I had already been using two of the original Drobo (Data Robotics) devices I decided to see what higher end options were available. I was initially impressed by the DroboElite. This device offered many of the features that we were looking for in a storage device. It was compatible with our virtual servers as well as offering a great deal of network storage. With the dual NIC (network interface card) configuration I could easily dual purpose the unit. I decided to pull the trigger. Once the new device arrived I quickly took it out of the box and started working with it. I made a few bad assumptions during the initial setup due to my previous experience with the original Drobo devices. The DroboElite is almost nothing like its predecessors. Here are a few key lessons learned:

• You have to connect the DroboElite directly to your computer using the USB cable for the initial setup.
• Once you have the desired volumes set up you can then access it via the Drobo Dashboard over the local area network.
• You cannot format the volumes while locally connected. You have to format the volumes over the network after the initial setup is complete.
• This device doesn’t work in Linux. Period full stop. I lost a day and half trying to get it to work. You have been warned.
• The only really good way to set up these larger volumes is to format them in NTFS. EXT3/4 won’t work. You have been warned (again).
• Only ONE computer on your network can access each volume at one time. This one took me some time to work out.
• You really should enable a CHAP password on any volume exposed to your local area network. One computer can lock out the volume so that no one else can access it. You might not know which computer that is. You might spend days trying to figure out how to regain access to your data before you finally think to enable a CHAP password. You have been warned (one last time).

All drives are recognized and working!

At this point I have initialized the Drobo, installed all eight hard drives (2 TB, 7200 RPM) and moved it to the local area network (LAN). The primary network interface card (NIC) has been configured with a static IP address and is accessible from all the devices on my network.

Now we need to set up the individual volumes:

Volume Setup Screen

We are sharing this storage device between our regular LAN and a virtual storage network. Before this device arrived I was running virtual machines locally on their physical hosts. This was risky since a hardware failure could potentially take down multiple virtual servers. With the arrival of the new Drobo I will finally be able to run the virtual machines on the storage device. If a physical host goes down I can quickly recover by moving the virtual machine to another physical host and starting it up again. The public facing recovery time shrinks from hours to minutes.

In the example above I have set up an 8 GB NTFS volume. This will be shared on the LAN for storage. The 2 GB volumes will be used on a separate storage network as shared storage for the physical virtual servers. All of the virtual machines will be migrated to the storage network ranked by importance.

Now that the volumes are set up it’s time to start copying data over to the Drobo!

Time to start copying files over!

One of the major differences between the original Drobo and the DroboElite is that only one computer can access a volume at a time. To work around this limitation I mounted the volume on our file server and used the domain permissions to control access.

Setting Up The Storage Network For Virtual Machines

To segment the virtual machine traffic from our normal LAN traffic I set up a second switch to manage the storage network. All of the physical host servers have at least dual NICs. One NIC from each server goes to the storage switch. The storage network runs over iSCSI instead of the standard TCP/IP protocol. This service is disabled by default in the physical host. To enable iSCSI click on Configuration – Storage Adapters.

Enable iSCSI Detection In VMWare

Once iSCSI has been enabled you can scan the network for your iSCSI device.

VMWare Can Now See Your iSCSI Volumes

Click on the Storage link to format the volumes with vmfs3.

All volumes are formatted and ready to go!

Click on the Networking link to set up the network. In the following example we are running one physical network attached to our LAN and a second attached to our storage network.

I am surprised at how many virtual machines can be run over the single gigabit ethernet connection without any apparent loss of speed. I haven’t hit a limit yet where performance is materially impacted. All in all this device is very impressive. You can really push the capabilities of this storage device on a rather tight budget. Kudos to Data Robotics for producing such a robust (and affordable) network storage device! Very impressive!

Recent milestones for Kindle include:

• Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
• So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
• In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
• Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
• Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1

The percent of U.S. adults with an e-book reader doubled from 6% to 12% between November 2010 and May 2011. Hispanic adults, adults younger than age 65, college graduates and those living in households with incomes of at least $75,000 are most likely to own e-book readers. Parents are also more likely than non-parents to own these devices.

Naturally, 1234 is the most common passcode: mimicking the most common internet passwords. To put this into perspective, these 10 codes represent 15% of all passcodes in use. Most of the top passcodes follow typical formulas, such as four identical digits, moving in a line up/down the pad, repetition. 5683 is the passcode with the least obvious pattern, but it turns out that it is the number representation of LOVE (5683), once again mimicking a very common internet password: “iloveyou.”

Interestingly, 1990-2000 are all in the top 50, and 1980-1989 are all in the top 100. I would interpret this occurrence as a subset of users that set their passcodes to the year of their birth or graduation.

The first part of the move was the smoothest. On the other side we had to battle power issues, cabling issues, uncooperative backbone switches, a dead phone system and lots of co-workers who needed help getting set up. The new server racks weren’t deep enough for our rail systems and used incompatible screws from the old racks. Throw all of that into a pot, add boiling water and you’ll get a very long weekend implementation.

So in this situation what would any self respecting IT guy do? They would stack the servers in the floor, run cables everywhere and get the websites and e-mail back online!

Servers stacked beside the racks.

It looks like our server room exploded!

Fast forward eleven months and three abortive attempts to clean up the server room. I finally scheduled another maintenance window that we could deliver on. We have reduced our hardware footprint somewhat with server virtualization and e-mail system consolidation in the intervening months. My friend David Wehrle stopped by on a Saturday to help me break everything down and bolt it into the racks. Fortunately the rail adapters and new screws all worked well from the start. Remembering to bring my electric screwdriver with freshly charged batteries wound up being a big advantage over the initial moving weekend. I didn’t care for the four post racks that startedwarping once w added servers, making successive servers harder to mount. If I could go back and do it all over I would have probably purchased racks that had more substantial support around the four posts. Ah well, live and learn. After several hours of work we finally had everything squared away!

Now we can actually walk around behind the servers!

Who knew there was this much storage space?

David Reid, our systems administrator, helped me clean up the mess after we finished mounting the servers. We were sweeping up construction debris that had been there from when we moved in! Without the help of the two Davids this project would not have been completed. I really appreciate their help. It’s nice to finally have everything unpacked from the move, even if it was almost a year later!

“For us it’s probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is,” shrugged West. “But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days.”

Most of today’s key video game outlets – Game, HMV, Amazon – and even some supermarkets (Tesco) buy and then resell used games from customers. Game publishers have developed a number of initiatives to counter-attack this, the most popular being EA’s Online Pass, which bundles a free code with new games that can be redeemed to enable multiplayer or receive downloadable content. Whoever buys the game second hand won’t get a free code, which means they’ll have to buy a replica online for around $10.

Why do game publishers and developers not like second-hand game sales? Because they don’t get any money for the transaction – the shop reaps all the rewards.

I must be the worst video game customer they have. I remember playing my first video games on an Atari 2600 A LONG time ago. I’ve owned virtually all of the Nintendo, Playstation and X-Box systems that have been created. You could call me an old school gamer. When I am playing multiplayer games online I have to remember that I’ve been playing games longer than some of my opponents have been alive (so why are they so much better than me?). I am passing the tradition to my children with our Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS systems. They play the Nintendo games while I keep the X-Box 360 for myself.

This habit can get to be expensive, considering how long I have been buying video games. When I got out of college, found a job and started paying for these systems and games myself I realized just how expensive it could be. I decided then to stop chasing the latest and greatest video game. I wait now for the prices to drop significantly in the used market before I buy a title (except for Gears of War 2 and 3 – I’ve gotta have those now!).

This keeps me significantly behind the curve for new video games. I don’t mind so much when I’m paying a lot less for the game than others do. I keep all of the games that I buy after I have finished playing them. When the next X-Box or Nintendo system comes out I have plenty of hardware to trade for a system upgrade and a few games. Then the clock starts again on buying new games. When I am fortunate enough to receive a Christmas bonus from work I take advantage of the holiday deals and buy enough games to last me for most of the next year. With a full time job, a loving wife and three kids, a fierce Geocaching habit and a strenuous work out schedule I don’t have the time to keep up with the pace of video game development.

When a hot new title hits the market and comes back used a few days later the used price isn’t that much different from the new price. When there is a five dollar difference I go ahead and buy the new game (if I truly can’t wait for the price to come down). The extra few dollars buys me an unblemished copy with no scratches. Have you ever seen how scratched up a used game can become? Of course, the developers don’t see any of the dollars from a resale but they have already made their money on the initial sale of that product. You can be sure that the person that brings the game back takes a heavy loss on the trade in value. I know I have at times.

I bet I am more typical than you would think. All of the kids that played Atari with me are surely still gamers now, right? To call us worse than software pirates is nothing short of insulting. I almost felt bad for Lionhead (almost) until I read this:

Fortunately, Lionhead has already managed to cover development costs with first-hand Xbox 360 sales, which are “in their millions”.

Wait a minute, you have already covered your development costs and have turned a tidy profit? Why are you complaining about this? When I studied economics in college we called this rent seeking behavior. As such, it should be dismissed out of hand. To the developers I say “meh, I will continue buying your games used.” Create something as good as Gears of War 2 and 3 and I will buy it at the midnight release party. Otherwise, please take  your profits, shelve the atrocious behavior and get busy developing the next profitable title.

Conference Staff Attending The Leadership Summit

The event was nicely done from a technology standpoint. It was an interesting experience to know that we were participating in the same event with United Methodists in the Congo, Germany, Zimbabwe, Liberia and elsewhere all over the world. We all sang the same hymn and prayed the same prayer, regardless of timezones. It was a great experience. I hope we do more presentations like this in the future.

This is one of the reasons why I think that all of our churches should create a technology budget for their leadership. All of our pastors need access to modern computer equipment and smart phones. These devices will help our clergy become more connected with each other, the annual conferences and the general boards and agencies.

Having driven in from Raleigh to attend this conference I had a rather high set of expectations.  It’s a considerable investment to leave the office for three or four days and drive three and a half hours.  This conference would not disappoint!  Columbia is a wonderful place to hold a conference of this size.  The hotels are an easy walk from the conference center.  There are a lot of excellent dining establishments all within the same area.  I didn’t have to go far to attend the conference, sleep or eat.  I decided to drive this time but I would have been just as well off had I flown.  I didn’t really need a car once I got here.

The support that this conference has gathered in its four years of existence is simply amazing.  The sponsor list included companies such as Microsoft (yes, they were here), Oracle, Red Hat, Verizon, Linode.com, Google and many others.  The support from the City of Columbia was also very impressive.  Mayor Benjamin welcomed us on the first day and reinforced his excitement and support for the conference.  It’s obvious that Columbia is making a big push to become a technology center.

Since I help produce a few conferences a year I spent some time looking over the visible POSSCON operations.  I am always looking for better ways to put together our show.  Here are a few lessons that I picked up this week:

• Internet access is an issue at other conferences beside ours.  When you bring a few hundred (or a few thousand) people into one place for the day they will take down your connections.  The Internet connections here worked all day although they were a bit spotty at times.  There are just too many smart phones and laptops out there.  Overall I think it worked well.  With some patience I didn’t have any severe trouble with communicating when I needed to.
• QR codes were used to great effect during registration and on our ID badges.  It did slow down registration on the first day but once the main first day registration was over it moved fairly well.  There are clear advantages to using this technology.  The obverse side of the name tag held a QR code with all of my contact information.  I could easily pass off this electronic business card to anyone with a smart phone bar code scanner.  The reverse side of the badge held QR codes with internal ID numbers.  I assume these were used to keep track of my registration and what days I attended the conference.  I did notice that glare from the big windows played around with the bar code scanners a bit.  Once we turned the name tag away from the glare they worked without a hitch.
• We need to do a better job of getting electricity out to the floor of our conferences.  POSSCON had electricity within easy reach in every room.  I found myself having to recharge my laptop and phone multiple times during the week and this was most appreciated.
• Give aways at the end of the day was a nice touch.  It does a good job of keeping people’s attention all the way to the end of the day.  I wonder if there is a way that we could integrate this idea into our conferences?  Alas, I did not win one of the coveted Galaxy tablets but it was nice to mingle and hear the applause for all of the winners.
• One of the conference staff grabbed me at lunch on the second day and asked me to fill out a quick online survey (again tied into my QR codes).  I think this is a great idea and something we should seriously pursue.

At the end of the day I am very excited to have been able to attend this conference.  Unless something similar pops up in Raleigh I will likely add this to my annual list.  Thanks POSSCON for putting on such a great conference!  I am excited to hear about what is in store for next year!

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife

Shortly after I started Geocaching I discovered Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK).  GSAK is an excellent database application that is geared towards tracking all of your caching activities.  I rely on this one program to load thousands of caches into my GPSr, keep track of what I have found (as well hidden) and all of the recent activity in caches I haven’t yet found.  In my experience it is the best program written for this purpose.  There are other applications that can do parts of what GSAK can do but none offer the same complete package.

Sounds great, right?  The only problem I have with this program is that it is written for Windows.  There is no Linux port!  Since I run Ubuntu on all of my mobile computers (and even my work computers), I can only use it on my Windows computer at home.  This (for me) was limiting.  Of course Windows users don’t have a problem with this.  For us Linux users however, we are simply stuck if we need to reload our GPSr units in the field or do any research while we are out of range of the internet.

Wine Is Not A Windows Emulator

Over the years I have tried numerous Linux based tools trying to replace this functionality.  Each time I eventually gave up and went back to doing it in Windows.  One day recently I decided to give the latest development build of Wine (WINe is Not an Emulator) to see if GSAK would work at all.  In past revisions of Wine GSAK would either not load at all or would crash and burn shortly after loading.  After updating my laptop and giving it a shot I found out that it works!  I was able to finally load GSAK and browse around the program without crashing.  What a relief!

So, how did I get it to work?  My Linux distribution of choice as of this writing is Ubuntu 10.10.  The default version of Wine that is in the Ubuntu software repository is version 1.2.  Don’t try to run GSAK in this version as it will not work.  You can find detailed instructions on how to install Wine 1.3 below (summarized):

Run the following commands on the command line:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.3

These commands will install the latest version of Wine automatically.  If you already had Wine installed then the upgrade will remove version 1.2 first.  I had the most success by manually deleting the Wine version 1.2 /home/user/.wine directory.  Opening Wine version 1.3 will create these files again from scratch.

You need Wine version 1.3 or higher to make GSAK work.

After you have installed the latest version of Wine and created the new configuration files, download the latest version of GSAK.  Open the command line and browse to the downloads directory.  Enter the following command to install GSAK:

wine GSAK772B56.exe

Latest version of GSAK

Now that the software is installed you can start it up, enter your licensing information and get started!  Once I had finished the installation and tried out a sample database, I was ready to start putting this to use.  I solved the issue of getting the software to work in the first place.  Now I had to solve the problem of portability.  How can I move my GSAK installation around with me wherever I go?  I have desktops at work and at home, a laptop and a netbook.  That’s a lot of devices!  I could be using any of them at any time so what happens when I have my netbook but GSAK is on my laptop?

Dropbox solves this problem nicely.  I am running this service on all of my computers to synchronize my important files everywhere I go.  With so many computers it is virtually impossible to keep up with where my data is.  Dropbox takes care of this completely.  I went to my Windows computer and copied my existing GSAK settings files to my Dropbox folder.  Once you have copied the settings files over you will need to change the Application Data, Database Folder and Backup Folder paths in Tools – Options – General.  As you move from computer to computer GSAK will open up and pull in the latest database information.  It really is seamless!

It is seamless however, until I try to open GSAK on my one Windows computer.  The Application Data and Database Folder settings survive the transition from Linux to Windows.  The Backup Folder path does not change.  It still looks for the last path used.  If you want to back up the database in Windows you have to manually change the options coming and going from Windows.  I posted a note in the GSAK forum asking that the Backup Folder be turned into a variable instead of a hard coded path.  Hopefully that will change in future versions.

So What Doesn’t Work In Windows?

There are two areas of GSAK that still doesn’t work with Wine:

• Split Screen View – This feature doesn’t work at all.  It loads the first cache when the program loads but never loads another one after that.  Sometimes the program crashes when it tries to load.  I only run this view when I am on my Windows computer and I have to turn it off before I go back to Linux.
• Macros – Most of the macros that I am accustomed to using work well in Linux.  Only the macros that require Windows drive letters won’t work in Linux.  That doesn’t affect me very much so I haven’t spent much time on it.

It really works!

So there you have it, GSAK works in Linux!  There are still a few kinks to be worked out but considering that a few months ago it wouldn’t even load properly this is enormous progress.  I hope more of my fellow Linux users will start running it.  Perhaps we can get the last few glitches worked out at some point and have the same functionality as our Windows brethren.  Happy Caching!