Parallels Desktop 5 Ups the Ante and Beats Fusion

November 9, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

Amazing, just days after VMware ships their brand new version of Fusion which includes full support for Windows 7 Aero out of nowhere comes Parallels Desktop 5. At first I was skeptical. How can the company that owns the server virtualization crown with ESX sever possible be beat by upstart Parallels? Well, Parallels has one it. Speed, performance, memory usage, it is all better in Parallels Desktop 5.

Don’t believe me? Give them both a try in a head to head battle.

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Parallels running Windows 7 with full Aero Glass.

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The list of Parallels virtual machines.

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Parallels settings. Notice the nice touches like Gestures and Apple remote settings.

Apple’s new EasyPay checkout shows the future of mobile scanners

November 3, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

A first look at the new case designed for the Apple Store to replace the aging symbol devices used as mobile point of sale units.

What I find really interesting is the application of this design to mobile warehouse, inventory and package scanning. It is still unknown who partnered with Apple to build the special case but I sure hope we see it marketed as an after market product. I can see all kinds of amazing possibilities at a much lower price point than current windows CE scanners.

Windows mobile first replaced Palm and MSDOS as the predominant handheld platforms. Next we will see OSX replace windows CE.

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[From AppleInsider | Exclusive look at Apple's new iPod touch-based EasyPay checkout]

Categories: apple, iPhone Tags: , , ,

Vmware Fusion 3.0 (Full Aero Support with Windows 7)

October 27, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

Just grabbed the release of VMWare Fusion 3.0 which was released today at Midnight.

Full 64 Bit support under Snow Leopard, and full support for Aero Graphics with Windows 7.

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NOTE: If you are wondering how to turn Aero on for an existing VM?  Make sure you change the VM type to Windows 7 from Server 2008 or Vista.  Install the new VMWare Tools to update the drivers.  After a reboot make sure you go into the computer properties and update the windows experience rating.  This will take a few seconds and when it is done you will have all the Aero goodness.

Ballmer misses huge chance to claim tablet win… news at 11.

October 23, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

Interesting that when asked Ballmer blew off any kind of opportunity to claim a thought share win on the tablet computing front…

When asked about the rumored Courier tablet book, Ballmer claims to have never seen the video and to only have heard details of the rumor. He does, however, hint at possible inside knowledge of the dual-screen, multi-touch device.

“I hope somebody does stuff like that,” he says.

[From Ballmer: Win Mobile 7 will bring Zune features | Electronista]

I suspect that when Ballmer says “somebody” everyone reads Apple… but that may just be me :)

Categories: 365 Tags: , ,

10 Years of Virtual Machine Performance (Semi) Demystified | Engine Yard Blog

October 6, 2009 Shawn Smith 1 comment

First, a solid statement: virtualization has always levied a CPU “tax.” Early on, this was very high, recently not so much. Probably the most comprehensive recent non-vendor benchmark of performance vs. native is AnandTech’s, which recently showed anywhere from a 2% to a 7% CPU tax on a fully loaded system running mixed workload 4-CPU virtual machines on recent hardware.

This blog post from Engine Yard shows the evolution of x86 virtualization technology and tackles the CPU tax imposed by Virtualization technologies over time. A must read if you are implementing big virtualization projects.

Posted via web from InFormalBrain

Categories: 365 Tags: ,

Collaborative Business Process Design using Google Wave

September 30, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

7 min video of Gravity

Gravity is a proof of concept project from our friends at SAP.  They created a system called Gravity which plugs into Google Wave and allows for collaborative Business Process development.  Click through the link to see an amazing video of the tool in action.  Incredible possibilities for cross site collaboration.

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Categories: 365

Salesforce.com show how to connect Google Wave with Force.com’s Service Cloud

September 30, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

Think next generation chat services with any type of incident management or service request management system. Wave will create the types of hybrid solutions we could only dream of creating before by mashing up Instant Messaging and Email. Amazing!

Posted via web from InFormalBrain

Categories: 365

Apple, how about allowing iPhone Apps to run on the Mac?

September 30, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment

Dear Apple,

With all those great applications (and games) out there why not let the mac run them as well?

How about letting us use our laptop touchpads as a controller?

Think instant apps expansion for your platform!!!

Thanks, Shawn

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Categories: 365

Waze Turns Turn-By-Turn Navigation And Mapmaking Into A Free Game

September 25, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment
I tried out waze for the first time tonight. It has a very nice ui, and the game aspect is interesting. However my inital routing test worked poorly. I will try another route in the morning and see how it does. 

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Sent from my iPhone

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Categories: 365

Gmail Is Down … Again

September 25, 2009 Shawn Smith Leave a comment
Gmail Is Down … Again

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Sigh, google is doing a very poor job demonstrating stability with their gapps platform.  Bad timing when enterprise customers are thinking about moving to their services. 

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from InFormalBrain

Categories: 365