Joined Up Contacts

So my new Blackberry turned up today and I can't sync my contacts and calendar entries from Thunderbird to that bad boy.

Disappointing... but time for a bit of googling to see how to get around the problem.

And the answer? I'm still disappointed.

I have managed to sort my email accounts in Thunderbird with the help of Folderpanes and I now have access to Hotmail from within Thunderbird using the webmail add-on. I've even sync'd my Google contacts with Plaxo (although that only works one way.... WHY!!!!).

I've downloaded Sunbird (though this gives me no benefit above and beyond the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird).

So... I have all this software, but no way to sync to the Blackberry unless I get radical as such:

• Use Outlook (which is too expensive)
• Use Outlook Express (which is too nasty)
• Use Live Mail (which I just don't like)
• Buy some additional software

I don't mind paying for software, but I've just spent a load on my Blackberry with the idea that I would be able to sync up simple things like contact lists and calendar entries. To find that I can't do it out of the box is.... disappointing.

Maybe I should write my own routine!

How To Search

So... I have a home network and a Mac Mini which is being used as a Media Server. It will stream video around my home network and I have a Pinnacle Show Center 200 which is a hardware based media player.

However... my Show Center isn't behaving itself. The picture is a bit 'slanty' and the sound is a bit tinny. My understanding is that this is the first sign of a power supply problem! At least, that's according to the horror stories online.

Replacement media players are going to cost anywhere between £100 and £200 and I can't justify that kind of expenditure just now. It would be simpler for me to reuse one of the old laptops with a software based media player installed and stream the output to a television.

What could be simpler?

Well, it is simple - once you have found the necessary software. A bit of googling and job is a good one. Except, googling for "upnp media client software" wasn't that helpful.

The On2Share plugin for WinAMP sounded promising so I downloaded and installed WinAMP. I downloaded and installed the On2Share plugin and the result? It doesn't stream videos at all. In fact, it downloaded the entire video before playing. Rubbish!

Kinsky and 4U2Stream appeared in the search results. I looked at their websites and the terminology used was alien to me. I downloaded them, installed them and.... rubbish! They aren't clients at all - they are remote control clients for UPNP servers.

VideoLAN Network Client also appeared in the search results and after it was downloaded and installed, I found that, once again, the software didn't work.

At this stage, it seemed that too much time and effort had been spent trying to solution what I figured would be an easy problem to solve. Windows Media Center can't play streaming video from a UPNP Media Server; Cyberlink's Media Center wouldn't bother to play streaming video either.

I promised myself just one final attempt and downloaded the XBMC Media Center - the software behind the XBOX Media Center. A quick download, and easy installation and guess what? IT WORKED! It actually worked and it worked brilliantly.

Why oh why was it so difficult to find it? I like to think that I'm skilled in the use of search engines but I'm finding that it is becoming more difficult over time. I recently had a requirement to relocate a DB2 database from one drive to another and my db2relocatedb command was failing. Could I find an answer to my problem? Not a chance.

The problem is that there is just too much information on the web and a tremendous amount of it is just garbage. And this tendency to end up at a site which is merely a site devoted to hosting paid-for banner advertisements is really winding me up.

What am I to do? Maybe the answer lies in storing the decent information when I find it and getting some trusted companions to also store decent information. I'm not talking DIGG here though. I'm not talking blogs. I merely want a repository of information that was difficult to find but was incredibly useful.

Anyone got an answer to that problem?

200mbs At Last

I've been suffering for a number of years now with the pain and heartache that is a dodgy USB wireless connection from my desktop to my router in another room in the house. Dropped connections, slow transfer speeds... I've tried a number of different wireless technologies but they all suffer similar symptoms.

Of course, wired is the way to go, right? Of course it is... unless you live with someone who finds wires so abhorrent that they just cannot be laid down in the house!

I've known about ethernet over the copper wiring in the house for a number of years now but never believed that it would "do the business" as it were. I finally gave in yesterday, parted with £50 for a value pack which supports 200mbs transfer speed.

Prior to installation, I ran a speed test at www.speedtest.com and scored 3,600Kbps.

I plugged my new kit into my router and the reciprocal component near my desktop and bingo - connected. Trotted off to speedtest.com and scored a whopping 19,700Kbps.

So, my dodgy 54g wireless connection got stuffed out of sight by my new Home Plug connection.

Why, oh why, did I wait all these years?

Loose Coupling

I stared at the price of Microsoft Office 2007 Standard edition (£300) and then stared at the price of Microsoft Office 2007 Basic edition (£100). The difference between the two products? Microsoft Outlook 2007 which costs about £100 as a standalone product.

Basic + Outlook (£200) = Standard (£300).

Am I missing something here?

Anyway, I bought the basic as I use Thunderbird as my mail client. And I have extended Thunderbird with the Lightning extension (for calendar functionality), Google Calendar extension (for Google calendar integration with Lightning), Plaxo extension (for synchronisation of my contact details across multiple platforms) and a few other minor extensions.

The result is I have a joined-up-in-a-loosely-coupled-way PIM for free.

My understanding is that Outlook is very powerful - I couldn't possibly deny that this is the case. But I also believe it can be a drain on system resources and it does cost £100!

So, I have my T'Bird, my LinkedIn, my Plaxo, my GMail/GCal and I'm liking my web based way of working. Now, all I need is a really good online document management repository which I can share with specific people. Time for a bit of investigation...

Personal News

Back in February, I sat my CISSP examination. I completed the 6 hour test in 2 hours, then spent 2 hours checking my answers then left the examination before I started to change my mind again!

I walked out of the examination and went through various emotions:

• Relief
• Uncertainty - I thought I had done enough to pass, but wasn't sure
• Forgetfulness - I could barely remember any of the 250 questions

Well, the results came through and I'm pleased to announce that I can officially use CISSP designation.

With my IBM Tivoli certifiations and ITIL certification, I'm now completely "certified".

Within Six Degrees

There is a saying that we are within "six degrees of everyone in the world". At least, that was the saying when I was growing up and we believed there were 4 billion people on the planet - maybe it is seven now!

Anyway, knowing someone, who knows someone else, who knows someone else, etc., etc. seems a little fanciful, doesn't it? Not really...

I found out recently that I am only 3 degrees away from David Kearns - a man whose work I read every week and I have the utmost respect for, though sadly, I have no contact with. Having said ithat, I did sit beside him at lunch one sunny day in 2004 at an Identity Conference in Sydney, Australia!

How did I find this out? http://www.linkedin.com/ that's how!

I know someone, who knows someone else, who knows David. Judging by the number of contacts David has on LinkedIn, I might be only four degrees away from everyone on the planet.

Anyway, http://www.linkedin.com/ is quite a powerful tool in that only people I truly respect and trust are listed as my contacts. I'm quite sure this is true of most people who use http://www.linkedin.com/. Why is this relevant? Well, the ability to verify who you are isn't just a matter of producing a passport, or entering a UserID/Password into a keyboard, or typing a PIN into a "hole in the wall", or using any of the myriad of authentication devices available today. In the old days, verifying your identity could have been as simple as having someone else "vouch" for you.

This still occurs today to some degree - joining some exclusive clubs is more a matter of who you know rather than who you are or what you know! Password resets could potentially be performed in the work-place not by the forgetful employee herself, but by her colleague who is already trusted (although ideally, two colleagues).

Can we computerise the concept of a vouch-for authentication system in the future? Maybe. And maybe, it will be social networks like http://www.linkedin.com/ that will hold the key. After all, I'm not going to let any Tom, Dick or Harry be listed as a contact against my name! My identity is too precious to have it be let down by some unsavoury type!

BTW... If you are desperately interested, my LinkedIn profile can be viewed at http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenswann.

Open ID get MS Backing

I typically try to talk about technology in the enterprise which is why I haven't yet mentioned Open ID on this blog - while I approve of the concept and the ideas which the Open ID group are working towards, I don't see that it is something that enterprises looking for staff authentication mechanisms are ever going to have to look into.

However, in the big bad world that is the WWW, a more joined-up approach to user authentication is no longer a nice-to-have. It is an absolute necessity. Personally, I dread to think just how many UserIDs I have online - my last count was ~150 and that is just a record of the ones I have recorded (securely, of course).

According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6339813.stm), the Open ID group have been given a boost by the news that Microsoft will give it their backing to the extent that they will share their own technology with the Open ID developers. This has got to be good news if only from the perspective that it will raise awareness of Open ID. After all, an article on the BBC website will only do it the world of good.

Microsoft are to bring their Infocards technology to the Open ID table. (Kim Cameron demonstrates the power of Infocards on MSDN TV: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20060209InfoCardKC/manifest.xml). So are we likely to finally get our joined-up-thinking as for as identity and access control on the internet are concerned? Looks that way, but it's still going to take time.