A Google Docs Folder Surprise

I love surprises.  Or do I?  Whatever, but I got one this morning when I opened my Google Docs and found something I hadn't noticed before.


There's a folder called "Google Chrome" with a couple of sub-folders. 



After a little fishing, I learned Chrome (sort of) has a sync feature built in, but rather than syncing with Google bookmarks, it syncs with that folder in Google docs. Maybe.


The sync feature isn't enabled by default.  If you have a windows machine you can enable it by creating a shortcut to the Google Chrome executable and add the argument "--enable-sync".  For a Windows 7 user the shortcut's properties would look like this:
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe --enable-sync


I use Ubuntu for the moment, so this doesn't work for me.  I've tried to launch Chrome with sync enabled by using the terminal command 

google-chrome --enable-sync


And I got this as a result:

[4553:4553:79733713890:ERROR:base/native_library_linux.cc(28)] dlopen failed when trying to open default_plugin: default_plugin: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[4452:4452:79733855096:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)
[4452:4452:79733871902:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)
[4452:4452:79733885745:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)
[4452:4452:79733918056:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)

So It looks like the sync plugin doesn't work in Ubuntu.  I sure hope it does in Chrome OS.  


It'd be great to have, but I'm working around it for now.  Just another bump on the road to cloud city.

Make Room - Uncle Sam's Moving To The Cloud

On December 9, 2010, Vivek Kundra, the US Chief Information Officer (Did you even know we had one?) released a twenty-five point plan to overhaul the federal government's IT strategy.

One of the most striking points is a very aggressive move to the cloud.  The plan calls for identifying three government services to be moved to the cloud.  One of those is to be fully cloud-based within a year with the other two joining the first in eighteen months. The scale and ambition of that project boggles the mind.

I'm pretty jazzed about this.  In the long run, this ought to save us (U.S.) money.  The GSA moved just its e-mail services to the cloud and realized a 50% savings ($15 Million over five years - just for e-mail).  It will also allow for new resources to be added quickly, or reduce redundant resources when demand drops.  They'll also short-cut the tedious procurement and certification procedures involved with provisioning physical data centers.

There are still a lot of questions to be answered, naturally.  Foremost in most people's minds will be security.  Ensuring sensitive data is properly safeguarded and getting that assurance out to the average citizen will be paramount.  I also wonder what such a large entity could do to the rest of us living in the cloud.

Imagine, for instance, the IRS moves to the cloud.  Tax time will see them expand their demand for resources dramatically for a short period, followed by a sharp drop after April 15.  Could that suck all the oxygen out of the cloud-based infrastructure for other cloud-based enterprises?  Will there be IaaS providers that will have the ability to have that much capacity available for one quarter a year?

As a system admininstrator myself, I see the writing on the wall.  The days of your friendly neighborhood data center, or the server room at corporate headquarters are coming to an end, and so are the jobs of a lot of corporate (and government) sysadmins.  Its' time for us to adapt or perish.  Exciting times.

Life In The Cloud - It's Easier Than I Expected

I've been so happy with running Ubuntu 10.10 on my desktop (and not using any local storage, except to run the OS) that I decided to upgrade my Dell Mini netbook from Ubuntu 8.04 to Netbook 10.10.

The installer file couldn't initialize my wireless NIC, so I had to go wired at first, but after installation completed I was able to activate a disabled driver and get on wirelessly.

Chrome browser doesn't come packaged with the Ubuntu installation (they provided Firefox), so I downloaded Chrome and installed a few apps and extensions from the Chrome App Store. For now, I'm sticking mainly with apps and extensions from Google itself, but I did also install Box.Net to get an additional 5 GB of online storage in addition to my Google Docs and Windows Life Office space.

I also installed Quick Note, but it only stores notes locally, so I've stopped using that in favor of Springpad which stores your notes online so they can be accessed anywhere from any machine, which is the point of all this, isn't it?


After installing apps they show up on new tabs in Chrome as large icons (which can't be rearranged for now).  I've read posts by some people deriding those icons are mere links.  Yes, that's what they are, and that's the point. You're calling a web-based service or application.  When a user clicks on a program icon or shortcut, that's a link, too.  The only difference is the user of a locally installed application is clicking an icon that links to a locally installed resource.

Thanks for continuing to follow this blog. Please let me know what you think, or recommend your own tools for life in the cloud!

One Less Windows Machine

While I've been using an Ubuntu netbook for almost three years now, I still had a Windows workstation (with a nice, comfy, full-sized keyboard) that I'd revert to when I didn't feel like pecking at the keys.  I'd also been telling everyone around me for quite a while that the cloud was the future.

Finally, I decided it was time to put my convictions where it mattered, and installed ubuntu 10.10 on a tiny partition on my workstation.  After initial configuration, I installed the Chrome browser and went about adding apps from the Chrome web store.

I'm making the commitment to a life in the cloud.  No more local storage.  Ever.

It's going to be an interesting transition, and I've already had to wrestle with some security misgivings (more on that in a future post), and I hope you'll check back with me as I dive into the cloud world.

Happy Maintenance Days!

As I write this, I'm one of two people in the office.  The other is a very bored helpdesk technician with no calls to take.

I think this is prime-time for network admins.  With (practically) nobody on the network, this is one of the few times in a year when you can do maintenance on production systems in the middle of the day.  If an e-mail server is down for five minutes to do a reboot after a patch, who's to know?  Scheduled SQL jobs generally run overnight, and with noone to query the database, it's all mine.

Some habits die hard, though, and Christmas morning found me at the data center taking down a file server to replace parts that were in pre-failure.  Nothing like a little pre-dawn preventive maintenance.

Have a holly-jolly maintenance time, all!

Why Chrome OS Will Absolutely Crush Windows

Okay, I’ll admit that title is a bit of hyperbole, but no more so than a recent article from eWeek.  In an article published December 20, 2010, Don Reisinger listed his 10 reasons “Google Chrome OS Faces Serious Risk of Failure”.1  I think he’s missed the point, and here’s why:

Chrome OSs capability is perfectly adequate for the majority of computer users.  Reisinger admits users of Chrome OS will be able to surf the web, use e-mail and create and edit documents. He correctly points out that users will have a hard time encoding HD video, but how many users do that routinely?
A sub-$300 laptop that allows users to surf the web, use e-mail and manage their documents is exactly what most home users need, whether they know it or not.  Most computers are seriously over-powered and under-utilized.  Your grandmother doesn’t need dual Xeon cores or 8 GB of RAM.  She also doesn’t need the frustration of dealing with malware, viruses, and complicated setup.  A laptop she can turn on to get near instant access to the web for not much money makes perfect sense for her.

Chrome OS for Education
Another group for whom Chrome OS is a great idea- students. Low-cost laptops would allow children to have laptops as tools in the classroom, take notes, do home work online, and when they get home, they’re reconnected to their work as soon as they get online.  Even college students should find a Chrome OS laptop to be more than adequate.

Chrome in the Workplace
Businesses need to find savings to survive and prosper.  Right-sizing and leaning are the buzzwords of the day.  Chrome OS is a perfect fit for a lot of enterprise solutions.
The cost of an average laptop, Windows 7 OS, and typical office suite will run around $1,260.002.  Again, assuming a sub-$300 pricepoint, Chrome OS provides all the basics at a savings just short of a thousand dollars per user, more, if those users would otherwise use Adobe Acrobat to create pdfs.

No Local Disk to Access: Good or Bad?
Fantastic, I say.  Putting storage into the cloud instead of on the local machine does several things for us:

1. It keeps the local machine safe.  If malware can’t save their nasty little scriptlets to the local machine, they can’t persist.  Viruses become a non-issue.  Shut off a Chrome OS laptop and you’re back to pristine condition.

2. It keeps data safe.  Cloud storage skeptics worry about data continuity, but I don’t think the likes of Google (or Microsoft or Amazon for that matter) are going away any time soon.

3. It keeps data secure.  A lost or stolen laptop running Chrome OS doesn’t have sensitive information on its drives.  It’s merely a lost appliance, and can be replaced without worrying about data falling into the wrong hands.

An Indestructible OS
If Chrome OS ships burned into read-only chips much like firmware, you have an OS that can’t be altered by malicious means or user mistakes.  As previously mentioned, worries about malware, viruses and the like go away entirely.  This isn’t just a savings of psychological resources, it saves real money when you factor in the costs of anti-virus, anti-malware, data recovery and the man-hours spent to restore a compromised system.

The eWeek article I mentioned listed as one of its arguments “Beating Windows is a tall order”.  That may be an assessment, but it’s not an argument.  The same was said of Internet Explorer in arguments against Firefox or the Chrome browser.

I don’t expect Chrome OS to completely supplant the locally installed OS model anytime soon, nor do I expect it to dominate the market, but the opportunity is there, and I think its growth will surprise many doubters.  When that happens, remember- I told you so.



1. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Chrome-OS-Faces-Serious-Risk-of-Failure-10-Reasons-Why-363244/
2. Dell Latitude 2610, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive, Windows 7 Professional, Windows Office Home and Business 2010, TrendMicro Titanium Antivirus+