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Yes, I too am whoring myself out for 3 free bonus apps that I’ll never use from Mac Heist! Srsly. http://bit.ly/heist-it  

RT @ruv: Intel’s new Nehalem-EX: 8 cores per processor and up to 8 sockets per server <- Gentlemen, start updating your licensing models!  

I’m at dobbs tire (Brentwood Promenade, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/5az8tq  

RT @phsoffer: @samcharrington good thing there’s only one Cloud Sam, and it’s you! <– Sorry @samj ;-)   

WTH, are there are two Cloud Slam events? cloudslam10.com and cloudslamevent.com/cloudslam10, both on different dates?  

A new STL Thai favorite for me! (@ pearl cafe) http://4sq.com/a8pSEb  

I’m at The Center of Clayton (50 Gay Ave, Maryland Ave, Clayton). http://4sq.com/90UyTK  

Clouderati @botchagalupe @joeweinman @kjackson @bobflores @dwploc tagged in a photo! http://bit.ly/9gkgN0 (Second pic, click to enlarge :-)   

Thinking about the @Appistry web site. Any thoughts or suggestions from a content perspective?  

Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for February 25, 2010 http://bit.ly/bKklyP  

RT @HighTechDad CCIF may close – Page 1 – Enterprise Infrastructure
http://bit.ly/cI4k4T <- Wow, slow news day!  

Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for February 24, 2010 http://bit.ly/agv5Ma  

Today’s Links

24 Feb 2010

  • chive – MySQL database management tool
    "Chive is a next generation MySQL database management tool. The web-based user interface supports most of the common operations needed by software developers and database admins (databases, tables, indices, keys, triggers, views, routines, privileges management, import/export). Chive aims to be an alternative to phpMyAdmin." — You go!

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RT @samj Hullo boys… T-5d until next MacHeist?: http://bit.ly/3nvX14 <- Txs for the heads-up!  

I scored 89/100 on the Pew Research Center How Millennial Are You? Quiz http://pewresearch.org/millennials/quiz <- my kids keep me young?  

RT @OrenMichels RT @bradjohnsonsv: Dad, Mom, follow Cisco &CA (Mashery, 3Tera) to the #cloud <- Did I miss a CA acq of Mashery?  

RT @appistry Cloud Computing and the Economy: Introducing the Appistry Roundtable Recap Blog Series http://bit.ly/9BXf00  

I’m hearing good things about the price CA paid for 3tera. Bodes well for the entire space. Congrats to the team at 3tera.  

RT @Sparkenstein http://bit.ly/9ohylV <- +1! Platform needs more of this kind of attention <- Thanks!! Wholeheartedly agree!  

Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for February 23, 2010 http://bit.ly/bLJNel  

Today’s Links

23 Feb 2010

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RT @randybias twitter joins the cassandra movement. http://bit.ly/bMvsxg <- Great article with nice detail!  

Between @abiquo and @opennebula, looks like lots of interesting open source IaaS work happening in Spain.  

Just got word that a paper I contributed to is scheduled for publication in the April issue of IEEE Transactions on Communications.  

RT @teich Heroku is ruby. <- OMG I don’t know what I was thinking when I typed that! Thx for overlooking :-)   

More on the topic of PaaS: The Essential Characteristics of PaaS – http://bit.ly/aY9cVa  

Cloud Pulse -> The Essential Characteristics of PaaS http://bit.ly/9Tbrwo  

I’m at The Center of Clayton (50 Gay Ave, Maryland Ave, Clayton). http://4sq.com/90UyTK  

.@Beaker Not sure how FF tab thread started, but u should look up BarTab, a new plugin that keeps tabs from consuming mem till you need them  

Looking for future speakers for St. Louis Cloud User Group. We want to learn about what you’re working on! Interested? LMK!  

Downloading LinkedIn Social Connector for Outlook… http://bit.ly/9ZP5HF  

I’m at Blue Nile Market & Cafe (8615 Olive Blvd, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/aHrIhZ  

I’m at Micro Center (87 Brentwood Promenade Court, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/43CP7K  

Facebook enables XMPP chat: http://bit.ly/8Yluts <- Great thing, cause that hacked Adium support never quite worked!  

New video “Appistry CloudIQ Platform and Enterprise Private Clouds” http://bit.ly/amTEMc <- What do you think? Informative?  

RT @Beaker I think you’ll be quite impressed when you see the list of core team mbrs of CloudAudit <- I was. Great team! LMK how i can help!  

Between this and your recent launch of sys-con-like Ulitzer competitor, I wonder if the real @samj has been abducted and replaced!?!  

RT @appistry: Appistry partner AgilePath wins “KPI Award” for work in cloud computing http://bit.ly/9KzvWI <- Congrats Eric and team!  

Doesn’t @samj hate things with Cloud in the name, now proposes CloudAudit :-)   

On the A6, now CloudAudit, con call.  

RT @kylecordes Roughly, ALL hosting providers will be cloud providers. <- My belief as well. Blogged about it here http://bit.ly/cLmLaC  

There’s not just a handful of hosting providers, so why do people think there will only be a few cloud providers?  

Battery dying… must be time for bed, er, sleep.  

Clayton vs Ladue at Fontbonne with the girls. (@ Mark Twain Athletic and Fitness Center) http://4sq.com/dnrDjZ  

Regarding PaaS talk for #SFCloudClub, what do folks most want to know/learn/hear about PaaS?  

I’m at House of India (8501 Delmar Boulevard, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/7se9o9  

On my way home! (@ Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) w/ 9 others) http://4sq.com/qm5av  

RT @bensons speed vs quality? <- Lord grant me the ability to work quickly & produce quality output, + the wisdom to know which to do when!  

RT @scottsanchez RT @samcharrington: @samj So when can we expect #OCCI, #A6 <- Making babies is easy, raising kids is hard!  

RT @mgualtieri: Late departure in Raleigh b/c crew needed a “bio-fluids” kit to clean up after last flight. <- Ewww  

As usual I need to wait six months for Buzz because I wanted to use a custom domain for my email address.  

CIO at the summit I’m at, on the transition to cloud: “We’ve become the mainframe guys we were brought in to get rid of!”  

Far from home, but just found my long lost bluetooth headset… Time for bed! #QuittingWhileAhead  

RT CloudAve: OpenECP, An Enomaly ECP Fork http://bit.ly/avFVPo <- nice post by @krishnan on a touchy topic  

Today’s Links

7 Feb 2010

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Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for February 7, 2010 http://bit.ly/bIfiuX  

Waffles! (@ City Coffee House & Creperie) http://4sq.com/7GQWNq  

I’m at Momos Greek Tavern (630 North and South Rd, Delmar, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/7bZab7  

I’m at Hotel Roger Williams (131 Madison Avenue, 31 Street, New York). http://4sq.com/4S5KAL  

I’m at Barbounia (250 Park Avenue South, 19th Street, New York). http://4sq.com/3OYvkF  

Today’s Links

1 Feb 2010

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Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for February 1, 2010 http://bit.ly/b8xpOp  

Today’s Links

31 Jan 2010

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Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for January 31, 2010 http://bit.ly/cNnfGB  

I’m at Micro Center (87 Brentwood Promenade Court, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/43CP7K  

I’m at The Center of Clayton (50 Gay Ave, Maryland Ave, Clayton). http://4sq.com/90UyTK  

I’m at Lowe’s (, Richmond Heights).  

Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for January 30, 2010 http://bit.ly/amRCM8  

Today’s Links

30 Jan 2010

  • Amazon S3: Versioning Proposal
    "Versioning allows you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. Once enabled for a bucket, Amazon S3 preserves existing objects anytime you perform a PUT, POST, COPY, or DELETE operation on them. By default, GET requests will retrieve the most recently written version. Older versions of an overwritten or deleted object can be retrieved by specifying a version in the request."

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First time here. (@ Remy’s Kitchen & Wine Bar) http://4sq.com/cj0REp  

Today’s Links

29 Jan 2010

  • Alex Payne — On the iPad
    "The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents. The iPad may be a boon to traditional eduction, insofar as it allows for multimedia textbooks and such, but in its current form, it’s a detriment to the sort of hacker culture that has propelled the digital economy."

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Will the iPad be Apple’s Foleo, or will the RDF carry the day?  

Today’s Links

27 Jan 2010

  • dpBestflow
    "dpBestflow is the new guide for every aspect of digital imaging technology from ASMP, the leader in education for the professional photographer."

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Today’s Links

23 Jan 2010

  • Septivium – Ask MetaFilter’s best introductory books
    "When talking about the Best Books I linked to this great Ask MetaFilter thread from 2007: What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?. The whole thing’s worth a read but a while back I decided to go through, give it a squeeze, and extract the juicy bits: the books themselves. So below is a list of books, grouped into topics, as recommended by the thread."
  • PyPalm for Palm webOS development « Punch Card
    "[Palm's] command line tools have a little shortcoming as they do not derive information from the appinfo.json that is available in the application directory. For me the first thing I created was a deploy bash script that would allow me to package, build and deploy to the virtual machine in one step. Again the issue was that already available information about the application from config files was not derived. So I started writing a small command line application called PyPalm in Python that would allow all that what I mentioned above and regroup the Palm tools together."

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I’m at Ranoush (6501 Delmar, Westgate, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/5tLIOl  

Cloud Pulse -> St. Louis Cloud Computing User Group -> First Meeting Tonight! http://bit.ly/5rySmg  

St. Louis Cloud Computing Users Group -> First Meeting Tonight! http://bit.ly/7rW4l6  

Today’s Links

20 Jan 2010

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I’m at Ranoush (6501 Delmar, Westgate, St. Louis). http://4sq.com/5tLIOl  

Today’s Links

18 Jan 2010

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Today’s Links

17 Jan 2010

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Today’s Links

16 Jan 2010

  • USB Overdrive
    The USB Overdrive is a device driver for Mac OS X that handles any USB mouse / trackball / joystick / gamepad / media keyboard and any Bluetooth mouse from any manufacturer and lets you configure them either globally or on a per-application, per-device basis.

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Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for January 13, 2010 http://bit.ly/5wAJTk  

Today’s Links

13 Jan 2010

  • Google brings Friend Connect to Joomla and Drupal
    "Today, Google announced the addition of their Friend Connect service to both the Joomla and Drupal platforms. Friend Connect is a pretty cool concept. It allows people to become "members" of a website by using credentials from sites like Google, Twitter, Yahoo, etc. Once logged in, you can "like" content, add other friends and participate in polls, discussions and other stuff like that."
  • $0 to $20 Million: Ten Hand-to-Hand Sales Tactics
    "Technology blogs are full of advice for startups: where to start a company, how to raise capital, what kind of culture to build, whom to hire. But we hardly ever talk about what makes strategic decisions meaningful: sales. A company with strong sales can build a great culture, hire anyone and take the time to figure out its strategy. Without sales, nothing else matters."
  • tonyg’s pika at master – GitHub
    "Pika is a pure-Python implementation of the AMQP 0-8 protocol (with an 0-9-1 implementation on a separate git branch, for now) that tries to stay fairly independent of the underlying network support library. It also tries to stay neutral as to programming style, supporting (where possible) both synchronous and asynchronous approaches."

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Today’s Links

9 Jan 2010

  • How to: create a wiki with Drupal
    "Over the past two years, Drupal's wiki capabilities have expanded exponentially. Yet, still we get support requests on the forums, "How can I make a wiki with Drupal?" Well, here is a detailed plan that gives wiki functionality to Drupal. This tutorial assumes you're starting with an installed version of Drupal 5.x, and that you're familiar with installing modules."

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TextMate is dying trying to open a 197KB file. Seems weak!  

RT @randybias It’s used for at least three distinctly different solutions and hence means nothing. <– Same goes for cloud, but worse!  

RT @bmichelson Cisco TelePresence: home office worker nightmare scenario! <- Yeah, y’all will have to get dressed like the rest of us now!  

The Time Is Ripe for Private Clouds in the Public Sector http://bit.ly/4GfRak  

Microsoft, HP said to unveil Courier tablet today at CES http://bit.ly/8b6dqm  

RT @GeorgeReese If the killer feature of N1 is G Voice transcripting, they’re screwed. <- Know shitting! (”No kidding” as transcribed by GV)  

Did Google just screw Motorola by overhanging the Droid market?  

Nice. Rackspace’s support line keeps hanging up on me when I get to the front of the queue.  

Apple, Verizon in disagreement over CDMA iPhone pricing http://bit.ly/5V5WgY  

Cloud Pulse -> Cloud Links for January 4, 2010 http://bit.ly/4YgHQ0  

RT @krishnan VMware buying Zimbra (via @jamesurquhart) <– Ha!! <– Huh?!? I’m not getting that one at all.  

Official Retweets or RTs/Forwards in 2010? What are folks thinking for sharing tweets on #twitter? Haven’t decided myself…  

RT @ras_shadow Installing Appistry CloudIQ cloud platform on Ubuntu: http://bit.ly/5nX6q1  

Google App Engine SDK 1.3.0 released including File Upload API (e.g. a la S3) http://bit.ly/7MA5PG  

RT @samj 2009 *was* cloud? HA! <- Agreed! The fun is just beginning!!! (cc @stu @chuckhollis 

Today’s Links

1 Jan 2010

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Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists – NYTimes.com http://bit.ly/6Z385A #fb  

The Famous ProductBeautiful Roadmapping Drinking Game http://bit.ly/4ttoT4 <- Somehow I don’t think I’d survive this!  

Horrifying personal story of corruption in Russia – They Killed My Lawyer | Foreign Policy http://bit.ly/6FSFj6 #fb  

New Blog Post -> Resolution: It’s Just ‘cloud computing’ Now http://bit.ly/58pDCR  

A rough equivalent to ipconfig /release, /renew for OS X:

sudo ifconfig enX down
sudo ifconfig enX up

Where en0 is the wired ethernet jack, en1 is the airport card.

I wish word processors had a feature roughly equivalent to code folding in IDEs. (I don’t like outline mode in Word so that doesn’t count.)  

Today’s Links

25 Dec 2009

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Today’s Links

24 Dec 2009

  • The Mobile Mobile is a magnificent and melodious module of merriment
    "Faced with an agency-wide phone upgrade that left fifty older HTC devices homeless, UK-based Lost Boys International decided to act on instinct in the most natural of ways: by turning each device into a cog in a musical mobile that hangs just inside the entrance of its Brick Lane studio."
    – Very cool. I'd love to know how they programmed the phones. Maybe just ringtones?

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botchagalupe

RT @botchagalupe: It’s official “The 2009 Cloudies Awards” – http://bit.ly/8kZmMG #aws #cloud #amazon #cloudies  

New Blog Post -> Introduction to MapReduce: Q&A with Michael Groner http://bit.ly/78JvvL  

New Blog Post -> Cloud Links for December 20, 2009 http://bit.ly/5zcc5P  

Today’s Links

20 Dec 2009

  • Hazelcast
    Hazelcast is a clustering and highly scalable data distribution platform for Java.
  • Christopher Lobay
    Mono is a very slick looking theme for Growl!

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I was brought up using wget to download files from the command line, and cannot seem to train myself to switch to curl, with is the default on OS X. Rather than find and install the former, I simply added the following alias to my .bash_profile:

alias wget="curl -O"

This is a simple solution that meets my needs and saves me some occasional keystrokes and frustration. It only works for simple downloads, but if I need to do something fancy I’m going to end up reading a man page anyway, and I’m just as happy to read the curl manpage in that case.

I’m not sure how long this has been around, but I noticed Text Trace while poking around my Amazon orders page. This this new-to-me feature allows you to request an SMS text notifying you when your item is out for delivery, is delivered, or when a problem has occurred preventing delivery.

Amazon Text Trace

Text Trace is part of a broader Amazon initiative to enhance the “Where’s My Stuff?” order management system on the site. The new “Your Orders” system has been in beta for some time and is a dramatic and much needed enhancement providing at-a-glance access to past orders as well as a search capability.

Crazy video by Intel Finland showing a stunt they pulled off to play the Intel jingle by launching human cannonballs at massive chimes. The world’s biggest Intel chime

RT @lmacvittie: The 9 worst tech movies of all time – http://bit.ly/6LrNX0 <- Funny. Swordfish immediately came to mind when I saw this!  

RT @kylecordes Here is a prediction: The word “cloud” will start to seem old, the underlying ideas get broader adoption http://bit.ly/89LHhw  

I’m collecting the best #CloudComputing predictions for 2010. Add yours here or send me a link: http://bit.ly/89LHhw <- Please RT!  

Today’s Links

17 Dec 2009

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The Clouderati’s Crystal Ball: Cloud predictions from around the web http://bit.ly/89LHhw <- Let me know if we left your predictions out!  

Stuck in a loop on the Gartner site and needed to delete all my cookies in to log in. I sometimes wonder how “normal” people use this stuff.  

Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones w/ $26 Software Package – WSJ.com http://bit.ly/7CLIWY  

RT @appistry Appistry Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2010 http://bit.ly/8dooqx <- Recap of predictions and link to replay.  

VMware Fusion 3I’m a very heavy user of VMware Fusion nowadays, and depend on it for running MS Office applications (2010 Beta) on a daily basis. Since I rarely close Fusion, it was only today that I was alerted of the availability of the first update since 3.0.

A move from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1 is only a bugfix release, and not something I’d typically get excited about, but a number of the Unity fixes are annoyances I run into every day. In addition, this version offers faster resume times for virtual machines, and a new native 64-bit networking subsystem.

Here’s the list of Unity View improvements:

  • “Always On” Applications menu defaults to the active virtual machine, and if more than one virtual machine is running, the menu defaults to the one that has focus
  • Fixes a problem in which the “Always On” Application menu was not populated in some cases
  • Improves the Aero-in-Unity experience with better interactive performance and easier readability of window titles
  • Improves Unity view interactive performance for 32-bit Windows applications running on 64-bit Windows operating systems
  • Ability to dismiss system tray menus in Unity view with only one click
  • Small mouse wheel scroll increments work correctly in Unity view
  • Fixes keyboard focus issues in Unity view when multiple windows are opened and closed
  • Fixes a problem in which Adobe Fireworks, Photoshop, and some other applications would drop out of Unity view, causing the Waiting for Unity window to appear
  • Fixes a problem in which VMware Fusion would fail when processing very large icons from Windows applications
  • Fixes a problem in which VMware Fusion could not create Windows applications in the dock for those with really long application names

The full feature list is here: VMware Fusion 3 Release Notes.

Great discussion for #appistrypredicts. Thanks @msgroner, @boblozano and @we-need-to-get-kevin-on-twitter. We will be posting the recording.  

Lots of interest in NoSQL approaches on the #appistrypredicts call.  

How will the cloud shape data? How will data shape the cloud? We discuss at Appistry Predicts 2010. Register now ->http://bit.ly/4XEiau  

What will cloud computing in 2010 have in common w/ a certain ’80s sitcom? Register now for Appistry Predicts 2010 -> http://bit.ly/4XEiau  

Not sure why folks are getting so worked up about the IW and CW articles. Charlie’s IW piece was solid, and the CW piece is clearly fluff.  

Anyone want to do Ignite St. Louis, as part of Global Ignite Week? http://bit.ly/5G0s2A  

Will your cloud provider survive the “race to zero”? Register now for Appistry Predicts 2010 -> http://bit.ly/4XEiau  

New Blog Post -> I’m Moderating the “Appistry Predicts 2010″ Event Today http://bit.ly/7K7GoN  

Follow @stlcloudusers for more information about the St. Louis Cloud Computing User Group now forming. #cloudcamp #stlouis  

New Blog Post -> CloudCamp St. Louis – Looking Backward, Looking Forward http://bit.ly/7UkZoU  

RT @kylecordes I was a sponsor of #cloudcamp and assert that even a sponsor should have max 1 slide and 10 seconds of pitch, the rest meat.  

‘Tis a sad day: ‘Flight of the Conchords’ Call It Quits Before Season Three http://bit.ly/8shBz8  

Second round of #cloudcamp #stlouis sessions underway: Software dev perspectives, virtualization & cloud, building clouds, data & storage  

Impressed by the SRO crowd here at #cloudcamp #stlouis. I know how many seats we had, and can say for sure nearly 100% of pre-reg showed up.  

Finally able to catch a breath here at #cloudcamp #stlouis. Great content and discussion so far!!!  

Who will get the last ticket to CloudCamp St. Louis? http://bit.ly/5M98R5  

RT @appistry: ‘Tis the Season for Predictions, Fa-la-la La-la La-la Laa-la http://is.gd/5iceu  

New Blog Post -> CloudCamp St. Louis Nearly Sold Out; Rackspace and Microsoft Join on as Sponsors http://bit.ly/4xcj2i  

The last few CloudCamp St. Louis tickets moving quickly. We’re about to be sold out!!!  

RT @bmichelson Yefim equating shared-hardware multi-tenancy to early days of screen scraping; effective, but tactical #gartneraadi  

Yefim Natis: If your objective for moving to (public) cloud is cost-savings, you should be prepared for some dissapointment. #gartneraadi  

RT @jamesurquhart RT @jack_daniel: Doesn’t EVERYTHING as “hybrid” once dust settles? <- Agree in enterprise case in the 0-10 year horizon  

Great dinner and conversation this eve with @erichknipp, @bmichelson and Clark Dorman from Next Century at #gartneraadi  

Finally made it to Vegas for Gartner AADI. Missed the “Real Cloud” panel (http://bit.ly/8yk4Ft) but looking forward to the rest of it.  

RT @appistry Gartner “Cloud Computing in the Real World” Panel Features Appistry Customer Next Century http://is.gd/5fUDS  

New Blog Post -> CloudCamp St. Louis: New Sponsors, More Attendees, Additional Event Details http://bit.ly/8dTSjb  

CloudCamp STL Rolls into Town on Thursday – St. Louis News – Daily RFT http://bit.ly/7aZ4qE  

New Blog Post -> Cloud Links for December 6, 2009 http://bit.ly/7Qzh56  

Run a WebDAV server on your Mac to sync VoodooPad (for Free) http://bit.ly/84okXg  

I’ve recently been using VoodooPad as a note taking and organization tool. I’m enjoying using it and find that the combination of Wiki-like organization, editing and linking of content combined with the responsiveness of a desktop application works very well for me.

As a user of both desktop and laptop computers, I quickly ran into the need to synchronize my two VoodooPad instances. Since VP stores all your notes in a single file (actually an OS X package) my first thought was to drop it in my DropBox folder and be done with it. This could work fine but you’ve got to be extremely careful to not change your document in multiple places—the DropBox mechanism has no idea how to synchronize changes within the documents.

Fortunately VP has built in support for synchronizing with a WebDAV server. VP’s developer directs folks to MobileMe as a readily available WebDAV server, but I don’t have an account there and don’t have much interest in subscribing. That left me with the option of setting up my own WebDAV server. The documentation points users to a great article by Manas Tungare which describes how to set up WebDAV on Mac OS X for use with another program, OmniFocus.

This article gave me everything I needed to quickly get a WebDAV server set up on my system. What follows here is my remix of Manas’ article, with a few tweaks that better accommodate my preferences and VPs capabilities, especially in the security arena.

Setting up WebDAV on Mac OS X for use with VoodooPad

Step 1: Enable Web Sharing in OS X

WebDAV is a protocol for storing documents to a Web server, so we’ll need to get one of those set up. Fortunately Mac OS X has the Apache Web Server built-in. Just go to System Preferences > Sharing and check the box labeled Web Sharing.

Web Sharing Control Panel

Step 2: Enable WebDAV support in Apache

Edit the file /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, (remember to use sudo to edit it) and locate this line:

LoadModule dav_module libexec/apache2/mod_dav.so

Make sure it is not commented out (there should be no “#” at the beginning of the line.)

Next, locate this line (towards the bottom of the file):

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-dav.conf

Again, make sure it is not commented out. It is disabled by default, so you need to remove the “#” from this line.

Finally, because we will use digest authentication here, go back up to the LoadModule section of the file and make sure that auth_digest_module is being loaded. You are looking for the following line, and want to make sure it is not commented out.

LoadModule auth_digest_module libexec/apache2/mod_auth_digest.so

The stock Snow Leopard config file has it enabled, so chances are you won’t need to make any changes.

Step 3: Configure WebDAV

Next, edit the file /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-dav.conf. Add a section in it to create your new WebDAV share. Here’s what the new section should look like. As a security precaution, you should also go ahead and delete the /usr/uploads share that is set by default.

Alias /webdav "/Library/WebServer/WebDAV"
Dav On
 
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/WebDAV">
   Order Allow,Deny
   Allow from all
 
   AuthType Digest
   AuthName WebDAV-Realm
   AuthUserFile "/usr/var/webdav.passwd"
</Directory>

With the first line you’re telling Apache what URL to expose your WebDAV directory on. For example, if you are accessing the server via localhost, the above configuration would make your WebDAV URL equal to:

http://localhost/webdav/

With the Directory block you are actually configuring WebDAV access to the particular file location.

Line 9 is where this code block starts to differ from the configuration used by Manas. Unlike OmniFocus, VoodooPad works just fine with the more secure Digest authentication scheme, thus ensuring that your password isn’t sent over the wire in clear text.

Here we also, on line 13, tell Apache to only allow access by authenticated users. (The Manas configuration allowed read access by unauthenticated guest users.)

Step 4: Create user accounts and passwords

Now we use the htdigest tool to create your password file.

sudo htdigest -c /usr/var/webdav.passwd WebDAV-Realm "[username]"
New password:
Re-type new password:
Adding password for user [username]

Note that the “-c” specifies to create a new file. If you want to add additional users, get rid of the “-c” after the first time you issue htdigest.

Step 5: Create the necessary directories.

sudo mkdir -p /Library/WebServer/WebDAV
sudo mkdir -p /usr/var

Step 6: Setup permissions correctly.

sudo chown -R www:www /Library/WebServer/WebDAV
sudo chown -R www:www /usr/var
sudo chgrp www /usr/var/webdav.passwd

Step 7: Restart Apache gracefully.

sudo apachectl graceful

Step 8: Test WebDav

One convenient way to test your configuration is to attempt to mount your new WebDAV resource via Finder. To do this, open Finder and select Go > Connect to Server (⌘ K). Type your WebDAV URL, or http://localhost/webdav/ if you are on the server locally. Note that the trailing slash (”/”) is important, and you will not be able to connect without it.

You will be prompted by Finder to type in your username and password, and you need to be careful to enter these exactly as specified for the htdigest command.

Upon success, you will have mounted your WebDAV folder within Finder, and you should be able to copy a file to the folder.


Setting up VoodooPad using your new WebDAV server

For my needs, I’m planning to do all of my syncing on my local network. If you want to expose your WebDAV folder on the Internet, however, you will likely need additional configuration, such as setting up a dynamic DNS service, like DynDNS, and setting up your router/firewall to pass http traffic to your server.

Once any networking issues are resolved, configuring VoodooPad to use your new WebDAV server is pretty straightforward. On your primary machine, open the VP document that you want to sync, and then pull up the synchronization dialog from File > Synchronization Setup, enter your WebDAV URL, username and password. Your document is now being synchronized with the WebDAV server.

VoodooPad Configuration

Since sync in VP is set up on a document by document basis, on your second machine you will need to create and save a new document. (I gave it the same name on both machines.) Then, when you set up sync for the second document, use the “Pair with document” option on the sync dialog to identify the corresponding document on your WebDAV server.

I was a bit worried that it might cause problems to sync the new document with the sample text to the real document in WebDAV but it all worked out just fine.

CloudCamp St. Louis: A Long Time Coming, a Short Time Until http://bit.ly/7ZJ7S3  

CloudCamp St. Louis less than one week away. Time is really flying! http://bit.ly/128KB4  

Listening to a talk on Hadoop’s HDFS: “One of the nodes is a single point of failure, but fortunately you only have one of those!” <– Doh!  

RT @puredanger uploaded new #lambdalounge videos this week http://bit.ly/6oGApQ <– Nice! Live (not quite) from the Appistry “auditorium”  

I’ve got so many balls in the air it’s not funny. Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right…  

CloudCamp St. Louis is in 15 days. Great location and sponsors in place. Register now and please RT! http://bit.ly/128KB4  

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18 Nov 2009

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RT @randybias Cloud can displace the client/server model… <– Kind of an apples and oranges comparison…  

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17 Nov 2009

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RT @samj Dear IBM, System Z10 mainframes are NOT #cloud. #kthxbai <– Seconded, ratified, #kthxbaibai  

IBM’s new “private cloud” is a 48-Processor System Z10 Mainframe. #TheyStillDontGetItFail http://bit.ly/3IiM4e  

New Facebook page for CloudCamp St. Louis http://bit.ly/2BqSjm <– Stop on by!  

CloudCamp St. Louis is ON! Join us December 10th. Register now at http://bit.ly/128KB4  

Close to finalizing a date for CloudCamp St. Louis. Anyone out there interested in helping or sponsoring?  

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4 Nov 2009

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29 Oct 2009

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27 Sep 2009

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23 Sep 2009

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21 Sep 2009

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20 Sep 2009

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19 Sep 2009

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17 Sep 2009

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16 Sep 2009

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15 Sep 2009

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RT @the_spinmd:The best/saddest/most frightening 9 mins and 30 secs you will spend this week: http://j.mp/mCfXW <– Wow! Scary, crazy, sad.  

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14 Sep 2009

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13 Sep 2009

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10 Sep 2009

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Sprint Any Mobile, Anytime offers FREE unlim mobile-to-mobile http://bit.ly/3mHjqf <– Note, that’s *any* mobile on *any* carrier  

Sprint Any Mobile, Anytime offers FREE unlim mobile-to-mobile to everyone w/ a Pre, Everything Data plan http://bit.ly/3mHjqf <- Woohoo!  

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9 Sep 2009

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I was looking for an iPod Touch with video camera. Would have made a nice cloud client. #disappointed  

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8 Sep 2009

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7 Sep 2009

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RT @msgroner:For a guy that is looking at turning 40 years old, I liked this article very much. http://j.mp/yKlr4  

Who’s in Second? State of the Cloud survey identifies cloud provider usage http://bit.ly/1IWWjg  

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6 Sep 2009

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RT @bmichelson i’m of the opinion that SaaS runs/lives/is offered “on the cloud”; not offering “of the cloud” <– exactly!  

Webtide (Jetty) acquisition a shrewd cloud move by Intalio http://bit.ly/jbTVO <– Retweeting for folks not “sleepless in SF” last night  

Any opinion on note/PIM software for mac like Yojimbo, DevonThink, Together, SOHO, etc? Is there a cloud-friendly analogue?  

Is Cloud Computing Killing Open Source in Government? http://bit.ly/1jHzcM <– Value migration; the open source is still there.  

BetFair had to build private cloud b/c public would break the law (state gaming laws due to ec2 avail zones crossing boundaries) #icesummit  

451 Cloud Spectrum: Closed private, community private, cloud bursting, enterprise public, commodity public #icesummit  

No one is seeing cloudbursting in the wild. If you do, tell @rachelchalmers #icesummit  

Wikipedia kind of SaaS, kind of PaaS. When you read it, it’s SaaS, when you edit it’s PaaS #icesummit <– what do tweeple think about that?  

451 Group still arguing internally about term “private cloud”. Shout out to @ruv’s for “elastic computing” – @rachelchalmers #icesummit  

Platform as a service = Facebook, Salesforce AppExchange – @rachelchalmers #icesummit <– ???  

Can Hadoop and “big data” processing be gateway drug for cloud, broadening the applicability of yesterdays grid – @rachelchalmers #icesummit  

RT @bmichelson: Illogical Headline? “Can Indian firms deliver cloud services from offshore?” http://bit.ly/4fSjq1 <– Only private clouds!!!  

RT @Werner: Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability – #Dijkstra  

RT @Lounibos: As the US learns to “save”, China learns to “Buy”…and most likely will do so online. Private, Public…think China Cloud!  

On my way over the 451 ICE Summit. Looking forward to seeing @rachelchalmers and company.  

RT @ruv: Sorry, But I’m going to have to PaaS on your SaaS because everything you provide looks like *aaS. <– ROTFL  

Great round up of analyst/media data-points on cloud computing -> http://bit.ly/3TVoJn  

Listening to a healthcare customer tell their (very cool) story to a Gartner analyst. Might be featured at their conference!  

“For the 2nd day in a row…” <– No slam on them BTW, just speaks to the different audiences the two companies speak to. #vmworld  

For the 2nd day in a row, when the Spring guys come up & pull up Eclipse, a segment of the crowd starts heading for the doors. #vmworld  

RT @samj:cloud infrastructure services (IaaS) are just the beginning & are relatively boring for all the attention they’ve received. <– +1  

Maritz at #VMworld: If we’re not careful cloud may bcome the ultimate CA hotel – you can check your apps in but you can’t check them out.  

How to do “curated daily links” with #wordpress?? E.g. Post to delicious and once/day choose links to push to single post. Ideas?  

RT @samj:Top 250 #cloud companies http://bit.ly/1zzI1 <- adding @dediserve, @rackcloud, @appirio, @appistry <– Thx so much. Writing PR now!  

Speaker talking up “Pure Virtual” as a descriptor, meaning all resource usage abstracted. #vmworld #vcloud api session  

Is there a planned tweetup for #cloud folks at #vmworld 

English getting cloudy. New verbs created: “Wrapper” e.g. “They wrapper and extend the vSphere API” #vmware