We have updated the following services:
Tim Johnson, a Product Marketing Manager at Google, had recently introduced a new application called the Google Web Security for Enterprise. Powered by Postini and featuring a jem or two from Scansafe, this software is supposedly able to cater to businesses of all sizes, irregardless of their needs.
Google Web Security for Enterprise protects organizations of all sizes against web malware attacks in real time and enables the safe, productive use of the web, without incurring hardware, upfront capital, or IT management costs. The product enables organizations to control how employees use the Internet, and provides easy-to-use tools to create, enforce, and monitor the right web policy for your organization. Now, through a new add-on feature, we’re extending that security to users wherever they may be working.
Protecting off-network users used to require them to connect via a VPN when they were out of the office — often with mixed results. With this new feature, all off-network users’ web traffic is automatically directed to scanning infrastructure to enforce your policies and protect their computers, requiring no action on the part of individuals. It’s easy to deploy and users can’t tamper with it, ensuring your security and appropriate use policies are always in place.
Here are a few screenshots to pique your curisiousity:
On a hindsight, it will be worthy to note that Postini was snapped up by Google back in Q3 2007 for US$625-million. Here’s the welcome note written by David Girouard on the arrival of Portini aboard the Google vessel.
Tags: google, Postini, Scansafe
TechRepublic’s first weekly video show, Screensavers for IT Executive, focuses on identifying 5 warning signs that CIO may not be the best career goal for you.
Welcome to the first episode of TechRepublic’s new weekly video show, Sanity Savers for IT Executives. This show will provide actionable tips for CIOs, IT directors, and other senior IT leaders to help them become more effective leaders, make good technology decisions, align IT and business goals, and better manage their teams of IT professionals. We’ll also provide tips aimed new IT at leaders to help them get a jump on the path to success.
At the same page, there are links to an accompanying article, “10 signs that you aren’t cut out to be a CIO”
Interestingly enough, by a sheer coincidence, we were going through this whole debate about choosing between being a technical specialist/professional and being a manger/CIO in class.
So if you’re in the IT line, this article/videoshow is quite an insightful look into what you should be expecting if you’re looking to take up a managerial position in the IT industry.
tunesBag is a fresh approach to listen to your music anytime and anywhere. Just fire up your browser and indulge in your eclectic music taste – or in those of your friends. Yes, we all love our iPod – but it doesn’t allow for sharing. Not only does music sound better if it’s shared with friends; tunesBag has all the funky bells and whistles that you would expect ‐ plus that extra bit more to make it different.
Founded by 27-year old Hansjörg Posch, tunesBag is currently in closed beta and is free-to-use at the moment. However, there is a chance that it may charge a premium fee once it is opened for public usage. You may want to read up on the development blog, sign up with its Google Group; or simply follow their progress on Twitter.
Tags: tunesBag
In January this year, a non-profit organization representing independent music labels, called Merlin, issued an open invitation for independent music labels to join them so as to create the fifth largest record label after bigwigs like EMI, Warner Music etc.
This is so that they can have better bargaining power at negotiation tables with online music stores like iTunes. In the past, it can be a hassle for online music stores to carry indie music labels’ records as they have to deal with the countless labels individually, creating a large overhead on costs.
Merlin, hopes that by teaming up, they’d be able to sign more deals, on behalf of the thousands of independently owned music labels, with big distributors so that their music can be distributed online and compete on equal ground with the major labels.
Ars.Technica writes that Merlin has already gotten 12,000 labels on board.
From Merlin Network:
Merlin exists because the independents need their own body to ensure their interests are properly represented by an organisation focused wholly on their sector. Independents work in a incredibly competitive environment, ruled by shrinking physical sales, a digital market that is not replacing the fall in revenues, and where independent’s ability to compete is being eroded by the major corporations that dominate the market, from both the supply and retail side.
Merlin is not an aggregator or distributor. Its remit is to represent its members in new media deals that can’t be easily negotiated locally or individually or are not covered adequately by existing arrangements.
Merlin also does not operate in the space occupied by Collecting Societies, rather Merlin aims to address the gap between what these societies are able to offer their members and what labels and aggregators can achieve individually.
Merlin is a stand-alone body and a sister organisation
to the Worldwide Independent Network (WIN).
Not only that, it looks like grassroot activities for independent music labels have been increasing, with the latest one (at least to me) being Slicethepie.com. In the past, musicians have to struggle to raise funds so that they can send their music for recording. With the power of the internet, Slicethepie helps bring the struggle online to a wider audience.
At Slicethepie, artists basically upload demos of their music onto the website and readers of the site basically rate each track. The top 20 rated artists will then move onto a section of the site called Showcase, where fans can help to finance these artists by buying “Backstage Passes”. These “Passes” can then be used to claim a free copy of the album when its recorded.
The cool thing about the site is that, it seems to introduce social lending into the concept of supporting independent artists. Fans can also buy “Contracts” from artists which will entitle them to returns based on the number of singles and albums sold by the artists in a 2 year period.
So if you’re a local artist, why not give it a shot, who knows your bedroom music could just be the next international sensation. I hope as technology grows, the Davids in the music industry will finally be able to take down the Goliaths.
VirtualBox is a virtualization management application that was developed by innotek until Sun Microsystems acquired the software development company in February 2008.
You can read up on the Changelog here. In a nutshell, VirtualBox 1.6’s new highlights include Web service API, a SATA hard disk controller, experimental support for Physical Address Extensions (PAE) and a new guest addition set for the Solaris operating system.
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD. Feel free to grab a copy of the application, and do catch up on additional reading while you are waiting for your download to complete.
Tags: Sun Microsystems, VirtualBox
James Leszczenski had recently announced that Facebook will no longer be continuing its support for Java-based applications. He also added:
While we understand this may have an impact on some developers, we feel that it is most important to keep working on our list of initiatives I referred to before, instead of maintaining an additional client library of which the developer community has already built several unofficial versions.
After this Tuesday’s push, the official Java client library will no longer be available for download from any of the developers pages. We encourage all developers who are interested in continuing to develop in Java to consider some of the open source alternative client libraries listed on the Wiki here. While the official Java library should have no immediate problems with continued use, we nevertheless recommend that you use a client library that is kept up to date, in order to best take advantage of any new functionality that is added in the future.
Here’s a list of alternative platforms that you could work on if you were affected by this announcement:
On a hindsight, we would like to take this opportunity to note that we do provide support for Ruby on Rails at FRRO. Inquire us today to find out more.
Tags: Facebook
In all, Elliot Schrage’s impeding departure as Google’s Vice President of Global Communications and Public Affairs has sent ripples throughout coffee tables at the Silicon Valley. After all, it isn’t the first time that Facebook has managed to coerce Google’s elite to hop over.
So far, the slew of prolific Google employees that moved over to Facebook works out in a list of top flyers that included the likes of:
Well, the idea of having someone like Elliot Schrage coming aboard with a team of ex-Google seems like a cause for a celebration. That would have been too much excitement to hold back. The following is a leaked memo that Mark Zuckerberg had sent out to the peons at Facebook:
Hey Everyone –
I’m writing from India to share with you the good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.
Elliot is joining us from Google where he has been their VP Global Communications and Public Affairs since 2005. At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and internal communications. Before that, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank, as a professor at Columbia Business School and as SVP at Gap. Early on, he began his career as a Harvard-trained lawyer.
This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications.
Elliot will be starting on May 14, although you may see him around the office before then.
Nick Gonzalez noted that this ongoing phenomenon have been dubbed as the “Facebook problem”, a term coined by Google’s management at the undeniable exodus of top-ranking executives and engineers leaving for Facebook. It is not surprising to note, however, that Microsoft had once faced a similar situation as Google now did, for which Google had once poached the cream of the crop from Microsoft with the lure of a promising and satisfactory pay job that Microsoft can’t beat.
Could it be the same that Facebook is offering something a million times better than what Google has to offer? Or could it be that the taste of pre-IPO explosion is too much for anybody to miss out on? We all know how awesome the working environment at Google can be but do Facebook have something else that is by far the best ever?
When Erick Schonfeld inquired Ethan Beard about his departure from Google for Facebook, this was the message that he had received (via Facebook):
Yes, I can confirm that I have resigned from Google and will be going to work for Facebook.
I think Facebook is great for a variety of reasons: the company has an innovative product with amazing growth, the team they have assembled is first rate, and the business is at a very exciting time in its development. I am excited to join Facebook at a time and in a role where I can have a significant impact on its core business and bottom line.
Maybe the work environment at Google isn’t “sociable” after all. And that could be the reason why they are moving over.
Or maybe it is the pre-IPO carrot-on-a-stick offer that is too tasty to miss out on.
We are running a little feedback campaign for the duration of 1 month, and would like to find out if there’s something else that you would like to see being hosted by FRRO.
Do take your time to go through the poll and cast your vote on the choice that you desire.
You can’t find your option slated on the poll? Drop us an email and tell us more about how you feel.
Credits: Fitz & Pirillo
In the world of power-guzzling servers, operational uptime is the coveted holy grail for all network/system engineers/administrators in the world. Unfortunately, like with every action - there is a reaction.
In the case of Slashdot - which has seen itself giving out ’slashdotted’ effects to other purveying linked websites that get published on its frontpage - that was brought down not by a failed hard drive or a split Cat 6 network cable but rather by their service provider, Savvis.
Netcraft confirmed it… Slashdot was dying for several hours (along with SourceForge which share a corporate overlord and router). Some planned downtime from our provider apparently didn’t come back up quite as planned. Sorry for the inconvenience. On the upside, we’re moving to a new network and hardware soon, so the site should be much faster and more stable rsn.
This downtime was widely reported and other major media networks started reporting on this outage, as evidently seen from the reports published by The Register and Pingdom. The site has since been up and running already but not without invoking amusing, and insightful, comments from its faithful followers:
I slashdotted slashdot by linking to a slashdot article on slashdot.
Sorry.
Meanwhile, there were happier moments to celebrate about as The Uptime Institute handed out its Green IT Enterprise Awards at the Uptime Institute Symposium 2008: Green Enterprise Computing held in Orlando.
“Realizing that neither business nor the environment can sustain the costs of the increasing energy demands in data centers, the award-winning companies have displayed leadership and innovation in their data center energy efficiency efforts,” said Kenneth G. Brill, Institute founder and executive director. “It is our hope that they will serve as a clear example to the world’s largest operators of critical computing facilities of the realistic impact and feasibility of these types of initiatives.”
The winners of this initiative included AOL, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and Netapp. You can find out more detailed information about the winners here.
Credits: Paint.It.Black
Ok, it wasn’t really used by Steve Ballmer. The notebook was left behind by a non-Microsoft speaker. Ballmer merely made use of an automatic slideshow for his keynote.
Credits: Choubistar
Micro-sized computing on an enterprise-level isn’t something new to us at FRRO. In fact, we have all read about how our fellow geeky engineers placed the Mac Mini through its paces by deploying it for use as a server. There are tutorials that give you a step-by-step guide on getting started, a quick comparison with other viable solutions, and excellent engineering innovations that are sure to inspire the nerd in you. If you are feeling a little cash-rich, you could opt for a readily-available solution instead.
However, that is just the Mac Mini. You could, of course, spend your lovely weekends (and the week after) building your very own fan-less Mini-ITX sized server in the shape of a toy car.
These days, we are seeing a slew of servers that are probably no larger than our Dell 90W power adapter. Earlier this week, Plathome had made available their OpenMicro product which will arrive pre-flashed with SSD/Linux and prepped with NetBSD functionality within it. It also sports a pair of Gigabit Ethernet, and a Fast Ethernet interface; a pair of RJ-45 serial and USB 2.0 ports are available as well. More importantly, however, is the power consumption rating which is pegged at 8.1W during normal operations. With dimensions squared at 230 mm x 102 mm x 33 mm, you can easily fit a dozen of these little critters onto a 1U shelf.
Another shoebox-sized product that we would like to bring attention to is the SlimLine 100 from Gigafin (formerly known as Mistletoe Technologies). It possesses similar dimensions, and features as the OpenMicro does - a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, a single RJ-45 serial port, low power consumption, shoebox-size and a cutting-edge platform. In comparision to larger and chunkier devices, you could fit a dozen of these network devices alongside with your other shoebox-sized equipment in a quest for maximizing output with minimal rack shelving uptake.
With the scary phenomenon known as the “Data Center Space Crunch” catching on, it is little wonder that solution vendors and service providers-alike are looking out for ways to maximize profits from what little resources that they have left. Expansion is, of course, always a viable option but like with the previous expansions - key ROI-related results will always have to wait. It is little wonder that ideas like the Project Blackbox by Sun Microsystems are giving these people a much needed peek of what is to come in the near future. There are other solutions available - if you aren’t a big fan of Sun Microsystems - like the Ice Cube Modular Data Center from Rackable Systems, or the Scalable Modular Data Center by IBM. And of course, there’s always trusty Google to dispute all of the above with their patented claim on the idea.
In addition, a short report published by Bruce Baike and Steve Gaede on the related phenomena with the inclusion of a minimal rundown on the basic concepts of virtualization.
At FRRO, we are looking towards to achieving an eco-friendly setup. We will probably drum up a couple of Mini-ITX servers powered by a cage full of hamsters and place them in a self-sustainable environment encased within a rack cabinet.
Tags: Gigafin, Mistletoe Technologies, Plathome, Sun Microsystems
Frro’s Blog updated to WordPress 2.5.1.
WordPress 2.5.1 has been released. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix.
If you are interested in only the security fixes, just replaced the following files.
There are more than 70 bugs and performance fixes in 2.5.1, here is an outline of it:
Everyone knows that they are big. Like Friendster, Youtube!, Flickr!, Fotolog, and Wikipedia, the only word that we know of that will allow us to wrap our minds around their enormous infrastructure - is BIG.
At a recent MySQL conference, titled “Scaling MySQL - Up or Out”, Facebook revealed that they are currently operating 10,000 web servers and 1,800 database servers. Another newsworthy thing to note is the deployment size of Memcached services - which is slated at roughly 800, as stated in the extensive report. In addition, James Hamilton pointed out of a slightly old report that puts that number at above 200 in H2 2007.
As mentioned by James Hamilton:
The Facebook fleet has grown fairly dramatically of late. For example, Facebook is the largest Memcached installation and the most recent reports I had come across have 200 Memcached servers at facebook. At the Scaling MySQL panel, they report 805 Memcached servers.
Insane!
For a price, we say.
A nonchalant press release that was published on Dell’s website will now allow you to get in touch with your “truly dedicated bunch of customer service officers” every time you foolishly spill out the contents of your burritos on your swanky notebook.
Dell’s new premium support service is to provide a dedicated team of technical professionals which customers can contact directly for support of any Dell-branded product. This new fee-based offering is designed specifically for those customers who want to engage with the same dedicated team each time they have an issue with any of their in-warranty Dell-branded products.
The premium service offer provides household support by an advanced support team in North America for one year. The technicians are empowered to address a comprehensive range of issues across the breadth of Dell’s product line.
As mentioned on their press release - they had conducted a pilot survey with close to 20,000 Dell XPS owners giving the idea a big thumbs up. It will be interesting to see how would they be able to push this optional premium service to the respective system owners that reside within the lower-bracket whom rather opt out of every nitty gritty detail and slash costs wherever possible.
Fortunately, this service is provided for their customers who are currently residing in North America. Unfortunately though - for a fee, nothing that good will ever be made for free.
Tags: Dell
Yes, that’s right! We’re going bananas this month and we’re giving away $85.40 off the existing discount price for ATOM1000. That’s right, you’re not seeing it wrong. Its a $85.40 discount worth about 12 Big Mac Value Meals!
That’s a whooping 68% DISCOUNT!
To find out more about this promotion, visit our CRAAAAZYYY APRIL Promotions page!
Signup today!
Tags: promos
iPhone and iPod Touch readers rejoice! This blog can be access and viewed on iPhone and iPod touch browsers in its native resolution.
No longer do users have to scroll left and right just to view our page again 
Eaccelerator has been installed on our servers.
eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator, optimizer, and dynamic content cache. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times.
If you have a site hosted with us, let us know if you see an improvement in the speed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7290322.stm
Google’s Zurich Office. Slidesssss. Yum.
Did you know that you can access frro’s website at http://frro.sg also?
Tags: did you know, trivia
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