Ho John Lee's Weblog

These are my links for March 16th through April 2nd:

• Google uncloaks once-secret server | Business Tech – CNET News – Photo and more comments on the Google data center server configuration, 12vdc only, local battery, shown at yesterday's data center power conference.
• Google’s Custom Web Server, Revealed « Data Center Knowledge – 1:30 video of current server configuration, from Google Data Center Energy Summit, April 1, 2009. Open shelf, power supply with built in battery (per-unit UPS) rather than centralized UPS.
• HerHotSpot Uses Facebook Connect to Block Boys Out – Relies on Facebook profile data to limit boys access to site targeting girls only. Uses FBConnect as the exclusive login method.
• SandHill.com | Opinion : Cloud Computing Ecosystem Map v1.0: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants – Collection of pointers to maps of the cloud computing ecosystem, and a merged map, as of March 2009
• Penny Arcade! – Le Twittre –

The current issue of EETimes gives us a good look at the innards of the new iPod Nano. Earlier posts on the new iPod have noted the “Apple”-branded chips, which are identified in this teardown. PortalPlayer had supplied the media processor for the original Nano, and has been replaced in the 2nd generation design:

An Apple-labeled ASIC, the S5L8701- B05, comes from Samsung and is responsible for all audio and still-image decoding. Other than the Apple proprietary markings on the Nano’s CPU, labeling tells of an ARM core within the Samsung chip, under 6 x 6 mm in die size, and packaged in an underfilled ball grid array package similar to the Nano’s PortalPlayer-based predecessor. Unlike the first-generation design, which had a separate NAND controller component from SST, the Samsung CPU appears to have integrated the NAND interface directly, reducing cost and complexity.

The article estimates the build cost at $65 to $132 depending on the amount of flash memory, leaving a healthy margin.

Add it all up and the 2-Gbyte second-generation Nano is estimated to have a direct production and materials cost in the range of $65, inclusive of the accessories (earbuds, USB cable, dock adapter). Assuming a slight premium for higher-density NAND stacks, we estimate the 4- and 8-Gbyte versions would have a materials and production cost in the range of $87 and $132, respectively. With retail prices of $150, $200 and $250 for the three models (2 Gbytes, 4 Gbytes, 8 Gbytes), gross margins look good, ranging from 56 percent at the low end to 47 percent at the high end. Of course, other indirect costs related to product development, marketing, shipping and any software licenses are absent from these figures, but the story remains pretty positive no matter what.

I just replaced the battery in my wife’s iPod Mini this weekend, but we’ll probably end up with a new Nano shortly.

Link: EETimes – Revised Nano toughens skin

See also: Apple’s new iPod family — who benefits? (AppleInsider)

In a previous post I observed that the PhoneGnome looks like a SPA-3000, with a simpler configuration process for normal people who aren’t interesting in hacking their phone system.

Today, PhoneGnome is offering to convert unlocked SPA-3000 hardware into PhoneGnome adapters for $34.95. (link)

Not sure if you can undo the firmware change afterwards, or what’s in their load. I may check this out when I get some time for Asterisk and phone hacking.

See also: Using the SPA-3000 as an Asterisk PSTN Trunk, PhoneGnome Analog to VOIP adapter

Update 08-23-2005 – the upgrade offer appears to be temporarily suspended, due to configuration issues between various customer supplied SPA-3000 hardware.

I stopped by the BlackDog booth at Linux World today, initially drawn in by the spectacle of Tux the Linux Penguin riding on BlackDog’s mechanical bull. Not something you see every day.

The whole scene at the BlackDog booth had sort of a early dot-com boom circa 1996 feel to it. Here’s a company I’ve never heard of, with a relatively huge booth and lots of happy staffers recruiting riders for the mechanical bull, but almost no one bothering to mention what they were actually selling, other than large posters announcing “The World’s First Linux Server that will take You for a walk”. It took me a bit of effort to find a person who could explain what they were selling.

The BlackDog server turns out to be an interesting hybrid of a putting Linux on a USB flash device and putting an embedded Linux into a USB device. The actual device is around the size and weight of a pack of cards, and runs Debian Linux on a 400MHz PowerPC, drawing power from the USB interface. The announced ship date is September 1, 2005, at $199 for 256MB or $239 for a 512MB model. Both models include a fingerprint scanner, 64MB RAM, and a SD/MMC expansion slot.

Unlike the SoulPad, BlackDog is intended for use with a Windows or Linux system that’s already running. In their booth demo, when the device is plugged in, it launches an X server on the WinXP host system, which is then used as the display for applications residing on the BlackDog server.

A few considerations come to mind:

1. Since there’s no network interface, this can’t be used as a Linux server in the typical sense, i.e. plugged into the network on its own. It could probably be connected to a powered USB hub for power and a network connection, but this doesn’t appear to be its design target.
2. Fast startup time – in their booth demo, the environment hosted on the device came up a few seconds after plugging in the USB cable. I’m guessing that the WinXP autoplay was previously configured to run the X server from the USB flash file system on hotplug detection. In any case, it’s a lot faster than cold-booting Linux or Windows.
3. Since it relies on the host computer for human interface (display, keyboard, and mouse), it’s not quite as secure as it might look. One issue I worry about in public internet cafes and other shared-computer environments is the growing presence of keyloggers. Spyware-infested public computers are fairly common in my unscientific poll (i.e. places I’ve stopped, mostly in Asia). So my working assumption is that anything I type on a public computer is visible. That would still apply to applications hosted on the BlackDog server, since it can’t do anything about securing the human interfaces on host system. This is one of the reasons I’m mostly considering bootable Linux environments for use in unsecured environments.

It seems like a neat gadget. I’ll have to think a bit more about what it’s actually good for.

The BlackDog team is apparently looking for ideas as well. They’re starting a developer contest in September when the product is shipped, with a $50,000 prize. A lot of money for a product that appears to be in the “interesting-linux-hacker-widget” category. I suspect the total product revenue for some products in this space are less than $50K.

Turns out they’re part of Realm Systems, which received $8.5 million in funding last January, which is why they can afford a huge booth that doesn’t tell anyone what they’re doing, and offer $50K for a developer contest.

Hint to Realm’s marcom team: The mechanical bull was a lot of fun, but it would be good to mention what you’re selling once in a while…

See also: SoulPad, Rabbit Ethernet, SSV Embedded, PicoTux, Engadget, discussion at Slashdot

Om Malik writes about a new product called the PhoneGnome, which combines an analog phone line and a LAN port for use with a VOIP service.

But the best part about the gizmo is that, when you try and outgoing call, it basically uses your selection of service provider to place that outgoing call. For someone else with a PhoneGnome to call you for free. They would not have to dial any different number or address. For instance, if my # is 415-555-1212, (and I have PhoneGnome), as a PhoneGnome user, you call 415.555.1212. In case I don’t have PhoneGnome, your call will get routed over the PSTN. On this website, my.phonegnome.com website, PhoneGnome can select a provider for national long-distance, international calls, or both, and select separate providers and plans for each.

The photo looks pretty similar to my Sipura SPA-3000, which also provides both analog phone interfaces and VOIP and a laundry list of configurable bridging functions. I’ve been using the SPA-3000 as a front end to Asterisk, so I’m not as familiar with it’s standalone modes. The PhoneGnome looks like it might be the Sipura hardware, but bundled as a consumer-friendly solution. The SPA-3000 provides lots of configuration options, but isn’t exactly user friendly.

I’ve experimented for a few months with using just the notebook computer, rather than docking to a desktop monitor, keyboard, and mouse, with mixed results, and am shifting back to a full desktop dock setup again.

Good points of notebook-only:

• It’s easy to pick up the notebook computer and go to a meeting, or simply to move to a different location to write
• Got rid of the immense CRT sitting on my desk (20 inches, 65+ pounds)
• Consistent user interface and keyboard set up for travel and office, don’t have to make changes

Bad points of notebook-only:

• The native LCD resolution on my T42 (1400×1050, 14″) makes everything too small to work with for very long. It gives me a huge headache if I use it for more than a few minutes. As a workaround, there’s a handy utility to shift the screen resolution to something lower, but non-native resolutions are predictably a little fuzzy.
• The T42 keyboard and pointing stick are nice, but I find that I get achy wrists after extended periods of typing and clicking

I resumed using a full size keyboard and ergonomic mouse a while ago, and just set up a new Samsung SyncMaster 213T LCD monitor, which is 21 inches, with a native resolution of 1600×1200. This is much better. The T42 can drive 1600×1200 without scaling, and the analog VGA mode already looks pretty good, will try the DVI mode later.

In just a few hours of returning to a larger display, I can tell this is a big win. In theory it shouldn’t make that much difference, but I feel like my brain is getting a little uncramped. I’m already contemplating getting a couple more displays to get back to a multi-screen set up again and really get some space to work, but I’ll wait until the novelty wears off before committing to more equipment on the desktop.

Google Earth looks great in full screen mode! Plus it gives the graphics accelerator something to do.

It’s been a few weeks now since I’ve started using a new IBM Thinkpad T42P as a replacement for my HP 4150B. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve taken it on one trip to Asia and a few meetings so far, along with daily office use. The Omnibook 4150B has been a total workhorse, logging more than 500K air miles in 5 years. I’m still using it around the house, but the case has developed a hairline fracture which I suspect will not withstand another serious road trip, thus finally prompting a search for a replacement.

T42P good points:

Battery life – I routinely get more than 6 hours run time with the 9-cell battery
Weight – I got the 14″ rather than 15″ display to improve portability. It’s definitely lighter than the old Omnibook, and I’m carrying fewer extra widgets, which also saves weight.
Noise – HDDs have generally gotten quieter over the past few years, and the fan is also very quiet
Build quality – no loose plastic pieces, solid metal hinges, and very little chassis flex.
Think Light – this seemed a little gimmicky, but has actually turned out to be useful on the airplane
Built-in wireless – I got a unit with built in 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth. The performance of the 802.11 b and g modes has been quite good; I haven’t had an occasion to use the 802.11a mode yet. There’s no obvious way to connect an external antenna to the built-in hardware, but I can always put another radio in the PCMCIA slot. The IBM Connection Manager widget for managing roaming profiles also works pretty well so far

Undecided / not great:

Trackpad – the T42P has both a pointing stick and trackpad. I’ve never gotten the hang of using the trackpad reliably, so I’m on the verge of disabling it so I don’t keep bumping into it accidentally.
Fingerprint scanner – this is a cool concept, but I haven’t reached a level of comfort where I’m willing to rely on it to sign on instead of logging in the normal way.
No business card holder – this is nitpicky, but there’s no slot for placing a business card or other identifying marks on the unit. Obviously, putting your business card isn’t going to prevent people from stealing it, but it can help distinguish one computer from another — and there are a lot of similar looking computers around at airport security, conferences, meetings, etc.
Keyboard – the IBM keyboard “feel” is a little different, mostly good. However, I seem to do something from time to time that causes the keyboard to “beep” loudly when I type something rapidly/badly. It might be some control key combination, I haven’t figured this out yet.
Key placement – the IBM keyboard also swaps the usual placement of the Fn and Ctrl keys, and has a slightly different placement for the Esc key. I trip over this at least a couple of times a day. There’s a hack for swapping the keyboard mapping, but I haven’t tried this yet.
No recovery media – there is a recovery partition on the HDD, but if you upgrade the drive, or if you accidentally or intentionally trash the WinXP install, there’s no way to recover the factory install without contacting IBM support. I may request a set anyway, in anticipation of snags while setting up dual-boot Linux on the system.

To be fair, a lot of the improved experience I’m getting is in going from a 650MHz P3 with 256MB RAM to a 2.1GHz Pentium-M with 1GB RAM and a faster bus, and running a 7200RPM drive vs a 5400RPM drive, rather than any IBM (now Lenovo)-specific system design advantage. Similarly, the USB ports are 2.0 rather than 1.1, so the outboard peripherals are faster.

It’s depressing that it takes so much computing resource to mostly do nothing but run WinXP with OfficeXP with reasonable response time. I occasionally find myself SSHed into an antique Linux box running Emacs when I want to do serious text editing and it totally crushes Word for actual text manipulation power, sans formatting and nice print output. I’ve repartitioned the disk on the Thinkpad to leave room for a Linux install when I get some time for some tech hacking.

I’ll also put in a mention here for Bill Morrow, who hosts Thinkpads.com. The user forums there are the best online resource I’ve found for IBM Thinkpad info of all models and vintages, and with many posts by knowledgeable and motivated users.

I purchased my T42P from Bill rather than the IBM online store, in part because I had problems getting a system configured on the IBM site (similar to the problems I had earlier with the HP online store), and found his prices to be competitive while providing me some confidence that I was actually getting what I was trying to order.

In the end, what sold me on the Thinkpad this time around was a combination of the longer battery life and being able to order from Bill. The system performance, feature set, weight, and build quality for the HP nc6220 is generally similar, but the actual battery run time for the HP model is significantly shorter in both published reviews and anecdotal user comments. I was still considering just living with it, but I couldn’t get the HP web site to kick out the configuration I wanted, as it was convinced I wanted to buy one of the promotional configurations. The IBM site was slightly better, but I found it difficult to tell whether I was substituting one option for another, or getting an additional piece of equipment.

Bill stocks a variety of high end T42 configurations, and I was able to verify that he had what I wanted in hand, and received it overnight after placing the order. In theory this could have all been done, “friction-free”, on the internet, a la Dell. However, given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be 12,000 miles from home out in the boonies in India or China or wherever, and be counting on a semi-disposable computer. Sometimes you just need something that will hold up, and Dell isn’t it. Obviously, I was willing to pay more to get something more bulletproof. Here’s hoping for another 5 years of reliable service…

See also: Notebook Migration in Progress…, More on Notebook Computer Shopping

I’m still wrestling with what to do about my next notebook computer. I’m probably going to end up with something like an IBM T42 or an HP nc6220, but I keep toying with the idea of changing my entire work setup to be more mobile and perhaps returning back to a full desktop system or something like that.

In the meantime, someone’s found some photos and documents on the unreleased IBM X41 Thinkpad on the FCC web site. (via Slashdot)

You’ve got to love the FCC when you’re craving information for rumored devices and these pics found on the FCC site depict an IBM Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC. No real surprises in these pics, the depicted Tablet looks just like a Thinkpad. Looks like it has Bluetooth and a dual antenna WiFi. Except, of course, for the swivel screen.

updated 04-26-2005: X41 discussion at Thinkpads.com

Forwarded this morning from Andy Fitzhugh:

WiFi Wok and the Chinese cookware 2.4GHz repeaters (at Engadget).

As some of the comments point out, earlier versions of this appeared on Slashdot sometime last year, but the pictures with overlaid captions accompanying this writeup are quite nice.

Perhaps we can make some of these to go with the collection of coffee can antennas for the Kuppam wireless program, not sure how widely available woks or similar shaped metal pans are in India.

Not a new electronica group, but an ongoing project by New Zealander Stan Swan to make some seriously DIY WiFi repeaters out of — what else? — Chinese cookware, among other kitchen and household gadgets. Turns out cheap cooking scoops make great 2.4GHz parabolic mesh dishes. Who knew? We don’t see too many WiFi extenders with bamboo handles in the States — surely a missed opportunity for the wireless adapter market.

The original site is here.

Advertised in EETimes, December 20/27, 2004
www.rabbitethernetize.com

Includes development board with RCM3720, 512K flash, 256K SRAM, 1MB Serial Flash, 33 digital I/O, full version of development software, TCP/IP stack, sample programs, AC adapter

Promotional price $99, normally $199.

Could be handy for building ethernet devices of various sorts.