Chrome gears for my desktop

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Google Gears logoFor the last week, I’ve only used two browsers on my Windows PC – Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 and Google Chrome beta – and I’ve been really impressed at how these two browsers have shaken up my surfing. There’s plenty of sites on the ‘net comparing the two browsers (so I won’t do that here) but one thing I heard Paul Thurrott discussing with Leo Laporte on Windows Weekly (Episode 73) was the integration of Google Gears into the Chrome browser. I hadn’t realised that Chrome included Gears (although, now I come to think of it, the installation error I experienced when I was installing Chrome referred to Gears) and it is really cool.

Let me give you an example, a few minutes back, I had a power spike at home. The computers stayed on but my ADSL connection was dropped, as was the WiFi connection from my DNS server to the router… I didn’t even notice – I was happily writing a blog post in WordPress through Chrome and it kept on without missing a beat. Only when I tried to surf to some new sites did I realise there was a problem.

Creating a Google Gears application in Google ChromeBut it gets better (credits to Paul Thurrott for pointing this out) – if you click the drop down menu in Chrome with a file icon, you can select to create application shortcuts. This creates a standalone instance of the current page with optional icons on the desktop, quick launch bar or start menu. I now have Gears applications for Google Reader, Google Mail, Google Calendar and WordPress (I’m using the WordPress one to write this post).

Google Reader in a Chrome/Gears application

(The last time I was interested in things like chrome and gears, I was a teenager and the context would have been my bike…)

Poor performance with Camtasia Studio fixed by adjusting the screen resolution

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A couple of days back, I mentioned some videos I’ve produced for Microsoft. There are various technical requirements for the way in which these videos are produced, one of which is that I have to use TechSmith Camtasia Studio 5 (which seems pretty flaky at times – in fact, it’s the only application ever to have caused a blue screen of death on my Windows Server 2008 workstation – and that was the first BSOD I’ve seen with a non-beta version of Windows in a long while).

When I’m recording these videos, I tend to capture the video on my external monitor whilst I have Camtasia Studio and any applications related to the demonstration running on my main display (then I move them to the recording area as required). Today, I was really struggling to make anything run at a decent speed whilst I was recording and the capture rate dropped to a measly 0.5 frames per second (on a computer with a 2.2GHz Intel Core2Duo CPU and 4GB of RAM).

Last time I’d recorded anything, I’d dropped my monitor resolution to 1024×768 but this time I was using it at full (1680×1050) resolution and Camtasia was just recording a 1024×768 region of the screen. As soon as I reduced the monitor resolution, performance was back to it’s normal level (encoding video on a machine with integrated graphics is always going to hit the CPU hard).

So, if you have to use Camtasia Studio (I blogged an alternative method using nothing but Windows software a while back) and you are experiencing performance issues, try adjusting the monitor resolution.

Some key messages from Microsoft’s virtualisation launch yesterday

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I watched yesterday’s Microsoft virtualisation webcasts with interest and, excited as I am to know that I will finally get my hands on Hyper-V Server and SCVMM 2008 in the coming weeks (and to get confirmation that live migration will be in the next release of Hyper-V), there wasn’t a lot else there that was new on the virtualisation front. Even so, I don’t want to downplay the message – Microsoft does have an excellent story to tell around its virtualisation products – and I was interested in how this fits into the overall “big picture” for IT.

Gartner’s VP and Chief of Research for Infrastructure and Operations, Tom Bittman, presented a really interesting slot about how virtualisation is just one part of a much larger transformation of the way that IT is delivered to business customers (I’ll cover off the rest of Bittman’s presentation in a separate post).

Of course, Bittman was speaking at a Microsoft event and so it should come as no surprise that his view is not dissimilar to Microsoft’s view of dynamic computing, which has two major streams: the dynamic data centre; and user-centric computing – i.e. becoming less concerned with managing devices and more concerned about providing a seamless user experience (leading into predictable demonstrations of desktop, presentation and application virtualisation – Microsoft is a software company after all).

There were some interesting messages in the technology pitch though:

“If you know Windows, you know virtualization.”

This was stated several times, first by Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President, Servers and Tools Business at Microsoft but also by other speakers. It’s clearly something that Microsoft wants to highlight – i.e. it’s not necessary to spend thousands training people on specialist virtualisation products – Hyper-V is built into Windows Server 2008 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager uses a familiar Windows interface.

“Having a complete management solution is really critical, and with System Center, our customers are able to manage the physical environment, the virtual environment, as well as their applications in a fully integrated way. That’s an offering put together that nobody else in the industry really provides.”

[Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft]

This should not be underestimated. There may be other products that perform various technical elements of a virtualisation solution in a more functional manner, but management is critical to the success of any virtualisation implementation – and I do not know of any other vendor who can manage physical and virtual machines in one place.

I nearly laughed loud when Bob Muglia said:

“There is no magic in VMotion, it’s just a feature and we’ll have that feature in the next release of Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008.”

[Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft]

i.e. we’ve got it working now – so stop slating Hyper-V because it doesn’t do live migration… it can, it will (but is it really that important?).

Even Kevin Turner’s CxO-level presentation was interesting (there will be another post following on that one too) and I was interested to see the slide about the relative costs of Microsoft and VMware virtualisation (based on pricing from the web).

Microsoft slide showing VMware solutions as 3x more expensive

Take it with a pinch of salt, given the source, but it is still a big difference. VMware will point out that software cost is minimal given the overall cost of the solution (and they are correct) but if the low-cost solution also provides a holistic view for management whilst the IT organisation is under pressure to become more efficient and effective at the same time as reducing costs, adapting to changing business demands and providing a dynamic IT service that is better aligned with business needs… I know which one I’d choose.

Microsoft Unified Communications: part 3 (putting it all together)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Over the last few days, I’ve been describing the Microsoft view on Unified Communications (UC), based on a presentation given recently by James O’Neill.

In the first two posts in this series based on James’ presentation, I outlined the business need for unified communications and some of the Microsoft technologies that can be used to address those requirements before examining some of the benefits to be gained thorough adaptation of communications to fit modern working practises. In this third post in the series, I finally move on to the technology, looking at the main steps involved in implementing a UC solution using Microsoft products.

It may also help to check out my post from April 2006 which provides an introduction to voice telecommunications for IT professionals.

In a traditional communications infrastructure, voice and data networks are managed independently:

Traditional (non-unified) communications

Even though there has been a move to replace telephone cables with standard CAT5/5e/6 cabling in recent years, and IP telephony has become more commonplace so there has been some convergence at the network level, the voice and data systems are typically separate (although their directories may have been integrated).

Implementing Exchange Server 2007’s unified messaging capabilities allows the removal of the PBX voice-mail system and provides voice-mail, fax and speech capabilities within Exchange, accessible via standard e-mail clients, Outlook Web Access or through a voice call:

Unified messaging with Exchange Server 2007

To enable the integration with the PBX, a VoIP gateway may be required (some PBXs may integrate directly).

Replacing any existing instant messaging systems with Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 (or implementing OCS as a new service) can provide VoIP connectivity with the existing telephony systems, enabling both “soft” and “hard” IP phones to be used. In addition, Live Meeting can be used to provide conferencing facilities:

Unified communications with Office Communications Server 2007

With this infrastructure, OCS will integrate with Exchange and work collaboratively to route calls, present caller ID information (used in the subject of messages), perform directory lookups, etc. but for OCS to integrate with a PBX a gateway is required. A basic gateway also requires an OCS Mediation Server to be deployed whereas an advanced gateway includes the necessary technology to integrate directly with the PBX.

Effectively, there a four levels of integration:

  1. None at all.
  2. Basic gateway with mediation server.
  3. Advanced gateway.
  4. VoIP capabilities built-in to PBX.

Microsoft has partnered with a number of manufacturers to provide hardware that integrates with OCS, and the strategic gateway partners are Audiocodes, Dialogic and Quintum.

This approach allows legacy routers, gateways, PBX and phones to be maintained (after all they are a significant investment) but integrated with software solutions to adopt new ways of working, as featured in Microsoft’s VoIP as you are campaign. For organisations that are ready to remove the legacy telephony altogether (e.g. in a green field site) an advanced gateway can be used to integrate the VoIP system with public telephone networks:

Full Microsoft Unified Communications

The call path is as follows:

  • User initiates a call.
  • OCS looks for valid endpoints and sends a packet to say that there is an incoming call (including call forking, if configured).
  • An endpoint (possibly voice-mail) accepts the call and the server drops the other connections.
  • Once the call is established, the server drops out of the conversation (aside from logging the call details) and the call continues on a peer-to-peer basis.

There are a few additional points to note:

  • Where network address translation is in use, an OCS Access Proxy may be deployed.
  • If the call is routed over the PSTN, the gateway is just another party on the call (as if it were a phone).
  • In a conference scenario, Office Communicator clients only have a single channel of data in each direction and so where multi-party calls are placed, a media control unit (MCU) is required to act as a negotiator. At this point, the direct call is dropped and a new multi-party call is set up via the MCU. Live Meeting clients can send multiple video channels (plus sound and desktop conferencing on separate channels).

Having outlined a VoIP-only solution, it’s often the case that the legacy infrastructure cannot be completely removed – there are still some limitations around VoIP that OCS cannot address (at least not in the current release). For example, if there is a loss of power, then there are no network switches and there is no telephony (the same issue also applies for IP Phone systems using Power over Ethernet – such as Cisco IP Phones). As a consequence, and to meet health and safety requirements, it may be necessary to retain some traditional telephony infrastructure for emergency calls. Even if they are accessible through OCS, emergency calls present another challenge in that the call will be placed at the gateway, which may be in another city, country, or even continent to the person making the call, so dial plans need to be carefully designed.

Clearly this post is heavily biased towards Microsoft products and another major player in the unified communications space is Cisco. In the next post in this series, I’ll take a brief look at the approaches that the two vendors have taken to unified communications (and it will be a brief look, as I have very limited Cisco experience!) before I wrap the series up with some notes from my own OCS implementation last year.