Tech Friday — WES and Ruby

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Microsoft has made available considerable information about Windows Embedded Standard, (WES) which is the latest version of Windows Embedded, based on Windows XP.

There are (roughly) three versions of embedded operating systems from Microsoft:

Windows Embedded Standard: Allows a stripped down version of Windows XP for powering set-top boxes, game boxes, and machines dedicated to a single application. This is what we’re using in one version of our telemedicine set-top box.

Windows Embedded POS: An enhanced version of WES for cash registers and checkout scanner applications.

Windows Embedded CE: This is the version of Windows used for mobile phones and other hand-held and portable devices. The code base and software development tools for CE are different than Windows Embedded, with many of these related to WES.

There are a total now of twenty-nine (29!) training videos related to Windows Embedded Standard.

The Windows Embedded Developer Center site is the gateway on Microsoft’s Developer Network to all things related to Windows Embedded.

The Windows for Devices web site has information related to all version of Window Embedded as well as hardware that runs under Windows Embedded.

Other Notes:

Smashing Magazine has a nice introduction to Ruby on Rails.

Remote Access via iPhone and iPod Touch

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Logmein now has a version of Ignition for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

Logmein continues to provide terrific value for remote access. We’re using it extensively, with a combination of the free version for most workstations and LogMeIn IT Reach for our servers and critical workstations. Ignition is the desktop client which is slightly more convenient than accessing your Logmein computers from a web page.

Danner Article on U.S. Torture Policy

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I don’t even know how to title this blog post.

This is the article in the New York Review of Books by Mark Danner, that comments on the International Red Cross report about the treatment of prisoners (oh, excuse me, detainees) after rendition to Guantanimo Bay and other secret U.S. prisons.

And so, after a devastating and unprecedented attack, the gloves came off. Guided by the President and his closest advisers, the United States transformed itself from a country that, officially at least, condemned torture to a country that practiced it. And this fateful decision, however much we may want it to, will not go away, any more than the fourteen “high-value detainees,” tortured and thus unprosecutable, will go away. Like the grotesque stories in the ICRC report, the decision sits before us, a toxic fact, polluting our political and moral life.

A shorter synopsis appeared in the Sunday New York Times.

The author’s web page includes audio interviews.

Revisiting

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After more than two years, a former and much loved non-profit client called for some help in sorting out their donor database. That’s another story which may be worth telling, but I was interested in seeing how they have weathered the economic downturn, and how some of the networking decisions that we took some years ago have held up. They have a main office and several field offices scattered among three counties. They have about 55 employees.

  1. By the time I had left, most of field offices had a broadband connection. That work was completed, and each office now has a DSL broadband connection, either from a local ISP, or from Fairpoint (the company who bought the Verizon landline and consumer data service in the three northern N.E. states). After working with it for a couple days, I’d say performance is OK.. although today, curiously, there was a twenty minute outage.
  2. With broadband available, they how have remote access software going to EVERY computer in EVERY office, as well as their central file server. Much desktop maintenance that required an on-site visit, can now be accomplished over the wire.
  3. Electronic mail accounts are hosted by the local internet service provider. People use Outlook or Outlook Express as their desktop eMail client….and access their eMail account when away from the office via webmail.
  4. They refreshed their desktop hardware with Dell Optiplexes that were donated by a local large employer. Although the machines are hand-me-downs, they are more than adequate for eMail, web browsing, and running the database application. The donor also gave them several laser printers that were only a few years old. Everyone is running XP, with Office 2007. (Without prompting, they said that Office 2007 is fine.) They have Norton Anti-Virus which is managed from the file server. No less than three of the staff said, in casual conversation… “well, I do have a Mac at home”. I nodded toward my Macbook, running Parallels, wondering if this turns out to be a longer term gig, if I will need to get a new Windows laptop.
  5. Their Dell file server is probably going on five years; but it is built like a tank, with RAID drives, and the original HP backup tape system. They have HP Procurve 2124 ethernet switches, and HP continues to keep replacing them under a lifetime warranty, when the fans go bad. I think we’ve replaced two or three switches with this client, and a couple of them with other clients. It takes one phone call.
  6. Several old battles were, well, old, if not forgotten. They have made their peace with a state-mandated performance data application which gave us all fits for years. The Executive Director attributes this success to attentive support from the state agency which mandated the system.
  7. If there is one especially popular non-business application being used by the staff, it is streaming audio. In fact, today, the first indication that there was a glitch in the internet connection was when a staff member came in and asked why her “radio” wasn’t working.

In short, it Just Works. I think this is attributable to the existing staff who have educated themselves over the years, and new staff who have come on board with full expectations of a functioning network and desktop workstation and how to use it. Add in some longstanding support from management who recognize the value of investing in technology and training, and the efforts of the current part-time network manager who keeps it all humming.

NPower – Network Documentation Template

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NPower Seattle has a Network Documentation Template which is in Word. This is a great start for documenting your computer network. The file is called SBS2003template.doc which suggests it might have been modified by one supplied by Microsoft, and it includes inserted Visio files to show the networking diagrams. If you are a MS shop this will work out of the box. If not, you can easily modify it in OpenOffice, or Pages, or whatever. The object of documenting your network is not necessarily perfection…but to have something to give you a clue when things start going haywire.

Desktop Video: First Impressions of Polycom CMA

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I had a visit from John Palaszynski, our regional Polycom rep the other day and had a look at the Polycom CMA client. (CMA stands for Converged Management Application. Doesn’t that sound like something out of corporate?) This appears to be their answer to Tandberg’s Movi client…which is a little ironic, because although the Movi client appears to have gotten the greater mindshare, version 2 (much improved) has been rumored for almost a year, but not yet deployed. CMA is indeed available; and has been since August 2008 or so.

Both are “server-based” videoconferencing clients which work on the Windows platform. By server-based, it means that if a user wants to participate in a videoconference, they click on a web site within their browser which takes them to the video server. After authenticating the user, the server checks to see if the videoconferencing client software is installed on the user’s machine. If it isn’t, it asks permission to download and install the client. This gets around the issue of installing a fat client on the machine, (i.e. PVX).

The client looks a lot like a chat client or Skype. It has buddy lists and so on. So far I’ve been unable to ascertain whether there is an API, or whether the appearance is configurable. For example, I still don’t think there is a way to have the client open up full screen and wait for a video call. There seems to be no way to suppress the buddy screen/directory window.

Many of the set-up screens look as if they were lifted from the Polycom PVX product; they are identical. One major improvement over PVX is the support for high-definition video.

Of interest is that if you have the CMA server, it does NOT replace the need for an multipoint controller (video bridge), if you want to make multipoint calls. So, the product appears to be ideal for a large corporate deployment on a LAN or VPN-WAN.

Here is the data sheet.

Here’s a press release with a fair amount of background.

They also have a white paper describing a number of example applications.

Grants.Gov in danger of collapse?

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A Heads Up from the superb Medical Writing Editing and Grantsmanship Blog:

A new funding mechanism covering hundreds of scientifically diverse research topics to be scored under new scoring procedures using new review criteria by as yet unidentified reviewers untrained in this process … and now, the feds suddenly realized grants.gov might not be up to the task of receiving 1.3 million submissions at 5 p.m. ET on April 27th.

We’re preparing an application for the April 27th deadline ourselves. Fortunately, we had the unnerving experience during the conversion from paper applications to the online electronic applications (was it only two years ago?) and so we have yet to get out of the habit of submitting earlier than the last day. You have been warned.

Polycom – "Large Scale Video Deployments with CMA"

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This is a transcript of notes of a webcast by Polycom, demonstrating the new CMA product and desktop client.

John Palaszynski Medical upstate NY, Vermont govt, health-care and education rep.
Bill Torrey – Sales Engineer

CMA – Polycom Converged Management Application

It is a little ironic, but I’m attending a Microsoft LiveMeeting web presentation about Polycom’s new video client, which is a web-based client (Windows only for now), which will supplement or replace Polycom’s PVX desktop software application.

The irony is that we’re dialing in to an 800 number for the audio portion of the program, and they are showing PowerPoint slides on the LiveMeeting. (later…. the demo is very interesting. )

CMA has Management and Gatekeeper functionality and a downloadable desktop client

CMA Desktop Client looks like

CMA is a server (Dell rack-mount server, running Windows 2003 server)
Control endpoints

Polycom has a MPLS network worldwide

No specific talking points when comparing with Tandberg Movi 2.

Control bridges
Control recording and streaming devices

Can tie into active directory (as a read-only application)
Can assign rights and privileges (scheduling conferences, monitoring conferencing, troubleshooting)
Provides XML and XMPP (provisioning endpoints.

Buddies list – status of everyone in the list
Start a chat
Escalate to a video call

Dell rack-mount server
Server 4000- 200 seat license, can scale up to 400 seats
Server 5000 500 seat license and can scale up to 5000 seats
5000 has additional hardware redundancy

Gatekeeper
Policy and bandwidth management
Participant admission
Least cost routing (if you use ISDN)
RTP statistics
OneDial (E.164) four-digit dialing plan

Scheduling via Outlook and Lotus Notes

Video client
Licensing – if it is inactive for a default 30 days it automatically pulls the license back into the license pool. This is unlike PVX, where those licenses are essentially “gone” after they are distributed.
MSI installs are supported.
Can receive HD video assuming you have the bandwidth available. It will transmit at 4CIF and is limited to that for transmission for now.
This is an H.323 client – can call into any other H.323 client.
You can do far-end camera control.
CMA does not include T.120 support for data sharing, (and actually the latest PVX client doesn’t support it either…as the standard is considered obsolete)
Recommend the Logitech 9000 camera

The Polycom Communicator is also helpful for 22Khz audio. (This is a USB microphone/speaker with built-in echo cancellation)

The CMA client will NOT work if you don’t have VPN or Polycom firewall product (the S/T5300 ad S/T6400 line)
CMA has “deep integration” with Microsoft Office Communication Server/Client

CMA is an upgrade to the SE200 (management/gatekeeping box). There is an upgrade path.

Demonstration: — The setup screens look very similar to PVX
Shows the desktop

Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) error recovery code

CMA 500 server management application

Think of the CMA clients as just another endpoint. The main difference is that the PVX client doesn’t require connections to a licensing server. So, for multipoint you need to have access to an MCU.

The CMA replaces the MGC manager. This means you can use a web interface instead of the loaded MGC manager.
Right now CMA t won’t go into the bridge and hard reserve a port that the MGC manager does. (Available at the end of the year December).

Discussion of created “Meeting Rooms” configured on the bridge.
Sounds like you still have to use both the MGC and CMA together to be able to reserve ports.
RMX is the more recent Polycom bridge product.