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DualPhone 3088 Skype Phone: first impressions

AKA, the internet eats the phone system, installment one.

We recently bought a skype phone (having been inspired by this post).  We wanted to use our cell phones less (having been inspired by this book), and Skype seemed like an alternative to the local telco (Qwest).  Of course, it just increases our dependence on our local ISP (Comcast).  Gotta love broadband duopolies.

There was one requirement that made the phone relatively easy to choose.

  • It had to work without a computer being on.  I didn’t want to have to tie up a laptop or netbook for this phone.

This criteria limits you to about three phone models.  There are tons of phones that work as long as they are plugged into a computer (and they are cheaper too).  After spending some time wandering through Amazon.com’s catalog (a local store was also called, and they didn’t have anything), we selected the DualPhone 3088.  Here’s the Amazon page.

Impressions from using this phone for about a month.

  • It was easy to set up–I just created another skype account and set it up for some subscriptions.
  • The phone service is pretty good, though it has cut out a couple of times in use.  Of course, having AT&T as a cell phone provider, this is something we’re used to.
  • The phone feels cheap.  The handset is light and not quite full sized.

The economics are powerful, though.  A full subscription to skype (Skype In, so that others can call us, and Skype Out, so that we can call regular phone numbers) is around 9 bucks a month.  As we cut back our cell phone minutes, we’ll see whether a Skype phone is a full blown solution.

Technology | moore |

What to do when you get 504 and 500 errors from your Google Mini

I have a client who uses a Google Mini (a search appliance created by Google) as a key part of their business.  The appliance worked fine, gave great search results, and was happily humming along until very recently.  At some point over the last couple of months, the number of 504 errors visible to the users using the mini increased drastically.

At one point, no matter what term you searched on, you would see this error message:

Error: Unknown XML result type.

View page source to see the offending XML.

504

When I took a look at this to try to troubleshoot, the results were very arbitrary--some search terms would show this message, some would not.  However, when a search term did show the error message, it would do so consistently, at least for 5-10 minutes.  Perhaps that had to do with caching?

The benefit of the mini is that you get great google like search results.  The detriment is that it is a black box--you don't even get a login to the box, etc.  And when your support contract runs out, you're left with very few options.

So, we troubleshot with one hand tied behind our back.  We:

  • tried rebooting the box a couple of times (via the web interface)
  • considered rolling back the index, but we only had about 36 hours of index history
  • generated and analyzed the search logs
  • searched the Google Groups for mini support.  All that turned up was this post which was not exactly helpful, since we no longer had support

Finally, the client suggested resetting the index, as it was conceivable that the mini index had been somehow corrupted.  This was an option for the client because their documents are re-crawled every day.  If that wasn't the case, it would have been a harder decision.

Resetting the index solved the problem.  Some numbers:

  • a few months ago, 0.5% of search requests were returning either 500 or 504 errors.
  • just before the index was reset, 40.2% of the requests were either 500 or 504 errors.
  • now, 0% of requests are either 500 or 504 errors.

FYI, this post is applicable to the Google Mini version 4.6.4--I'm not sure how more current versions of software work/break.

[tags]google mini,black box troubleshooting,504 error[/tags]

Technology Tips Useful Tools | moore |

Hadoop logging case study

Here’s a fascinating case study of the evolution of a (large!) log analysis toolset. It follows Rackspace as they strive to allow searching logfiles from an ever growing number of servers, starting from manual ssh/grep, through various incarnations of a MySQL database, and ending up using Hadoop/Lucene/Solr.  There’s (some) more info on the rackspace blog.  Cool stuff.

Via George Fairbanks.

[tags]lucene, solr,case study,hadoop[/tags]

MySQL Technology Useful Tools | moore |

Solix website launch

I was able to help launch a revamped website on Monday.  Solix Biofuels is an algal oil producer moving from R&D into production. I’m not really a biology person, but I did enjoy reading about their technology.  To my layperson’s eye, algal energy sources seem much more sustainable than crop fuel sources.

It’s been a while since I’ve been the prime mover behind a deployment–there’s always a bit of nail biting when you finally reveal work to the world–but this one was fairly smooth.

[tags]solix,site launch, algal energy, oilgae[/tags]

Technology Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

CleanPrint Installed on my blog

About six months ago, I met with some friends who I’d worked with in the past, at Format Dynamics.  They gave me a bit of software to install on my blog, and I installed it and forgot about it. But it is worth mentioning.
It is a wordpress plugin that interfaces with CleanPrint, which is a pretty cool piece of software (I’ve written about it in the past.)  Installation is as easy as typical WP plugin installation.  You can try it out by going to any individual wordpress page and looking for the ‘Print Blog’ button:

I printed my notes from the BDNT meetup, just as an example; you can download the PDF here: June 2009 New Tech Meetup Notes.pdf.  (PDF created using the excellent PDF995 adware.)

The other option for pretty printing, of course, is to create your own print.css.  I believe that the plan is to eventually be able to display ads on the printouts, with some revenue sharing agreement.

[tags]wordpress plugins,pretty printing,shout out[/tags]

Technology Web Applications | moore |

Open Source Ad Server Roundup

I found this vlog post about a social network building their own advertising infrastructure to be interesting.  Basically, Dogster founder Ted Rheingold (whose lapdog gives him a Bond-villian-like presence during the interview) argues that building your own ad pipeline is harder than using an ad network, but is far more profitable and sustainable.  Ad networks are easy to slap in and give a startup instant revenue, but automated content targeting leaves something to be desired.  In addition, there’s no relationship built between the content purveyor and the advertiser, which leaves the content purveyor more vulnerable to advertising cutbacks.  Advertising salespeople are the easiest to hire, and the easiest to fire, as they should pay for themselves.  (As an aside, here’s an interesting article by Jakob Nielsen talking about how “paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value.”)

I passed it along to a friend who is building a directory site around local Colorado farmers and food and he mentioned some interest in it.  On my own, I took a look around to see what was available for self managed website advertising, and was surpised at the paucity of good open source ad serving software out there.  After all, advertising is one of the great business models (of the web, and of all time); I expected to see a bit more code out there.  But perhaps ad network software isn’t anyone’s itch.  Or maybe there’s no demand for it–sites are either small enough to use Adsense, or they are big enough to pay for a commercial ad server.  Regardless, here’s what I found:

There were a number of projects on source forge that seemed appropriate, but nothing that was actively maintained and useful (lots of projects started in 2001, and dormant).  Adsapient seemed the most useful, but they say on their website: “AdSapient Ad Server is an open source ad server that can be used as a platform for building your own ad serving technology. We recommend using it for educational purposes though.”  Not exactly a ringing endorsement.  Update, 4/27/2009: Someone who worked on Adsapient has started a new ad server.  More information below.

For some reason, this didn’t show up on my search of Sourceforge, but OASIS is definitely an ad serving and management solution.  Last release was 2007.
There is a company that offers hosted OASIS and OpenX ad serving solutions, but they’re rather pricey.  Another (closed source) option is Google’s ad management solution.

The best solution I could find was OpenX.  They have a demo site that works, they are continuing development as you read this, they have a free hosted solution good for up to 25 million impressions a month, and at that time, you can choose to either pay them a monthly fee, or download, install and configure the software and run the ad server on your own box.

Now, I haven’t spent enough time with the OpenX UI to know if there are dealbreakers in there, but based on pricing, ongoing development effort and freedom, I would definitely recommend OpenX.  Here’s an interesting discussion comparing the hosted OpenX solution and Google Ad Manager.

[tags]google ad manager,openx, oasis, ad serving, hosted ad solutions[/tags]

Business Technology Web Applications | moore |

Google Apps For Your Domain Site Launch

One of the fascinating things about business is how ecosystems are created around big technologies. Think of car manufacturers. One of the big reasons that there is fear regarding letting GM go bankrupt right now is the knock on effect–all the suppliers, big and small, that would not get paid while the bankruptcy judge was reorganizing the business. They wouldn’t be able to pay their employees, and that would affect the employees’ ability to buy goods and services from others in the area, which would cause other business to have issues, etc. The point I’m making above is not an argument in favor of bailing out the big auto companies, but rather a bemused look at how complex business ecosystems get.

Software is no different–every big company (HP, Sun, IBM, Microsoft) has multiple channels for getting its technology products out in the market. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are crucial for platforms. Consultants, both those employed by the company and those outside it familiar with its technolooges, serve as wells of expertise that can be drawn on by clients for the short or long term. Value Added Resellers (VARs) are important for re-selling company products and technology.

A few months ago I had a conversation with a fellow who was building a VAR for the Google suite of products. It looks like it went live in October. I have not used it, but certainly the idea has power. It is similar to the Office Suite, including outlook, but brings in chat, calendaring, and HTML authoring, all with the simplicity of remote hosting on Google’s infrastructure. Check out Google Apps for Your Domain if you think it might be a good fit for you.

Technology Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

Colorado Tech News Roundup Site

Via Kevin Cawley (who also has an interesting post on the changing nature of blogging), I found Rocky Radar, which claims to be “Colorado’s Technology Record”. We’ll see how long the folks behind it keep it up–I certainly hope they do.

The Radar started in Sep of 2008 and covers info tech, clean tech, life science and CU news. They do have a nice calendar of Colorado Tech events, even if there’s no ical format exposed.

Hey Rocky Radar founders, here’s an idea I’ve been toying with. CU has a ton of mailing lists announcing free talks across a number of academic interests. Why not

  1. aggregate them all in one massive list, or
  2. provide some kind of calendar interface to them
New Tech Meetup Technology | moore |