One of the reasons that I use Rackspace Cloud Files and Cloud Servers is that the data transferred between the two is free. As such, it struck me as odd when I discovered the network interface which handles such communication hadn’t been used on my server. Upon some further digging, it was in fact clear that I had been charged for all of my data between the two.
The trick is that a different host name must be connected to for the requests to be processed over the internal network (and hence for free). Luckily, the ‘cloudfiles’ Ruby gem has a poorly documented way to do this. All you have to do is set an environmental variable named “RACKSPACE_SERVICENET”.
I accomplished this by adding the following code to the end of my production environmental configuration file:
# Enable Rackspace Servicenet usage
# Uses eth1 to send free traffic to Cloud Files
ENV['RACKSPACE_SERVICENET'] = "true"
Technology development, rackspace, rails, ruby
This fun tidbit was in ArsTechnica’s post about the Google-China situation:
Fun fact: Google’s security team managed to penetrate one of the servers being used by the attackers, which was how the full extent of the attack—more than 30 companies—was revealed.
Where do I sign up to be a hacker for one of the most technologically advanced companies on the planet?
Life google
Foursquare and Gowalla will be this year’s Twitter.
This will occur for a number of reasons:
- Twitter’s wide-spread adoption has people used to the idea of real-time updates. Privacy is dead. With the advent of Twitter, people realized that the inane details of their lives will be posted and distributed in real-time and that nobody can control what is spread. At this point, I’m not going to argue whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but there is no denying that it is true. The natural extension of this idea is that it will soon be public knowledge where you are located at any point in time. Twitter has dabbled with this idea, but I do not expect them to package it in as seamless experience as Foursquare and Gowalla deliver.
- Smartphones are now ubiquitous. Five years ago only business executives had phones which could be used to check e-mail. The Blackberry was the end all and be all of the smartphone in America. Today there are new players in the game, and the market is growing at an extraordinary rate. After the failure of the Newton, Apple is back in the mobile business. Google threw its hat in the game by releasing the Android operating system and, more recently, the Nexus One phone. Smartphones are everywhere, and many of them are location-enabled.
- An increasing number of phones support geolocation and internet access. In the past, even many smartphones did not have GPS functionality. That was reserved for the absolute highest-end devices. Today every iPhone comes with built-in a GPS, forcing every serious competitor to include one as well. Combined with a mature SDK, location data become easy to access by applications such as these. With the widespread adoption of mobile internet access, this can be uploaded to a centralized service to be displayed.
The timing could not be better for these companies. These services have already experienced phenomenal growth. Foursquare has recently announced that it is going global, allowing users to post from any city. They no doubt realize that they are incredibly positioned in an emerging market, and they want to dominate this space. They are getting ready to release a new iPhone client, and their Android client is one of the most popular applications on the platform. They are also developing a Blackberry client application in order to cover the majority of location-enabled smartphones. Gowalla is taking a more niche approach by only having an iPhone client.
Like with Twitter, this isn’t about the money. Foursquare and Gowalla have not and can not charge for use. That would be suicide in every way. Make no mistake: the winner will be determined by number of users, not how well those users are monetized. Later I’ll post more about how I think these businesses can monetize their services while still gaining users and attention.
Technology 2010, foursquare, gowalla, location, prediction
My first application, Zippy, has been approved by Apple and is available on the App Store!
It’s a simple location-based application that uses your current location to look up your zip code. It can also search based on a provided city and state.
It was a really interesting experience developing this. I had never used Objective-C before, and this was my first application on the OS X platform. It was also my first project using the git version control system. I learned a ton, and maybe one day I will post about some of my more interesting discoveries.
Now, I’m hard at work on Zippy V1.5, which will have an expanded feature set as well as a few fairly major bug fixes. The two main things I’m planning to include in this release are maps and city and state information in addition to the zip code.
I’m also working on a few other projects that I will have news on soon. This includes another iPhone app (this time for musicians) and a web service (for businesses).
Technology development, iphone, zippy
This has been a particularly troublesome problem today, and I thought I’d help others out by sharing the fix that I found.
Active Directory can easily get littered with unused computers in large organizations, and before today, I didn’t know how to find and remove them.
On computers with the Server 2003 Support Tools installed, you can use dsquery to find inactive computers. For example to find computers that have been inactive for 13 weeks, you can use “dsquery computer -inactive 13 -limit 0″
That list can be used to automatically delete them from AD using “dsquery computer -inactive 13 -limit 0 | dsrm”
Technology activedirectory, server2003, tip
I got a shout out in Jason Calacanis’s new podcast, This Week in Startups.
It’s a cool show with interactive Twitter features. If you’re interested in startups or business, it’s a must watch.
Technology podcasting
I had the pleasure Sunday of going to see a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert in Nashville, TN. This was my first TSO show, and I found the band to be absolutely amazing. I would venture to say that Al Pitrelli (lead guitar) impressed me more than Angus Young of AC/DC fame did when I saw them. Alison Zlotow also had incredible stage presence for an electric violinist.
The lighting was absolutely breathtaking. I figured I would never see another light show as elaborate or perfectly synchronized as Nine Inch Nails. I was pleasantly surprised.
My seat wasn’t what I usually hope for when I go to a concert. I typically like to be within the first 15 rows by the stage. I got my tickets the day of the show, and I figured as long as I was on the floor it wouldn’t be too bad. This turned out to be a blessing, I believe, because being father back gave me a better view of the lighting and of the overall stage.
They had an elaborate pyrotechnic display featuring fire both on the stage and on the floor behind the audience. Lasers were also featured, with green light spanning across the arena in a style that reminded me of Coldplay.
I hope to see them again in the future, and you are doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t at least check out their CDs. The Lost Christmas Eve is my favorite.
Check out more photos in my flickr set.
Music Music, review, TSO
Plenty of people have criticized Nickelback’s latest effort, Dark Horse, as being unoriginal and tired.
I think it is important to keep some perspective. Nickelback has never exactly been a band that has tried to push the envelope. They are clearly influenced by Nirvana and and Pearl Jam, and that’s exactly how they sound.
The key, though, is that they are good at that sound. Chad Kroeger has a good voice, and the instrumentation is pretty good.
With that in mind, Dark Horse does have a few songs with sounds that they haven’t explored before. The last track on the album, “This Afternoon”, is more akin to country-rock than their usual post-grunge sound.
I’m not sure where the idea formed that every album has to be a radical departure from everything past, but that idea needs to be dismissed. For instance, I would love to find another album that compared to A Perfect Circle’s Thirteenth Step for me. Ashes Divide has come the closest to this, but they still don’t fill that void.
At the least listen to the singles and give Dark Horse a fair chance.
Music Music, nickelback, review
Just weeks after Josh Freese announced the Lights in the Sky 2008 tour will be his last, Alessandro Cortini announced he is also leaving on his blog. I’m deeply upset, but I wish him the best.
Though I felt like he wasn’t given enough attention, he added a lot to the live performance, and he was one of my favorite members. I, like most others, will continue to support him in his future endeavors including modwheelmood and blindoldfreak.
I had the pleasure to see NIN at Lollapalooza this year, and I’m glad I made it to a show with both Josh Freese and Alessandro Cortini.
Music Music, nin