Virtualization: What's Old is New Again, Kind Of

Back in the day, the computer sitting on your desk wasn't a computer at all. Mainframe terminals of the day ran very simple client software designed to simply connect, receive and send information, all in glorious shades of, well...just green. In fact, little of the horsepower was local, but resided inside a data center far away...sort of, like...I don't know...a cloud? Sound familiar?

These days, "cloud computing" and virtualization are the focus of many IT shops around the country as companies search desperately to cut costs and reduce IT assets. Both technologies lend themselves towards a model in which processing occurs in a central location, typically a data center, but often "cloud computing" refers to the utilization of a specific application, while virtualization refers to the execution of the entire operating system. Make no mistake however, while these technologies are suddenly popular in the age of Kanye West...the ideas themselves are straight up Doug E. Fresh. However, virtualization has come a long way, vendors such as VMWare, RngCube, and MokaFive have turned old school virtualizaion on its head, allowing central management of operating system images, while the processing itself occurs on the client's end point machine. The genius here is that you don't have to be connected to the local network (or any network) to get data to and from the VM, hence the ability to run VMs anywhere, anytime.

Recently VMWare announced that they've taken it a step further with their Mobile Virtual Platform, which obviously has the awesome acronym "MVP". When initially announced, the platform was a touch vaporware, as we saw no working prototypes to speak of. That all changed this week at VMWorld in Europe, as details surfaced on the platform itself, including video of a phone running both Android and Windows Mobile via the MVP client software. With current phone specs heading toward the stratosphere of performance, VMWare has timed this introduction well. A platform of this type could allow developers to reach an extraordinarily larger audience, and may allow consumers to focus more on the hardware when choosing a phone rather than the operating system. In addition, it brings carriers and companies who support these devices one step closer to a device agnostic mind set, one in which we the consumers have a much greater level of flexibility in our purchasing choices. And to think, it all started with a mainframe terminal...luckily we have more colors this time around.

I'm testing an application called "Pingle" for the iPhone. It allows you to utilize the ping.fm service to update a huge number of social sites and blogs...

iPhone App Review: Wunder Radio

I've only just recently started paying for apps on my iPhone. I had always previously trended towards the free sections of the App Store and for the most part always found something that suited my needs. In that vein, I've tried a number of free radio applications on the iPhone, and still love the streaming music of Pandora (who wouldn't?), but the features of Weather Underground's Wunder Radio application actually make this app worth the $5.99 price tag. You might wonder why a weather website has released a radio application, it seems as though they initially wanted an application that provided streaming weather to as many areas of the country as possible. What they ended up with was a portal to 60,000 radio stations and other content feeds. The app is available now in the App Store and has an efficient and well organized interface. You can find radio stations by way of category, region, or even stations close to you. The application offers you "station like this" in the "now playing" screen, and also often allows you a choice of stream type and bit rates along with their respective reliability. This comes in handy if you find your stream dropping in a certain location, there may be a lower quality one available that is more reliable. One of my favorite features is the police, fire, and emergency scanners available inside the application. You can listen to basically any metro police scanner in the country, including my hometown of Davenport. The Chicago scanner is riveting, and provides a lot of entertainment. You can also plug-in to Dallas' air traffic control stream which is also quite interesting. The bottom line is that this is a really great radio application with features warranting the $6 price tag...Oh yeah, it also gives you the weather.

The President Reads This Blog

NOT Photo-shopped.


The proof is undeniable...after my post yesterday providing my thoughts on the broadband pieces of the economic stimulus package. Reuters today released this statement from the White House:

Stimulus 1st Step in Obama's Broadband Goals


Thanks for stopping by, Mr. President.

Broadband Stimulus Creates Plan for Most Expensive Visio Diagram Ever

Look, for the most part I think the stimulus plan is a really good idea, and while I think the amount of spending (infrastructure spending in particular) versus tax cuts falls woefully short of what it should be, the bill seems to be putting money in the right places. One of the aforementioned places I have been keeping close tabs on is the amount allocated to broadband growth. Even for those not closely familiar with technology, it is not a stretch to see just how broadband communications can greatly affect our country's progress. Better communications sparks better collaboration, faster research, but more importantly...one could argue that our nation's network connectivity drives the ideals of egalitarianism that initially grew from the advent of the printing press long ago. Our ability to communicate and organize easily is "flattening" our world in ways that we honestly haven't even realized.

Gigaom and the SF Chronicle have good overviews of the bill as passed. Here are some highlights:


7.2 billion dollars - This is a decent compromise between the two bills. Unfortunately the money is split up into two grants that don't have to be allocated until 2010.

No speed requirements - This is not a good development. Initially the bill had aggressive verbiage regarding the standard definition of "broadband". This has since been stricken as legislators decided to focus on availability. I see this as a focus on rural and underdeveloped communities.

Broadband penetration map - This is a great idea and needed...but seriously, 350 million?? I'll have one on your desk by the end of the year for free Mountain Dew and Miller Lite.