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When I was growing up, I loved watching those “House of the Future” shows where everything was controlled with the push of a button. I’ve recently been working with a company in CT, Cyclone Home Systems, that provides a number of things to homeowners very similar to the things we saw when we were growing up. Of course, they have now-conventional offerings like home intercoms, but the future of companies like this one lies in the futuristic structured wiring, security and automated window treatments offered.

The average consumer can always implement the basics of home security and automation through products like Internet cameras for home security, MPEG capture cards and plug in modules but this new generation of professional automation solutions are another story altogether. The structured wiring system’s combination of media, security and thermostat controls can

…distribute music and television to every room in your house, to control lighting everywhere in your home, to sound a security alarm when an intruder lurks outside, or to remotely monitor areas of your property where security cameras are set up.

Now that’s what those future-thinking shows promised when I was a kid! I haven’t had the pleasure of using any of Cyclone’s products/services, but their description of this “smart” house system is definitely interesting. Two questions: one serious, one not. Serious: whatever happened to those Internet-equipped refrigerators that were supposed to order groceries for us? Not so serious: where’s my jet car?

Technorati Tags: home automation

Browsing some of my favorite tech blogs, I came across an article from 2005 on The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security by Marcus Ranum. This is the sort of IT discussion I like to see - advanced topics tackled in a way the modestly-informed reader can understand. In short, the article outlines the absurdness of:

1. The Default Permit - “…the computer security equivalent of empty calories…”
2. Enumerating Badness - “…around 1992 the amount of Badness in the Internet began to vastly outweigh the amount of Goodness…”
3. Penetrate and Patch - “…the problem with ‘Penetrate and Patch’ is not that it makes your code/implementation/system better by design, rather it merely makes it toughened by trial and error…”
4. Hacking is Cool - “….I find it interesting to compare societal reactions to hackers as ‘whiz kids’ versus spammers as ’sleazy con artists’..”
5. Educating Users - “…like ‘Penetrate and Patch’ if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. …”
6. Action is Better Than Inaction - derides “…product-purchasing decisions by reading Gartner research reports and product glossies from vendors…”

Between the lines, Ranum is saying that computer system security should be addressed through predictive systems rather than permissive & reactive technology or training. What can average at-home users take from this? Realize your computers have vulnerabilities with people dedicated to exploit them. For tech professionals, it seems to be a much more urgent message: adapt the way you think about your world or face security as an endless, sisyphean task.

Technorati Tags: computer security, Marcus Ranum

Yes, my prediction is that Android, Google’s open source mobile phone software, is going to take over soon… might I say rule the world!? Ok, maybe not, but there is a lot of buzz about the Open Handset Alliance and Google’s desire to produce a mobile phone “platform” that would be available for open source application development. What’s the story?

Originally, there were rumors that Google was going to produce a “GPhone” much like Apple’s iPhone hardware. Adding fuel to the fire was the company’s acquisition of Android back in August 2005. Then, there were rumors they were just going to start producing some phone software. But (last week) Google announced its leadership of the Open Handset Alliance,

a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. [more]

With this, they have now positioned themselves as a leading participant in an open source phone platform that can be freely distributed & infinitely customized by ALL mobile phone manufacturers. Why just stock the shelves when you can run the store, right? Of course they still have their eye on the hardware market (the Open Handset Alliance promises a handset w/ Android in 2008) but the primary goal is to provide handset makers and even individual wireless operators an easy way to develop custom applications for their users. It’s easy to imagine how the apps developed by companies and end users are going to turn mobile devices into a hotbed of 2.0 mashup applications using maps, profiles (ala Dodgeball) and geo-information. People are already putting together alpha versions of Android apps, as mentioned in this recent News.com article.

It’s an exciting time to watch the mobile world. No doubt Google has positioned itself, alongside its Android, to rule the world.

Technorati Tags: Android, Open Handset Alliance

As online shopping becomes more a part of everyday life, buying a video online has also become second nature to most. Amazon and other providers like them use the medium to

show, directly on your site, movie and TV trailers and previews for a huge range of recent and classic titles

Worth checking out? Sure. It’s another way large bandwidth connections for the masses has improved stores’ ability to market their wares. Will it attract a disproportionately higher number of viewers and buyers? We’ll see!

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Unbox

If you’re in the market for a blade server, I’m not going to hold your hand through this article. Blade servers are meant for business. They are meant to be run in tandem with other blades within a blade enclosure. Unlike traditional rackmount servers, blades put all the non-essential hardware in the blades’ enclosure, leaving the core computing pieces intact and hot-swappable on the blade itself. (The enclosure provides power, cooling, networking and, often, other management firmware.) As you can see, those in the market for a blade server are either going to want a full blade system (blades + enclosure) or the individual blades.

I won’t try to convince you of one blade brand or another. Why? If you already have a blade enclosure, you already know what you want (you cannot usually put blades of one brand into the enclosure from another.) We feature deals on blades by makers like HP Proliant and IBM Bladecenter.

If you’re starting from scratch and are looking to buy a blade server enclosure, check out our Intel Blade Server Chassis. Inventory includes new blade server enclosures for just over $3000 and refurbished blade server enclosures for under $2500 USD. The IBM is described as

The Intel Blade Server Chassis SBCE is an example of state-of-the-art blade engineering that allows you to greatly expand computing power while reducing management resources. No matter how you configure it, the Intel Blade Server Chassis SBCE was built for efficient management. The system includes a management module that monitors temperatures and controls fan speeds, to maintain an optimum operating environment.

Do your research. Know your needs. When you decide that power, scalability and redundancy are top on your list of priorities, consider buying a blade server system.

Reference:

• Blade Servers on Wikipedia

Technorati Tags: blade server, servers