Tag: windows

Banning the Phablet… with the Samsung ATIV with Keyboard.

Ok, in the end, let’s just call these things tablets. I know there is the attempt to call these phablets, but that’s so freakin’ stupid. They’re called tablets Microsoft. Just go with the flow. Here’s an unboxing, initial application viewing & a bit more via video. I’ve broken this review into three sections; A Video Review & Unboxing, A Few Product Photos and A Few Notes. On to the review…

A Video Review & Unboxing

A Few Product Photos

Samsung ATIV (Click for full size)
Samsung ATIV (Click for full size)
The ATIV with Windows 8 Start Screen displayed. (Click for full size)
The ATIV with Windows 8 Start Screen displayed. (Click for full size)
The side view of the ATIV; power button, the something another button, headphone jack and USB port. (Click for full size)
The side view of the ATIV; power button, the something another button, headphone jack and USB port. (Click for full size)
The button, connectors removed for attachment to keyboard. (Click for full size)
The button, connectors removed for attachment to keyboard. (Click for full size)
Close up of the screen. (Click for full size)
Close up of the screen. (Click for full size)
The Connectors between the bottom and the keyboard. (Click for full size)
The Connectors between the bottom and the keyboard. (Click for full size)
ATIV connected to the keyboard. (Click for full size)
ATIV connected to the keyboard. (Click for full size)
Power chord side. (Click for full size)
Power chord side. (Click for full size)
Base of it, folded with keyboard. (Click for full size)
Base of it, folded with keyboard. (Click for full size)

A Few Notes

On an Atom device, a ton of software is incompatible with Windows 8. NOTE this. It is vitally important to be aware of. Especially if you’re under the impression you’ll do any type of “Microsoft” Application Development. Also much of the 64-bit software won’t run even in compatibility mode. All things to keep in mind when making a purchase.

Strava, Pandora, Spotify and many other apps just do not exist for Windows 8 – still. Microsoft is either going to have to win market share in the app market or they’re going to have to pay companies to build Windows 8 versions of their applications. This isn’t entirely out of the question, as Microsoft has basically paid for most of the applications that are in the Windows 8 store.

If you’re an Evernote power user, or any type of power user for that matter, you will likely need to download the regular Windows version of any application in addition to the Windows 8 Start bar, tablet style metro interface contraption that is available via the store. The Evernote application for instance is cumbersome and requires more fiddling about clicking and moving things on the screen to be truly useful.

Amidst all of these problems there are a few gems in the Windows 8 application space. The one that stands out the most to me at this time is the Amazon Kindle Application. It is truly one of the more polished applications, but in addition it looks good and works well in the Windows 8 touch universe. Another application that holds up is the Weather Application. Yup, the simple built in Windows 8 Weather Application.

The Evernote application, fact is it doesn’t synchronize effectively nor does it actually show you how or were it is within that process. In the end, even though the application appears, at first to work well with touch, it doesn’t work well overall. Maybe it’s Evernote or Microsoft that is at fault. I don’t know. As the consumer I don’t need to know because it’s their responsibility to make these things work. Hopefully, that’ll happen eventually.

I’ll be using the tablet in an ongoing basis to build and test Windows 8 applications and for some everyday tasks; email, twitter and other applications as they become available. I’ll definitely have more to say about this device. Another review in a few months when I get really used to the Windows 8 interface and the hardware itself.

NOTE: I don’t get paid to do any of these reviews. I merely do these because I enjoy good, candid reviews and want to contribute back to the tech community. I am not paid to advocate Windows 8, Samsung, Apple, Tablets or Phablets or anything in this video. This is merely a product that I have purchased that I intend to use for software development and testing in the near future.

Cheers,

Thor Project Opens Up, Building the Cloud Foundry Ecosystem with the Community

The Iron Foundry Team are big advocates of open source software. We write code across all sorts of languages, just like many of the development shops out there do. Sometimes we’re heavy on the .NET, other times we’re all up in some Java, Ruby on Rails, spooling up a Node.js Application or something else. So keeping with our love of open source and our polyglot nature we’ve created the Thor Project with three distinct apps.

Before jumping into the applications though, a little context for what and where Thor is in the grand scheme of things. We need to roll back to the Cloud Foundry Project to get into that. The Cloud Foundry Project is an open source project built around software for PaaS (Platform as a Service) which can be used to build your own PaaS internally or externally, in a cloud provider or directly on hardware. It’s your choice how, when and where you want to use it. For more context on PaaS check out my previous entry “The Confusions of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS“.

Thor Project

Cocoa for OS-X

Thor Odinson
Thor Odinson, God of Thunder

You know who Thor is right? He’s this mythic Norse God, also known as the God of Thunder. Since we’re all about bringing the hamma we welcomed Thor into our team’s stable of applications. So starting immediately we’ve released Thor into the realms for contributions and fighting the good open source software battle! If you’d like to join the effort, check out the github project and feel free to join us!

Technically, what is the Thor Application? This is a Cocoa Application built for OS-X that is used for managing, deploying and publishing applications to Cloud Foundry enabled and or Iron Foundry extended PaaS Environments.

.NET for Windows 7

The .NET Metro version of the Thor Application is also released via github with a provided installer. We’ve almost taken the same path, except of course for the very different UX and UI queues with Windows 7 and the Metro UX design guidelines.

WinRT for Windows 8

I wasn’t really sure what to call this version. Is it Metro or WinRT or Windows 8 or something else? Anyway, there is a project, it is albeit empty at this point, but it is the project where the Windows 8 version of Thor will go! For now get the Windows 7 version and install it on Windows 8, it won’t have touch interface support and things, but should work just like a regular application on Windows 8.

The Code

To get started with these, generally you’d just clone the repo and do a build, then get started checking out the code. There is one catch, for the OS-X version you’ll want to pull down the sub-modules with the following command.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
git clone git@github.com:YourForkHere/Thor.git
git submodule update –init –recursive
[/sourcecode]

Once you do that in XCode just make sure to then select the right project as the starting build project.

…then when the application is launched…

Thor Running in OS-X
Thor Running in OS-X

I’ll have more in the coming days and weeks about Thor & Iron Foundry. For now, check out the blog entry on the Iron Foundry Blog and subscribe there for more information.

Windows Server 2008 Core, A Quick Run Down

I needed a Windows Server installation with low overhead, clean installation, that providing hosting and other features. I decided I would check out the Windows Server 2008 Core R2 installation and see how it stacked up. This is a quick run down of what is available on Technet and what I used to setup the server core for usage.

First there is the getting started guide. This write up provides a basic description of what the Windows Server 2008 Core R2 is, laying out the services and other characteristics of the installation. Specifically for the R2 version of the core installation these services are available:

  • Active Directory Certificate Services
  • Active Directory Domain Services
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
  • DHCP Server
  • DNS Server
  • File Services (including File Server Resource Manager)
  • Hyper-V
  • Print and Document Services
  • Streaming Media Services
  • Web Server (including a subset of ASP.NET)

One of the first things you’ll need to do is administer the server core installation. This document details the ways a server core instance can be administered such as:

  • Locally and remotely using a command prompt.
  • Remotely using Terminal Server.
  • Remotely using Windows Remote Shell.
  • Locally or remotely using Windows PowerShell.
  • Remotely using an MMC snap-in.
  • Remotely using Server Manager.

Known Issue: There is also an issue with core installations that is brought up. Not all management tasks can be performed by the MMC snap-in. An included script can be used to configure the things unavailable via MMC. The script is in \Windows\System32 folder. The following command provides configuration options for the unavailable MMC features:

[sourcecode language=”bash”]cscript scregedit.wsf /?[/sourcecode]

Three more cool things before moving on:

  1. Cheat Sheets or as they’re labeled “Job Aids for Server Core Installations of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2“.
  2. Additional References for Installing a number of features including; Backup, Bitlocker, File Server, and a host of other features.
  3. Installing Server Roles onto the server core. This section provides step by step instructions to get various roles setup on the server including file sharing, etc.

Now that I’ve covered the standard things the server does and can do when configured, there are a number of things that need installed to really make the server useful. At least, for what I need it for. The first thing I need is to get .NET 4.0 running on the server. Onwards!

.NET 4.0 Standalone Installation for Server Core

I’ll admit right up front installing this shows a gross neglect that Windows 2008 Server Core has. First navigate, on a completely different machine, and download the .NET Standalone Installation for Server Core. Now, this is one of those situations where it appears Microsoft just completely misses how the Internet might work or should work. Why is .NET 4.0 not provided via FTP or some way that I could actually download it from the actual server that needs it? No idea, but you can’t. Once you do have it downloaded on a completely different machine (in my case, I used trusty OS-X) you can then find a way to get it onto the machine. I used a FAT formatted (yeah, in this situation I’ve had to return back a couple decades to FAT technology to get a 2011 piece of technology to work) USB Stick. Once I got the installation file on the USB Stick I just mounted that up and copied the file over the machine and installed it.

Instructions per the Download Page

    1. Important: Make sure that your computer has the latest Windows service pack and critical updates. To find security updates, visit Windows Update.  Including the following requirements (The image (Fig 1) shows what items I included – the extra items I included are unrelated to this blog entry):
      1. Turn on WoW64:[sourcecode language=”bash”]Start /w ocsetup ServerCore-WOW64[/sourcecode]
      2. Turn on .NET 2.0 layer:[sourcecode language=”bash”]Start /w ocsetup NetFx2-ServerCore[/sourcecode]
      3. Turn on .NET 2.0 layer for WoW64:[sourcecode language=”bash”]Start /w ocsetup NetFx2-ServerCore-WOW64[/sourcecode]

        Installing Multiple Services/Roles for the Server Core
        Installing Multiple Services/Roles for the Server Core
    2. On this page, locate the Download button and then click it to start the download.
    3. To save the download to your computer so that you can install it later, click Save.
    4. To cancel the download, click Cancel.
    5. After installing .NET Framework 4 on Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Server Core, it is highly recommended you install critical .NET Framework 4 updates available on Windows Update.
Installing .NET 4.0 for Server Core
Installing .NET 4.0 for Server Core

PowerShell, Now We’re Getting Somewhere!

Alright, the server is starting to be useful now. We have various services and prospectively other networking capabilities, all depending on what we would have wanted to install during the first section  of material. We also have .NET 4.0, so we can run some honest to goodness useful .NET Applications, such as web apps, and more.

Now that we’re all wrapped up, it is always a good idea to give a Windows Server one more firm kick before we put it into production. To shutdown, restart or otherwise give the server that kick, just type shutdown and you’ll find all the switches available. The most common one I use is to just shutdown right away (relatively, it still takes its time shutting down).

[sourcecode language=”bash”]shutdown -s[/sourcecode]

OS-X, Top 2 Gripes

I’ve been developing in my spare time on Mac OS-X using Rubymine, Webstorm, TextMate, XCode, and several other apps. I’ve also been using Kindle (the native app and the HTML5 Version), Tweetdeck, and a host of other applications. A bulk of things I’ve also been using, however they’re almost entirely in Chrome/HTML5 or some web application state. Speaking of applications, OS-X has zero shortage compared to any other operating system.

However…

I will admit with honesty, the the interface is very lacking compared to using Ubuntu or Window 7 these days. OS-X is lacking several functionalities that it desperately needs. I’m not writing this blog entry to complain about these either, just pointing out they’re missing, and hopefully someone may know of an app or add-on that will provide this functionality.

  1. Application Placement:  Windows & Ubuntu have a “snap to” type functionality that pops an application window onto a side of the screen when it is dragged. With the arrow keys or in other ways, that window can then be moved from left to right, or if on dual monitors from one screen or the other by 50% increments. This functionality is ridiculously useful when working with multiple applications, and anybody that really uses a computer ends up in this scenario.
  2. Rename, New Folder, and other short cut keys in the “Finder” are pretty crappy compared to Windows & Ubuntu. I’d even give windows top marks in this category. Of course, once one actually does a move, delete or copy they realize what crap Windows is at actual file manipulation. But the Windows Explorer makes it a breeze manipulating files – even if it is 2-5x slower than Ubuntu or OS-X – I’d still however like a nice trade off of file manipulation, viewing what a file is or is not from the finder, and other functionalities that generally don’t seem to exist.

That’s it for now. These are the top 2 items that provide an annoyance when using OS-X vs. Windows or Ubuntu. Any suggestions, ideas, thoughts, or otherwise that may set me straight about this?

Big News on Day #3 of OS Bridge

Microsoft announced today that they’ll be supporting an effort to get Node.js working on Windows. Mary Foley picked it up quick, but also so did Node creator Ryan Dhal. This, being the explosion of support for Node.js, is excellent news. This further enables JavaScript for the whole stack, on any operating system stack. Getting a good solid, stable, and supported version on Windows will enable some serious performance on that platform. Up until the release of the support, Node.js is primarily limited to Windows via software called CYGWIN, which emulates (or runs on?) Windows and simulates a Unix/Linux Environment.

I’ll have more information regarding Node.js, Node Package Manager, and the whole suite of packages to get started with Node Development over the next couple of days. So stay tuned if you’re interested in getting started!