Category Archives: Techy

Tehcy related posts, for the slightly geekier thoughts!

Mounting LVM vmware disks

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I’ve spent a couple of weeks trying to recover some data from an old vmware machine. I didn’t want to install vmware on my new OS, so I looked into the vmware-mount program. The documentation refers to vmware-mount.pl, but I couldn’t find that file at first. It looks like since VMWare 2.0, vmware-mount.pl and vmware-loop have been replaced by a single vmware-mount binary, which behaves slightly differently.

I initially had problems with vmware-mount from VMware-server-2.0.0-122956.i386.tar.gz. I was getting this error:

vmware-mount: error while loading shared libraries: libfuse.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I saw other reports of the same error, but no solution. I was using vmware-mount from a 32bit build on a 64bit OS, so instead I tried the vmware-mount from VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.x86_64.tar.gz. Then I got an error along the lines of:

SSLLoadSharedLibrary: Failed to load library libcrypto.so.0.9.8:/usr/local/bin/libdir/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8/libcrypto.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Core dump limit is 0 KB.
Child process 26541 failed to dump core (status 0x6).

VMware Server Error:
VMware Server unrecoverable error: (app)
SSLLoadSharedLibrary: Failed to load library libcrypto.so.0.9.8:/usr/local/bin/libdir/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8/libcrypto.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Please request support.
To collect data to submit to VMware support, select Help > About and click “Collect Support Data”. You can also run the “vm-support” script in the Workstation folder directly.
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

Press “Enter” to continue…

I read this. With a little guesswork this command seemed to do the trick:

sudo ln -s /lib /usr/lib/vmware

Now vmware-mount would list my partitions. First major breakthrough.

Mounting suspended disks

It complained that my virtual machine was in a suspended state, and so it wasn’t safe to mount the disk. I found I could bypass this problem by moving all the vmdk files into a separate directory. Then running vmware-mount in that directory. It effectively ignored all the vmware machine files, and used only the hard disk files.

mkdir vmdks
sudo mv *.vmdk vmdks/
cd vmdks

Now I could mount my /boot partition within the VM, but not the second partition because it was was an LVM container. A whole new problem to solve.

Mounting LVM volumes with vmware-mount

I stumbled on my buddy John’s post. That and this helped me figure out what was required.

My first step was to mount the disk flat, using a command like:

sudo vmware-mount -f pathToVMDK.vmdk /path/to/mount

That worked, sort of. With fdisk -l /path/to/mount I could see the two partitions. But sudo vgscan couldn’t find the lvm partition. I tried sudo losetup /dev/loop0 /path/to/mount/flat, but that didn’t work either.

I figured I needed vmware-loop to mount the partition as a loop device. I searched the VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.x86_64.tar.gz file for vmware-loop, but it was nowhere to be found. That’s when I started investigating with previous versions of VMWare. It looks like the 1.0.* releases included vmware-mount.pl and vmware-loop while the 2.0.* releases only include the new vmware-mount binary.

I downloaded VMware-server-1.0.9-156507.tar.gz. In that tar file I extracted bin/vmware-mount.pl and bin/vmware-loop. These were the files I needed. I skipped vmware-mount and went straight to vmware-loop. I was able to mount the second partition directly onto a network block device (/dev/dbd0) with:

sudo vmware-loop pathToVMDK.vmdk 2 /dev/nbd0

Now I could use the lvm commands to activate and mount my lvm. Note that vmware-loop is running the whole time, so I left it in a separate terminal. I closed it with CTRL-C at the very end of the process.

sudo vgscan
sudo vgchange -ay VolGroup00
sudo mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/

Finally, I was able to copy the files from my virtual hard drive. I made a full backup with tar and then grabbed some other specific files and unmounted the whole thing.

sudo umount /mnt/
sudo vgchange -an VolGroup00

If you’re struggling with vmware-mount and  LVM or suspended disks, I hope this helps. Comments welcome.

Ubuntu Jaunty and pidgin-facebookchat 1.61

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I was able to install pidgin-facebookchat 1.61 on Ubuntu Juanty Jackalope (9.04) by first installing the relevant libjson-glib-1.0-0 from Karmic. To find the correct deb look at the different builds on the right hand side of the page. In my case on 64-bit Ubuntu the relevant deb was this one, the 32-bit version is here.

I had to install the glib-json deb first. Otherwise the pidgin-facebookchat deb warned of an unsatisfiable dependency.

It looks like pidgin-facebookchat 1.6x is being included in Ubuntu Karmic but I’d guess it won’t be backported to Jaunty.

Google Wave

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This might be the most exciting technological development since email. I’m truly impressed at Google’s approach to this project. It gives me newfound faith in Google.

The guys behind Google Maps set out to answer the question “What would email look like if it were invented today?”

Their answer is truly outstanding. Wave is a collaborative communication tool. Something like email crossed with a wiki, instant messaging client, and much, much more. As I watched the video I was thinking, all well and good, but when I got to around 1 hour 8 minutes, I got really excited. In a truly genius move, Google has made the whole protocol behind this new platform open source. That allows independent organisations to build their own Wave servers, and privacy is tightly coded within the system. No Google snooping. Wow.

If you’re technically minded, watch the video here. I’m not embedding the video because it’s 1 hour 20 minutes long and you probably want to watch it in high def on YouTube directly. See more info and sign up for a demo account on Google Wave here.

I was clapping with the audience as the video ends. Truly amazing. Thanks to Pete Mall for the tip. :-)

An Ubuntu Kindle outside the US

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I just bought a Kindle and successfully loaded my first book onto it in Canada, using only Ubuntu. The process I used should work anywhere outside the United States. Here’s a quick summary for overseas, would-be Kindle owners.

1] Buy the Kindle. You need a shipping address in the United States where a friend or forwarding service will receive the Kindle and send it on to you. You can use a credit card from any country to actually purchase the Kindle, but not the books.

2] Deregister the Kindle from your Amazon account.

3] Buy yourself an Amazon gift voucher (I started with $20). Just buy a gift card and have it sent to your own email address.

4] Create a new Amazon account with a new email address.

5] Register the Kindle onto your new Amazon account. The Kindle serial number is in tiny letters on the back of the device.

6] Load your gift voucher onto your new Amazon account.

7] Browse the Kindle book store, purchase a book. You’ll need to add a shipping address to your account, use a US shipping address.

8] Got Your Account > Manage My Kindle and scroll down. You’ll see a list of your purchases, choose Download to My Computer then save the file.

9] Plug your Kindle into your computer (Linux, Mac or Windows all work) and drop the file into the documents folder on the Kindle.

Voila, you have a Kindle outside of the USA.

Do not add a non-US credit card to your Amazon kindle account. Use the account only for your Kindle and only put money on the account via gift vouchers. Any non-US credit card will stop Amazon sending books to you on that account. You could repeat the process to register the Kindle to a new account, but you might run out of email addresses!

I’ll post some thoughts on the Kindle once I’ve had a chance to try it out. Right now it’s charging via USB. :-)

For those of you still wondering what  Kindle is, go here. Think ipod for books. Here’s a picture to help you visualise:

bbPress 0.9 and WordPressMU 2.7

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I’ve just integrated cookie logins between bbPress 0.9.04 and WordPressMU 2.7.1 fort the second time. It took me a while to remember all the steps that were necessary the first time, so I’m documenting them here.

This is a quick and dirty integration. There might be a more fanciful or secure way of doing this. It works (for me, no guarantees!) and it’s easy. I think it will work for WordPress and WordPressMU but I’ve only tested on WordPressMU.

Firstly, you need to sync all the key and salt values in wp-config.php and bb-config.php. Set them in bb-config.php first. You need two lines like this:
define('BB_SECRET_KEY', 'secret_key_here');
define('BB_SECRET_SALT', 'secret_salt_here');

Generate secrets here.

The next step is to copy those values into wp-config.php. Copy the secret key value into all of these lines:
define('SECRET_KEY', 'secret_key_here');
define('AUTH_KEY','secret_key_here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY','secret_key_here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY','secret_key_here');

Then copy the secret salt value into each of these lines:
define('SECRET_SALT', 'secret_salt_here');
define('AUTH_SALT','secret_salt_here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT','secret_salt_here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT','secret_salt_here');

It is possible for these to be different on WordPress. That means each cookie will be different. WordPress uses 3 cookies to handle logins. However, that complicates matters with bbPress, so for simplicity, keep them all the same.

You may also need to set COOKIE_DOMAIN and COOKIEPATH in bb-config.php. Check out your forum admin (Settings > WordPress Integration) and it will tell you what to do.

Now go to your forum admin, Settings, WordPress Integration. Click “Show manual config settings:”. Now copy that into bb-config.php. Change this line to:
$bb->authcookie = 'wordpress_logged_in_';

WordPress standalone uses a wacky cookie name, generated randomly, but WordPressMU does not. If you’re using WordPress, you need to change this value. Log into WordPress, check the cookies in your browser, and copy the name here. I think you can also do this by setting COOKIEHASH in your wp-config.php. See this article for more info.

Now when you log into WordPress, you’ll be logged into bbPress. When you log out of WordPress, you’ll be logged out of bbPress. But not vice versa. In order to complete the link so you can log in and out on bbPress, you’ll need to add a little plugin to bbPress. Get the code here and put the file in bb-plugins then activate the plugin via your forum admin. This plugin only works for WordPressMU / bbPress. If you want a version for WordPress, nag me with a comment on this post and I’ll see what I can do. :-)

Now logins should sync beautifully. If you have any questions, try asking on the bbPress forums.

lftp and cPanel

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I routinely have problems connecting to cPanel FTP servers with lftp. Much to my frustration it works fine through gFTP. After some debugging investigation it seems that lftp automatically tries to use AUTH TLS and then fails. There is a simple solution. Set the lftp setting “ftp:ssl-allow” to false. This can be done by running this command within lftp:

set ftp:ssl-allow false

Another WordPress plugin

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I’ve been on something of a plugin writing spree of late. I’ve just written my second WordPress plugin this week.

I realised that the timezone was wrong on this blog. It’s been wrong since I left Sydney. Now that I’m posting status updates, and not using the “posted X minutes ago” format, it’s obvious when my times are wrong.

I looked into how I could change the times on my old posts. In the process I found Otto’s excellent Automatic Timezone plugin. It sets your timezone automatically including changes for DST and so on. You just choose the nearest city and it does the rest.

However, I couldn’t find a plugin that would change the timezone information on older posts. So I wrote one. The first version ruined the posts, thankfully I had run a backup before I made 90% of the changes. This version seems to work fine. New page here, it’s still waiting for approval from the WordPress plugin directory.

So the timestamp on this post is correct for my current timezone, it’s 2:17am, time for bed!

Trying a new theme

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I’m trying a new theme on the blog. I’m going for a lighter, simpler look more focused on the content and less on the blog. What do you think?

If you’re reading this in a feed reader, come check out the site and share your thoughts in the comments. :-)

Considering a Kindle

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I’m considering the purchase of an Amazon Kindle 2. I like reading books but books a’re big and bulky which doesn’t fit very well with my current nomadic lifestyle. I’ve spoken to a few people who recommend the Kindle.

However, I just read this. Amazon has allowed publishers to restrict whether a book can be read aloud on the Kindle or not. There is no basis for this in law, but Amazon has conceded all the same.

I’m typically a hardliner on issues like this. I boycott all Apple products because of the company’s proprietary lock-in practices. I use Ubuntu GNU/Linux because it includes software freedoms not available on proprietary operating systems.

Is there a Kindle competitor out there? Is the same range of books available?

Before I make a purchase I want to find out if I can load books onto the Kindle via Ubuntu. The Kindle includes a cell phone wireless component that allows internet access, but only in the US. So outside of the US I need another way to load books. If that requires Windows or Mac then I won’t buy the Kindle.

Then I’d also like to research the selection of books that is available. I’m hoping that the type of non-fiction books I typically read are readily available on the Kindle, otherwise, again, no point getting one.

Do you have a Kindle? Do you use Ubuntu? Any feedback?

My Manhattan office

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I went to the New York OpenCoffee meeting this morning. I’ve been to a few OpenCoffee’s around the world and I like the events. They normally give me a quick flavour of the tech scene in a place. The meetings in Cape Town are really buzzing for example.

This morning’s meeting opened with a series of introductions, each person introduced themselves in that usual “My name is blah and my company is called blah and I blah blah blah”. I was looking for a place to work for the day so I literally jumped from my seat when my turn came. I sprang into life, delivered an energetic good morning, explained my name was Callum, I’m from Scotland, and I was looking for a desk for the day.

The charming, generous and downright handsome Ashley J. Heather was a couple of intros before me. English accent, runs a tech incubator. Perfect I thought. He agreed. Bingo, I had scored an office for the day. So this post comes to you from the office space of dotbox. Thanks Ashley. :-)

Here’s a completely unrelated, creative commons licenced picture of a totally different type of dotbox for your viewing pleasure!

A sad day for Michael Arrington

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Michael Arrington is the main entrepreneur and journalist behind TechCrunch. According to Technorati, TechCrunch is the second most popular blog on the internet. TechCrunch covers technology startup news, specifically silicon valley, web based type stuff (as far as I know, I’m not a regular reader).

Michael posted some sad news yesterday. He is taking a break after being spat on at a European conference. He also said that he had received death threats and hired private security personnel to protect his family and employees.

As I understand it, Michael is a very public figure. He’s one of the best known web celebrities, whatever that means. As with all famous people, there comes a downside to that fame. While the likes of Mark Zuckerberg (24 year old, paper billionaire, Facebook founder) or Matt Mullenweg (25 year old, paper millionaire, Automattic / WordPress founder) keep a low profile, Arrington is the opposite. He’s been prolific in getting his name known, and very successful.

It’s a shame that fame is accompanied with such a downside. I’m sure most major actors have experienced similar issues to Arrington. Personally, I take this as a stark reminder that popularity has a cost. It reminds me that while fame may seem appealing, personally, I don’t think the benefit is worth the cost.

I hope Michael Arrington and his family are safe, and I hope he’s able to deal with these challenges and grow as a result. Good luck Michael.

Unsubscribing from AirAsia

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I cannot unsubscribe from AirAsia’s email newsletter. They say email unsubscribe@fly.airasia.com to be removed from the mailing list. That email address is dead. Likewise unsubscribe@airasia.com is also dead.

I’ve tried contacting their customer support department, nothing.

AirAsia’s emails appear to be handled by dartmail.net. Whois shows that this domain is owned by Google. The first result in a scroogle search for dartmail is a service from ClickZ / Double Click.

All in all, I’m feeling some frustration. If it comes to it, I can simply block all email from AirAsia, but that would mean I cannot fly with them. Not ideal. Does anyone out there have a suggestion or solution?

Update at 15 Jan 2009: ccd5 said the unsubscribe address now works, I tried again and it worked for me.

New laptop: Lenovo X301

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Exactly one month after I bought it, my Lenovo X301 finally arrived in Guadalajara. Big thanks to Ferg and Maeve for getting it to me.

New X301

I’m very impressed with the X301. It’s not cheap, my configuration retails for around $3’500 USD, but it definitely feels worth it. The machine is half the weight of my previous ThinkPad R60. The screen is noticeably brighter, I’m running it about 70% brightness indoors. It’s also got 70% more pixels, which means more stuff on the screen. That was the main reason I changed laptops, I wanted more desktop space.

Naturally, I immediately installed Ubuntu. I didn’t even boot the machine on Vista. I also swiftly removed the Intel Inside and Microsoft Vista stickers. After some hassles getting Ubuntu installed (I repeatedly chose the wrong options), I finally got there. Everything “just works”. Bluetooth, wifi, FN keys, the whole lot. This was the easiest Linux install I’ve experienced to date.

What impresses me most about the X301 is the build quality. It feels absolutely solid, particularly for a machine that is so light. Oz is staying with us at the moment and he has a MacBook Air so I’ve been able to compare them both first hand. The Air feels smaller. It’s thinner at the edges so it looks smaller. The two machines are almost identical in dimensions, I think the Air is 0.03 inches thinner at it’s thickest point. The Air also looks better. It’s Apple good looking. Metal finish, back lit Apple logo, etc. It looks awesome. However, I’m happy to have a machine that looks old school,  it draws less attention and is less likely to be stolen.

The X301 comes into its own on performance. The Air has a total of 3 ports. Headphones, mini-dvi and one USB. The X301 has 3 USB ports, headphone and microphone sockets, DisplayPort, VGA, ethernet, the list goes on. My X301 has an in-built DVD Burner which I can swap out for a second battery. The Air’s battery is not removable, so no carrying spares. I can run two batteries in my X301 and given enough batteries, achieve potentially unlimited runtime.

Overall, I’m delighted with my new X301. It’s super light, ultra portable, but packs enough performance that I can use it as my main workhorse machine. Very happy with my purchase.

[ Picture on the screen is One Night in Bangkok by Stuck in Customs ]

Satellite versus roaming

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Satellite broadband runs about $5-$7 USD per Mb. It seems expensive. I thought I’d compare that to global roaming charges. Vodafone NZ charge $10 – $30 per Mb depending on the region!

At these kind of prices, it looks like I’ll be staying in major metropolitan areas with wifi for the next few months. I was dreaming of getting a satellite phone and a camper van (or a motorbike) and taking off into the wild!

If I want to be uber-available, I might consider a pre-paid satellite sim card ($500!) valid for 6 months. Paired with a satellite handset, I could potentially be “permanently connected”. Food for thought.

Skype on Ubuntu 8.10

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Every time I reinstall Skype on Linux I lose sound for some reason. I can hear the other side, but they can’t hear me. I fiddle with the volume settings, and after a while it starts working. This time, I paid attention and made note of how I got it working. This post is as much for me as for anyone else on Ubuntu. :)

Firstly, under Options > Sound Devices I switched the output device to pulse. Then I set the input device to “HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0)”. Then I opened the volume control, enabled all the devices, and set Mic Boost to about 15%. That was the critical step. Now callers can hear me.

For the first time in my Linux history, I can now receive a Skype call and have music playing at the same time. Previously, I had to kill all other sound output before answering the call and I would only see it ring, not hear it. Much progress.

Here’s a random picture from a search for Skype on flickr to brighten things up a little.

Zend Studio garbled chars fix

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Following my post about installing Zend Studio 5.5.1 on Ubuntu 8.10, Gyorgy posted a comment about a problem with garbled characters. I had noticed the problem myself, but only briefly, I don’t tend to work with very large files. As yet, I hadn’t gotten a chance to look into it.

I spent some time on it today. Through this I found this thread discussing a similar problem with Netbeans. User cesc posted their fix (workaround?) which others reported to work. I figured the same option might work in Zend.

After a little digging, I have found that this approach works for me. I’ve tested with a 3k+ line file, and the bug is resolved. I’m running Zend Studio 5.5.1, Ubuntu 8.10, Sun’s JRE build 1.6.0_10-b33, compiz disabled. Zend appears to work with compiz enabled, but scrolling a 3k+ line file is very slow.

I edited file /opt/ZendStudio-5.5.1/bin/ZDE at line 1543 and added this:

# Hack in this option to solve garbled text problem as per:
# http://tinyurl.com/zendchrfix
options="$options -Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false"

Here’s a patch for those who like that sort of thing. Hopefully this will help others with the same issue.

Full encryption is go!

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This post comes to you from Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, upon a fully encrpted 500GB disk. So if my laptop should fall into the wrong hands, my customers, family and friends can rest assured their data, passwords, photographs or emails are (for all practical purposes) secure.

Thus far I haven’t noticed a performance cost. The system “feels” as fast as before. I’m running a Centrino Core2 Duo 1.66GHz, 1.5GiB RAM. When moving large quantities of data (10GiB plus) I see the kcryptd process using around 25% – 50% CPU (of one core).

It really was painless to setup. Thanks to this walkthrough I was pretty confident it would be easy. No dramas. The hardest step was probably choosing a suitably random password (thanks grc).

EasySpace Suck

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I’ve just been advised by EasySpace that the VPS I rent from them cannot access torrents. They block all torrent traffic on their network.

I’m sorry but Easyspace do not allow connection to torrent trackers on our network. There is the potential for the service to be abused so it is forbidden entirely.

Uploading/Downloading torrents will also greatly increase the bandwidth usage of your server and potentially cause problems for other users on the network.

Outrageous. If it wasn’t that I need a UK IP I’d kill the service immediately. Outrageous.

Any recommendations on a good UK VPS host? I’m looking around £25 a month for a reasonably spec’d box (probably 512MiB RAM). I’ll be happy to switch if I can find a better alternative.

Rsync.net gets cheaper

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My online backup service, rsync.net, has just dropped their prices. They’re now $1.20 per GB per month, unlimited bandwidth. Pretty reasonable I reckon. Plus they’ve added a couple of Windows clients to make things easier for poor souls not yet enlightened to the power of Linux. :-p

While others are talking doom and gloom it would seem rsync.net are on the up and up. Glad to be with them.

Goodbye FuseMail, hello TuffMail

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I have changed mail providers again. I’ve been with TuffMail for about 3 weeks now.

After my initial hassles with FuseMail, they came round. Pat and Henry were great. They got back to me after my scathing blog post, the issues were cleared up. All was well. I was all set to stay put.

FuseMail Problems

I had a problem deleting mail. I use IMAP, so I’d mark the mail to be deleted (press delete). Then the message is still visible, but crossed out. It’s waiting to be “purged” or “expunged”. I’d hit Expunge (in Evolution) and some of my mail waiting for deletion would be deleted. But only some. Then I’d repeat the process several times, and eventually get rid of all the mail to be deleted.

At least twice during this process, other emails were also deleted. Messages that I had not marked for deletion. I noticed that two very important client emails disappeared. It rocked my faith in FuseMail and my email in general. It was a very unsettling feeling.

I contacted FuseMail support. Explained my situation. I even managed to find the message ids of the lost messages from my backups. The response was very friendly, but pretty useless. They essentially said they couldn’t reproduce the problem, and so couldn’t do anything about it. They didn’t have a Linux machine to test with Evolution.

Hello TuffMail

So after a few weeks I finally made the switch to TuffMail. TuffMail is run by geeks. Every one of my suport emails has been answered by a guy called John Cano. I’m guessing he’s the man behind TuffMail.

His support sucks. Technically, he’s spot on, but his customer service sucks. It’s like asking for help on the #centos IRC channel. You’re expected to read the manual yourself, figure out what needs to be done, and then do it. Either I misunderstand John’s emails, ore they’re sarcastic at my expense. I’m assuming I misunderstand! ;-)

But, aside from the geekyt support, the service is technically excellent. Spam filtering seems to be rock solid after I finally got it seup properly. I can create complex sieve rules to filter my mail (which I adore). I haven’t lost a single email. All seems to be well.

Recommendations

Can I recommend FuseMail? Honestly, probably not. If you’re not too worried about losing email, or if you don’t use Linux, maybe they’ll be ok. Personally, I can’t in good faith recommend them after my experience.

Can I recommend TuffMail? If you’re a geek and don’t need “friendly” support, sure. The service is technically great. The configuration options are plentiful. You can set it up just how you like it. If you’re not a geek though, and you want a friendly support desk, no, I can’t recommend TuffMail either.

So my search for a technically competent, Linux friendly, well supported email system continues. Recommendations on a postcard… :)

Thinking bigger

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Thinking bigger by HalonaCoast

I think Seth Godin’s is my favourite blog. His posts are short, concise and usually thought provoking. Seth avoids the mistake of writing too much, too often, and writing crap just to keep the content flowing.

Today Seth talks about thinking bigger. It’s got me thinking about StraightPress.

I host a handful of WordPress sites for family, friends and so on. Every time a WordPress update is released, I manually go through each site, run a backup, apply the update, then test the site. It’s a time consuming process, but it’s important to keep the sites secure. The sites are on my server, so security is my concern. It’s a bit like brushing your teeth. Important, but not always the highlight of your day.

This is where the idea for StraightPress was born. If I can manage a handful of sites, why not manage a few hundred sites, and generate serious economy of scale? Like a professional tooth brusher. We’ll come round to your house at 6pm every night and give your teeth a professional clean. Great I thought, here’s a business I can build that meets my criteria.

Recently I read the excellent book Scientific Advertising (pdf) by Claude Hopkins. The book was written in 1923 and is as relevant today as the day it was penned. It really is an inspirational read. It’s a book about caution, practicality, being realistic. It’ll never inspire you to create Google, Apple or Twitter, but like insurance, it will keep you safe, sensible and secure.

The book makes an excellent point about toothpaste. The author makes the point that tooth paste is easier sold on account of its beauty enhancement than its disease prevention. I do believe that is true. Offering a product that enhances, improves, enriches is a much easier sell than a product that prevents.

Why do you want your WordPress site kept up to date? One of the most important reasons is security. Preventing problems. But that’s not a great selling point. New features is another important point. WordPress 2.6 added post revisions. Every time you save a post or page, it creates a new version. So if you mess something up, you can easily go back to an older version. That’s a very powerful feature.

My question is, how do I think bigger? How do I shape StraightPress so the offering is oustanding, remarkable, notable. What can we offer, around WordPress hosting and management, that would make people sit up and say “Damn, I want me some of that”? I don’t have an answer today, but it’s a question that will be on my mind until I do.

Google Government

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Google have launched a browser. It’s called Chrome. It’s an interesting move from a company that started out as a search engine. It has started me thinking, what is Google now? Is it a search engine? A mail service? A browser? A mobile phone company? It would seem it is all of those things.

What is Google’s core offering then? What does Google do better than anyone else? Again, it would seem many of those things. Google seems to do well in every market it enters. Gmail is generally regarded as the best free webmail service. Google search is surely the dominant search engine. Google Docs is hard to beat. If other companies create competing products, they’re typically bought by Google. YouTube, FeedBurner, and so on.

So what is Google? Where is it going?

It seems like Google is becoming the major supplier of information to a large portion of the people using the internet. That is, for many people, Google is their primary conduit of information. Google delivers access to all other websites via search and advertising. Google delivers personal messages via Gmail. Google provides news. With the launch of a browser, Google takes the next natural step in extending that reach.

Google is surely synonymous with the internet. For many people, Google is the internet. Google provides them with information, information they trust and believe.

It has been shown that all news networks have a bias. This is most obvious with political campaigns like the current presidential election in the US. Each network has their preferred candidate, or party. That has a significant impact on the voters who watch / read / consume the news from that network.

I wonder, what are Google’s biases. How does Google influence the web.

The internet is a largely unregulated territory. It is global, borderless, and largely lawless. This is seen most obviously in activities like child pornography. The internet spans almost every legal jurisdiction in the world. It is therefore almost impossible to prevent something from being available on the internet. That is both a great weakness and a great strength. It is very hard to quash freedom of speech online, likewise it is very hard to quash child pornography online.

Conversely, Google has massive censorship powers on the internet. While they can’t stop you from accessing something you already know exists, they can stop most people from finding something. As the global gateway to the internet, that is an immense responsbility for one company, and ultimately, one board of directors, to carry.

Typically, roles of such significance to the populution are carried out by governments. In the west, these governments are largely elected, and at least in principle, answerable to their people. Google has no such restriction. As a corporation it answers to it’s shareholders. A corporation’s stated and legally required purpose is the creation of wealth for it’s shareholders. Period.

So where does this leave us, the public? Google is arguably more able, better resourced, and far more global than any of our elected governments. Who then, can judge Google’s activities? Who can hold Google accountable? It would seem, at least currently, that Google is largely unaccountable. The corporation operates in famous secrecy, keeping all it’s technology hidden from prying eyes.

Ultimately, I believe, in time, all things answer to the people. Every empire, no matter how benign of tyrannical, falls eventually. Every great organisation dies. Death is what defines life.

It will be interesting to watch as Google grows. Microsoft, one of the technology gians of old, is now 33 years old, and has arguably had it’s day. Five days before it’s 10th birthday, Google reigns as the new king of technology. With the ever increasing pace of technology, how long will this king sit before it is replaced? With the ever growing size of the global market, how big will Google’s kingdom be at it’s peak?

These are both intriguing and worrying times. I choose to avoid Google where I can, but I will be interested to see how Google continues to shape the internet over the years to come.

Magic pidgins

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Pidgin is my instant messaging client of choice. It means my MSN, Gtalk, Yahoo, ICQ and other contacts are all in one place. Today I have taken that to the next level with three new plugins.

Skype Pidgin Plugin

I need to have skype installed and running, but now I can send / receive messages from within pidgin. On linux, this is a big deal. The skype interface sucks. It lacks spell check, among other things. Now I can even send encrypted, deniable messages through Skype with the Off The Record plugin. All my other pidgin plugins work with Skype. Fantastic. Get the plugin here. (It works for poor people on Windows also).

Facebook Chat on Pidgin

More and more people have started talking to me on Facebook chat. The interface was a little ropey, I much prefer talking to people in Pidgin. For example, when somebody sends me a message, a web site has no way of letting me know. So if Facebook is open but not on the screen (say on another tab) I miss the messages. Pidgin on the other hand is great for that. Now pidgin supports facebook chat.

Twitter via Pidgin

I haven’t actually activated this plugin yet, but I have installed it. I believe it allows you to set / get Twitter messages via Pidgin. I like that idea a lot. I really liked Twitter’s IM service (before it died). But now I’m using ping.fm (invite code vivalaping) to update all my statuses in one go. So Twitter only via IM might be a bit weird. I can post to ping.fm through IM no problems, they have a Jabber interface.

Plugin Pack

Before I forget, I recently installed the available plugins from the Ubuntu repository. I grabbed all the pidgin related plugin packs that looked good. That made a big difference. Added Extra Prefs and Off The Record Messaging which were the biggest changes I think.

Pidgin is on a new level today. :) Here’s a pretty picture for all you visual / non techy types out there.

Backup, backup, then backup some more

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I’ve had a couple of backup reminders recently. John suffered a hard drive failure. Then his backup failed. It reminded me that I need to sort out a backup for my server. This server! Then I accidentally deleted my whole address book. Thankfully I was able to restore from backup quite painlessly. Thank you dear, sweet rsync.net. :)

I thought I’d take this opportunity to share the message with YOU. When did you last backup? Do you have an automated backup plan? Have you tested it? Do you know you can actually recover your data, or do you just hope? Do you keep your backup drive next to your computer? How would you be affected by fire or theft?

Backup is a little bit like insurance. It’s tempting to drive without insurance, until you have a crash that is. Then, of course, the insurance seems like a bargain. Why not decide today is a good day to check over your backup procedure? Maybe even run a little test restore just to be sure.

Here’s a picture from amanky completely unrelated to backup which appeared in a flickr search for backup all the same.