Collaboration

This category contains posts that discuss collaboration and collaborative software, services, technologies, products, or projects.

My VMworld 2009 Schedule

Sunday, August 23, 2009 in Collaboration, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Well, VMworld 2009 is nearly upon us. Like thousands of others, I’ll be there next week attending sessions, meeting with vendors, networking with other virtualization professionals, and—of course—covering all of it right here on my blog. So, if you aren’t able to make it next week, stay tuned here for my coverage of the conference. And, to give you a feel of what I’ll be doing and what sessions I’m planning on attending, here’s my VMworld 2009 conference schedule.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

All day Sunday I’ll be attending the VMware Partner Technical Advisory Board (PTAB) meeting. I won’t be able to provide any coverage of this event, as it’s all hush-hush NDA stuff.

Sunday evening I’ll be at the VMworld Underground event at The Thirsty Bear. We’ll be giving away at least one copy of my book, Mastering VMware vSphere 4, and networking with other virtualization geeks and gurus.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Monday morning is tied up with the remainder of the PTAB meeting, then I’m spending the rest of the day with my lovely wife, Crystal (whom many of you already know has been planning activities for non-attending spouses). We’ll most likely be at the Monday evening reception and possibly joining John Troyer’s tweetup as well.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Now things really get interesting. The VMworld conference really kicks off on Tuesday, and here’s Tuesday’s schedule:

8:00AM – VMworld 2009 Day 1 keynote (I’ll be liveblogging the keynote)
9:30AM – BC1500
11:00AM – BC3209
12:30PM – Book signing at the VMworld conference bookstore
1:00PM – LAB08
3:00PM – DV2484
4:30PM – BC2761

The day wraps up with dinner with some industry colleagues.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

7:00AM – Meeting with Virtual Instruments
8:00AM – VMworld 2009 Day 2 keynote (I’ll be liveblogging this keynote)
10:00AM – Meeting with Xangati
11:00AM – TA2467
12:30PM – LAB03
3:00PM – TA2384
4:30PM – Meeting with Tranxition
5:00PM – Meeting with a company still in stealth mode (no spoilers from me)
7:00PM – VMworld 2009 Party

Thursday, September 3, 2009

7:00AM – Meeting with MokaFive
8:15AM – Meeting with NetEx
9:00AM – Meeting with INX
9:30AM – TA3603
11:00AM – Meeting with another company still in stealth mode
12:00PM – Meeting with Seanodes
1:00PM – TA2259 (My session!)
2:00PM – Meeting with FalconStor
3:00PM – Meeting with Embotics
4:30PM – TA2259 again (Repeat session!)

The day (and the conference) wraps up with dinner with a friend and colleague. Crystal and I aren’t flying back East until Saturday morning, so we’ll spend Friday together seeing sights and spending some time together.

I’d be particuarly interested to know if there are specific questions that my readers would like me to ask some of the companies I’m meeting at the conference. Would readers like me to post some sort of summary of the meeting, like what sort of information was shared or my thoughts on the companies? I do plan on liveblogging the keynotes and as many of the sessions as possible, but I’m curious as to what other sort of coverage readers would be interested in seeing. Let me know in the comments.

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Partner Exchange Schedule

Thursday, April 2, 2009 in Collaboration, Virtualization by slowe | 1 comment

If you’re traveling to Orlando to attend VMware Partner Exchange 2009 and are interested in meeting up with me while we’re there, have a look at this Google calendar. All my meetings and sessions while I’m at Partner Exchange will be listed there, and I’ve updated it for everything scheduled so far. I found that this approach works well after using it quite successfully last year at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas.

I look forward to seeing you there!

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A Closer Look at iCal, CalDAV, Google Calendar, and the iPhone

Tuesday, December 23, 2008 in Collaboration, Macintosh by slowe | 8 comments

A few weeks ago I posted an article titled Manually Configuring iCal for Google Calendar and CalDAV, in which I provided a way to configure iCal in Leopard to use CalDAV to communicate with Google Calendar. I’d done this once before, but when Google made the CalDAV support “official” they removed the how-to pages and instead pointed everyone to their application to do it automatically. In any case, a bit of experimentation turned up the right settings, so in the event you’re interested, have a look there.

Since that time, I’ve been taking a closer look at the integration points between iCal, Google Calendar via CalDAV, and the iPhone. What I’ve found indicates that this may not be the optimal solution for me—but it may be just fine for you. Note that this has not deterred me from moving forward with greater use of Google Calendar, it has just shifted my strategy away from the built-in CalDAV support.

Some of the key limitations that I’ve encountered:

  • The “one-calendar-per-account” limitation is probably already well-known and isn’t a significant limitation, but one to consider nevertheless. This will mean more space required for your calendar list in the event you want to use multiple calendars via CalDAV. For those that aren’t familiar with what I’m talking about, the basic gist of the idea is that when using CalDAV with Google Calendar, each CalDAV account is only allowed to have a single calendar. So, to use multiple calendars, you’ll need multiple CalDAV accounts. These can all be the same Google account, but in iCal they’ll need to be configured as separate CalDAV accounts.
  • The big limitation, for me at least, is that CalDAV calendars synced to the iPhone are, in fact, read-only. That’s right—you won’t be able to make any changes to such calendars from the iPhone itself. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the calendars did actually sync to the iPhone, and then unpleasantly surprised to find they were now read-only. For me and how I work, I need the ability to make changes to my calendar from my iPhone. If that’s not a big deal for you, then continuing down the CalDAV route may be OK. Unfortunately, it’s not for me.
  • You can’t move events between CalDAV-enabled calendars. You actually have to re-create the event on the other calendar, then delete it from the first.

I’m still moving ahead with a greater usage of Google Calendar, but as a result of finding these limitations, I’m now taking a closer look at some of the third-party utilities to provide two-way sync between iCal and Google Calendar. BusySync is the leading candidate right now, although I’m also looking at Calgoo Connect and Spanning Sync. If any readers are using any of these products right now, I’d certainly welcome any feedback on how well they work.

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Manually Configuring iCal for Google Calendar and CalDAV

Tuesday, December 2, 2008 in Collaboration, Macintosh by slowe | 9 comments

Sometimes I like doing things manually. I can’t tell you why, except perhaps to say that I’d rather know exactly what’s going on and how things are happening instead of giving over control to a “black box” that does something for me and spits out the results. It’s silly, I know, but that’s just how I am.

Case in point: today Google announced official support for CalDAV with Apple iCal. If you’ve followed my blog for any significant length of time you’ll recall that I used Google Calendar back around the VMworld 2008 timeframe, with iCal and CalDAV, to help coordinate vendor meetings and such. So, today, I decided that starting in January, I’d move all my calendaring to Google Calendar and manage it via CalDAV from iCal. So I go out to the Google Help site and look up the instructions for connecting iCal to Google Calendar via CalDAV.

Alas, the old instructions are gone; all that remains are new instructions that say “Use our new tool!” Hey, this is a nifty tool and all, but I’d prefer to do it manually. Where’s the information on doing it manually? Gone, apparently.

After far too long using Google to search for information on how to manually configure iCal to use CalDAV to talk to Google Calendar—and primarily getting results back that were from Google and had no such information—I finally stumbled across this page that described how to use Google Apps and CalDAV support with iCal. Piecing together bits of information from there and the previous time I configured iCal, I was able to make it work.

For the benefit of everyone else out there who prefers to do things the hard way, here’s the information you need to manually configure iCal to use CalDAV with Google Calendar.

  1. In iCal, select iCal > Preferences… and then click on Accounts.
  2. Click the + sign to add a new account.
  3. Specify a description. For username, add your Google Calendar login information, like “username@gmail.com”, and put in your password.
  4. Expand the “Server Options” section to expose the Account URL setting.
  5. For Account URL, specify “https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[Google Calendar ID]/user”. Note that it’s actually “/user” there at the end, not your user name. The Google Calendar ID in brackets is visible in Google Calendar by going to the settings for a calendar and looking toward the bottom of the Calendar Details tab. You’ll see some funky junk like “asdfjklasdfjklasdjklasdjkl@group.calendar.google.com” or similar. That’s the Google Calendar ID.
  6. Click Add.

That should be it. Note that these instructions work for any calendar you create in Google Calendar, but they don’t work for Google Apps users. Google Apps users should follow the link above for information.

By the way, it’s also worth mentioning that CalDAV accounts like this are synced to your iPhone, too. Handy.

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CompareMyVM

Thursday, November 13, 2008 in Collaboration, Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

VKernel, whose SearchMyVM search-based management product I wrote about back at the beginning of September, is launching a community site called CompareMyVM. The site is expected to formally launch in early December.

The idea behind the site, according to VKernel, is to provide a means whereby users can share information on how they are allocating resources to VMs. The idea is that as users share how they are configuring certain VMs for certain workloads, that information may be very useful to other users who are looking for that sort of information. Not sure how much memory to allocate to a small Linux-based web server? CompareMyVM wants to be able to provide that information.

Clearly, the site will only be effective if lots of users contribute information and share their VM configurations. I’ve been out of town all week so haven’t had the opportunity to take a look at the site, but I do plan to do so very shortly. In the meantime, I’d encourage readers to have a look and feel free to report back here in the comments.

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Follow Me on Twitter

Saturday, September 13, 2008 in Collaboration, General by slowe | 10 comments

I’m not yet convinced of the value of Twitter, but I’ve signed up for an account and I’ll be posting updates during VMworld 2008. My Twitter username is scott_lowe, so feel free to follow me via Twitter if you’d like.

I’ll be posting Twitter updates (tweets?) from my iPhone using TwitterFon and from my laptop using Syrinx.

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Virtualization Interview Posted

Wednesday, August 6, 2008 in Collaboration, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

I recently had the honor of participating in an e-mail interview with OdinJobs regarding virtualization and how to “break into” the virtualization industry. My fellow cohorts in this e-mail interview were Bob Plankers and Martin MacLeod. The interview questions focused on things like the best way for a sysadmin to get started with virtualization, what skills may be vendor-specific or not, and where virtualization may be headed. It was pretty interesting to participate, and it’s even more interesting to see how Bob and Martin responded to the questions.

You can read the full interview here at OdinJobs.

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Bookmark Spam?

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 in Collaboration by slowe | No comments

I’ve written before about del.icio.us, and how I find it extremely helpful in marking useful information I’ve found on the Internet.  (Now we just need a way to keep those pages we’ve bookmarked because they were useful or helpful from suddenly disappearing and making our bookmarks invalid.)  In the last few weeks, though, I’ve noticed something odd: bookmarks are being added to my Inbox (the “links for you” section, where other del.icio.us users can save a bookmark for you that they think might interest you) that don’t appear to be related in any way to links that I normally bookmark.  Am I missing something, or is this the start of bookmark spam?

I’m pretty boring when it comes to links, actually.  Unlike some other users whose RSS feed of links I watch, my “linkstream” is pretty much focused around specific technology areas (virtualization, VMware, Active Directory, UNIX/Linux, Macintosh) and Christian topics.  That’s generally it.  So when other del.icio.us users start adding links to my Inbox for topics outside those general areas, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me.  I can certainly see the value of the del.icio.us Inbox; after all, everyone’s view of the World Wide Web is different, and someone else might be able to find information that I can’t find (or vice versa).  So I could see someone putting a link in my Inbox that had to do with Active Directory, UNIX/Linux integration, VMware, or a Christian topic (like an up and coming new Christian music artist or something).  Links that don’t really have anything to do with links that I normally track are just like e-mail messages hawking wares designed to augment portions of my anatomy…they are not useful, helpful, or otherwise valuable to me.  That makes them spam.

Is this just me creating a problem where one doesn’t exist, or are others also seeing the same trends?  And what steps are ones taking, if any, to protect against this?  (Admittedly, it is an extremely low-volume and lower-impact problem right now.  I seem to recall saying the same about e-mail spam years ago.)

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Tagging Tactics

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 in Collaboration by slowe

I wouldn’t dare to describe myself an expert on the use of such sites or services as del.icio.us, Technorati, or other sites that promote the use of “tags” as a means of organizing links or other content.  I do use these sites (you’ll note the “Technorati Tags” added to each post), and I do find them very useful.  However, I’m beginning to shift tactics in my use of tags, and hoping that this change will make these services even more useful.

Up until now, I’ve used tags primarily as categories, as a way of grouping links (or other content) together.  For example, my Linux tag on del.icio.us contains links that all primarily center around Linux.  That makes perfect sense, but what about links that discuss Linux integration with Windows?  With my old system, that creates a quandary, a conflict that is not necessarily easy to resolve.

Moving forward, I’m going to start using tags more as keywords than categories.  This will mean that more items will have multiple tags associated with them (and that makes sense), but it will also mean more tags than I have used in the past.  This will allow me to more easily tag links and content in such a way that I hope will be more useful to myself and others.

I will continue, however, to attempt to use the same sets of tags across multiple sites and services, just as I do now with my del.icio.us links and my weblog content.

If anyone has any feedback on other ways I can make tagging work more effectively, I’d love to hear about it—perhaps someone out there would care to share their tips, tricks, and techniques?

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Just About Ready

Saturday, November 19, 2005 in Collaboration by slowe

This new blog is just about ready for public consumption.  I just finished configuring the permalink structure so that all posts have a static URL, using a pretty common structure that includes the date of the post in the URL.  (This seems to be a reasonably well-accepted practice.)

With the static URLs for permalinks also come static URLs for category archives and feeds.  Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll have to go back and rework any internal links I created in my own posts.

In addition, I reworked the template to include a hyperlink for adding a post’s URL to your del.icio.us bookmarks.  Now you can add an entry to your bookmark list with ease!

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