The most recent articles from vnunet.com

Review: Moblin 2.0 beta

Ian Williams — 2009-06-01T17:56:00.000Z

Ian Williams, vnunet.com, Monday 1 June 2009 at 17:56:00

Intel dishes up a slick and simple netbook operating system

Intel recently unveiled a publically available beta version of Moblin 2.0, the next iteration of the chip maker's Linux-based operating system designed for netbooks.

Although Intel has had a long standing partnership with Microsoft, the company has teamed up with Novell to develop Moblin specifically for the growing market of netbooks and mobile internet devices.

The install is pretty straightforward, but creating a bootable install disk is slightly more difficult than with some other operating systems. However, the Moblin site provides plenty of detailed information to get you up and running.

Furthermore, you can opt to run the beta from a CD or USB key without installing it first. You won't be able to save any settings, but you'll have the option of testing the operating system and its features without going through the process of installing it.

Once up and running, users are presented with a remarkably bare backdrop and an auto-hiding toolbar along the top, providing a static set of tabs to all of Moblin's features.

First and foremost is Myzone, which gives a general overview of your life. The screen is split into three panels. On the left you'll find a calendar as well as links to your favourite applications, the centre panel highlights recently accessed files and web sites, while social network updates are on the right.

The next tab is Status, which allows users to update their status on their favourite social networking sites. Only Twitter and Last.fm are supported at this stage, but more social networks are expected to be added soon.

This is followed by the People tab, which provides an interface to all your contacts. Although this section is still at a very early stage and has limited functionality, the aim is to provide an integrated list of contacts from across different platforms, as well as presence information and access to instant messaging.

The Internet panel is a browser based on Google's Chrome engine. As well as a full web browser, including the tabbed browsing seen in most browsers today, it includes an integrated 'automagic' bar that provides suggestions based on running, favourite and recently viewed web sites as users begin typing.

Next is the Media tab, which provides easy access to recently played and viewed media files and the ability to search for specific media. This section is also in its early stages, but Intel has plans for a playlist feature and other searching and sorting functions.

The Pasteboard allows users to store and manage multiple copied items, and makes it simpler to copy and paste between applications.

The final two panels are probably the most important. The Applications panel lists all of the applications available, segmented into categories, and lets you adjust Moblin's settings.

Zones, meanwhile, acts as a series of virtualised desktops, and allows users to manage, organise and switch between currently running applications.

Every time you start a new application you have the option of creating a new Zone or starting the program within an existing Zone. This can make life a lot easier when you have several different applications open, particularly if you can logically separate various tasks.

On the far right of the toolbar is the Status section which provides power, screen brightness and connectivity information. Wired networks, some Wi-Fi and some 3G connections are supported, with more coming soon, along with Bluetooth.

Moblin runs quickly and smoothly, and Intel has clearly done a lot of work optimising it for the Atom processor so that it makes the most of the reduced specifications found in netbooks.

However, while the developers have worked hard to make Moblin simple and uncluttered, there is a feeling that any kind of customisation is purely cosmetic, and that if you don't like the layout or other fundamental parts of the system there is nothing you can really do about it. As a result, Windows users may find there is something of a learning curve, particularly when it comes to altering anything.

Similarly, although there are a growing number of applications out there that will run on Moblin, users hoping to install anything even vaguely out of the ordinary may find themselves out of luck.

Even in its early beta form, Moblin 2.0 is one of the best operating systems of its kind we've seen. The clean and slick interface offers easy access to the majority of functions that most users will be looking for.

That said, it suffers from a lack of customisation that anyone not particularly interested in social media might be looking for, and anyone looking outside the bounds of the Moblin structure may well be frustrated by the experience.

Intel recently turned over control of the project to the Linux Foundation with the aim of making it even more open to other contributors. The long-term goal is to turn Moblin into the 'nexus' of mobile Linux development and make it the de-facto Linux platform for portable devices.

Ultimately, it's still quite rough around the edges and we hope that Intel will include some customisation of the toolbar to help users have quick access to the features they want. But other developers need to sit up and take notice, because this is how it should be done.

Review: CrossLoop remote support tool

Julian Prokaza — 2009-05-13T15:21:00.000Z

Julian Prokaza, vnunet.com, Wednesday 13 May 2009 at 15:21:00

A first-rate remote desktop application that now supports Mac OS and Windows

CrossLoop is ostensibly an online marketplace where freelance technical support 'experts' pitch for business. But the real value lies in the remote desktop application it provides as part of the service, which could be useful as a helpdesk tool for enterprise IT teams.

Available as a free download even if you choose not to sign up for paid online help, CrossLoop is a powerful remote desktop tool that, thanks to a recent update, now works with Mac OS as well as Windows.

Getting at the remote desktop tool requires a little effort. It's an obvious download from the CrossLoop home page (2.5MB for Windows, 8MB for Mac OS), but once installed it prompts you to sign up for a free account. This isn't necessary and you can just click the tiny 'Skip' option to proceed to the application proper.

CrossLoop uses the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) desktop sharing protocol - it's actually TightVNC - to connect two computers. While it doesn't do anything that can't be achieved with the multitude of other free VNC applications, it does make setting up remote desktop sessions remarkably easy.

Accessing one computer's desktop remotely over an internet connection is often made more difficult by the need to know the local IP address of the PC to connect to. The problem arises when that IP address is hidden behind the Network Address Translation of a home or office router, and the resulting need to reconfigure firewall ports often makes VNC impractical for corporate environments.

CrossLoop gets round this by routing traffic through port 80, and providing a unique ID for each session. The host selects the 'Share' option and provides the ID, while the client selects 'Access' and types in the ID. Click 'Connect' at each end, and the connection is quickly established.

Connections are routed through CrossLoop's servers and, while the CrossLoop-generated computer names are transmitted in plain text, these can be edited if their identities need to be protected. Data transmitted for the shared sessions is encrypted, and CrossLoop simply tracks the length of the session and the amount of data transferred for its own purposes.

Remote desktop applications come into their own for hands-on trouble shooting, and CrossLoop's ability to establish Windows/Windows, Mac/Mac and Windows/Mac connections with a mere mouse click makes it an invaluable tool. Files can be easily shared too, and the role of host and client can be quickly reversed for two-way sessions.

As with other remote desktop tools, the need to manually initiate a shared session on the host makes CrossLoop ill-suited for accessing your own home or office computer remotely. This is obviously a security measure to keep out interlopers.

CrossLoop hammers the point home by putting a two-minute time-out on new connections, so you can't leave the application running on one computer ready for on-demand access from another. LogMeIn and GoToMyPC are both better for personal remote access.

Overall, CrossLoop's foolproof operation makes it a worthwhile addition to computer tech support teams, even though it is not suited for personal remote access. The newly added support for Mac OS makes it even more invaluable.

First Look: Service-now.com

Dave Bailey — 2009-02-20T15:17:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, vnunet.com, Friday 20 February 2009 at 15:17:00

Next-generation SaaS IT service management suite gets iPhone and Blackberry support

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) management vendor Service-now.com upgraded its namesake IT service management package this winter. It could replace legacy framework products such as BMC Remedy and HP Service Desk, drastically easing the administrative burden for IT managers.

The Winter release adds support for iPhones and Blackberrys, a global enterprise IT search for configuration management databases (CMDB), My Yahoo-like Service-now.com home page customisation controls, field and attachment encryption for more SaaS security, and cross-application graphical workflow via SaaS.

We looked at the service logging on as three different types of users – an employee, a member of the IT management team and the IT administrator – using demo data supplied by Service-now.com.

The web interface is good, with the main menu items tabbed down the left side of the web page, which at a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 is easily readable. However, if many tabs are opened simultaneously the web page length soon occupies more than one screen, necessitating paging up and down frequently.

After users log on, they land on a pre-configured homepage. The page can be set to refresh at intervals of five, 15, 30 or 60 minutes or turned off and refreshed manually. Five standard views can be selected: ITIL Homepage, Employee Self Service, Enterprise CMDB, Service-now performance, and Project Portfolio Management (PPM). Users can also opt to change the screen layout if needed and customise the pages specifically for their job roles. For example, administrators could keep open the page where all critical errors relating to the business are logged and updated.

Neat touches are the integration with Google Maps, which can be used to show where the locations of critical outages are, the updated response times of the network browser and the Service-now.com server hosting your SaaS instance.

Browser support includes IE 6 upwards, Firefox 1.5 upwards and Safari 3.0 upwards for Windows. For Mac systems, the above Firefox and Safari versions are supported and for Linux, just Firefox.

Overall, Service-now.com's SaaS package is very comprehensive and has some great features and functionality wired into the platform. Logging on as IT administrator gives some idea of how much responsibility is heaped on their shoulders. Although demo data can provide information about Service-now.com's package, its feature set and operational dependencies, only a trial using live systems would give would-be users the real-world view, and how it compares with their current IT service management package.

Pricing for the service starts at $100 (£70) per month per process user, which Service-now.com defines as an 'IT worker who uses the system'. Volume discounts are available and employee logons to register an incident or access self help features are free.