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Olli Toivainen on Nokia N Series

On my InfoWorld blog I've posted an interview with Olli Toivainen, Nokia's director of product management.  He's one of the unsung heroes behind the N Series of Linux-based Internet Tablets.  Although I couldn't get him to make any new announcements of future products, he does give quite a bit of good info around the N810 Internet tablet, which I think is one of the coolest devices out there.

For those interested in music, I've also posted an interview with Joe Trohman from Fall Out Boy over at www.guitarvibe.com .  Oddly enough, he didn't have much to say about Internet tablets, open source or Linux.  But he sure had a lot to say about guitars!

• InfoWorld: Open Sources
• Amazon: Nokia N810

Jim Starkey and Falcon

Jim Starkey, who joined MySQL through our acquisition of his company Netfrastructure, has been working along with his team on the Falcon storage engine, which is part of MySQL 6.0, currently in alpha.  Jim has a history of introducing significant innovations in database technology throughout his career including his work on Blobs and multi-generational storage (or MVCC).  Right now the focus of the Falcon team is on optimizing performance for modern multi-core CPUs with large amounts of memory.  We're seeing some pretty significant performance gains that will come out over the next few months. And there's still a lot of untapped potential in what Falcon will be able to do going forward.

Jim took some time out of his schedule to answer a few questions for Dr. Dobb's Journal and the result is a short but insightful interview called Databases: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.  More info on Falcon is available on the MySQL developer zone. 

• Dr Dobbs Journal: Databases: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
• MySQL: Falcon, White paper, FAQ, Docs, Downloads, Understanding Falcon - Part 1, 2, 3

Two Storage Engine Updates

There are two recent updates on the MySQL storage engine front worth looking into.  Paul McCullagh over at PrimeBase has updated their BLOB Streaming engine MyBS. (Ok, some people like the name, others don't.  I suggest going for something more serious sounding.)  The engine itself is pretty cool.  It'a not really a general purpose engine, but the idea is to be able to store BLOBS of any size and stream them directly into and out of the database.  Ideally, any engine could use the BLOB repository and streaming API. Paul got a good reaction at his MySQL Camp presentation in New York a few weeks back and is eager to get feedback.  One concern: will the limitation of 4 Zettabytes be enough? ;-) 

Jim Starkey and his team have also put out a new updated Alpha release of the Falcon engine.  This is still early stage, but worth trying out if you plan on deploying modern multi-core hardware with lots of memory.  For those who don't know, Jim is one of the pioneers in database technology and he invented BLOBs and MVCC some years back.  There are some pretty cool innovations in Falcon for minimizing lock contention which should provide very scalable performance for web applications in particular.  Falcon will be part of the MySQL 6.0 release available in 2008.  There's a series of technical articles Robin Schumacher has written on "Understanding Falcon" Part 1, 2, 3.

Cool to see so much innovation happening in and around MySQL. 

• BlobStreaming.org: Documentation, Download, Presentation, Blog
• MySQL: Falcon, Documentation, Download, Understanding Falcon part 1, 2, 3, White paper

SqueezeBox Slimserver

I finally got around to installing a SlimDevices SqueezeBox at home. It was a gift from my wife some months back, but the idea of wrestling with our in-wall cabinetry to hookup the audio cables and get my MP3 collection onto the living room stereo put me off for a long time.  But I was in a cleaning mood this weekend and wanted to get rid of a bunch of boxes, books, and other clutter, so I figured this was as good a time as any.  The installation was fairly simple, as long as you know how to convert a WEP key into hex.

All tolled it took about 15 minutes, including messing with the cabinets while balancing a receiver from it's cables.  I didn't even have to reboot anything. Now I've got living room stereo access to all my MP3 songs from my desktop as well as Internet Radio, Pandora and the Squeezenetwork. It also supports most other unprotected audio formats including WMA, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis and WAV files, though I'm not sure why anyone would use WAV files anymore. For those curious, my music choices are rather out of date. I'm currently listening to a lot of Los Lobos, Hugh Cornwell (ex-Stranglers front man), Pink Floyd and legendary sixties garage rockers The Remains.

While Squeezebox is not the only way to get your MP3's onto a home stereo (I could have just plugged in my iPod), it works well, it's got a good display and the sound is excellent. 

One interesting element of the SqueezeBox is that the SlimServer software is all open source. As the configuration info shows, SlimServer is running MySQL 5.0.22 and Perl 5.8.8. 

If you're so inclined you can download the software for Windows, Mac, Linux, and check it out before buying a SqueezeBox.  The software has been localized into multiple languages and there's a healthy community that's sprung up providing various plug-ins, skins, mods and development tools. 

• SlimDevices: Main, SqueezeBox, SlimServer, Download, Forums
• Reviews: CNet, Rhino, Gadgeteer,  NY Times /IHT
• Amazon: Los Lobos, Hugh Cornwell, Pink Floyd, The Remains

Best Freeware Utilities

Again, this post is slightly off topic since I'm on vacation, but I wanted to point out a source for good freeware utilities for Windows.  I was looking for a good Windows outliner program and not having much luck and my Java Flex guru buddy Bruce Eckel pointed this site out to me.  If you're looking for a bit torrent client, a photo organizer, HTML editor, registry editor or any of a few dozen other items, this site will spare you the tedious research. The recommended outliner, Keynote, is available under an open source license, but it's no longer in active development.

• Tech Support Alert: Best Free Utilities

Open Source Hiring

Just about every open source company I know of is hiring right now.  There appear to be tons of open jobs at MySQL, SugarCRM, Alfresco, SnapLogic, Hyperic, Zend and elsewhere.  This is a good time to be an open source developer.  Also many companies are flexible about location and have openings across many departments including product management, sales, support, training etc.  Tell 'em Zack sent you...

• Jobs: MySQL, SugarCRM, Alfresco, SnapLogic, Hyperic, Interface21, Zend

PC Decrapifier

This is not strictly speaking about open source, but for anyone running a new Windows machine, it's a big issue.  PC Decrapifier is a free software which helps remove all the "craplets" (crippleware applications) that are installed when you buy a new PC.  Kudos to Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal for helping to fight the fight against crapware.

"The problem is a lack of respect for the consumer. The manufacturers don’t act as if the computer belongs to you. They act as if it is a billboard for restricted trial versions of software and ads for Web sites and services that they can sell to third-party companies who want you to buy these products."

One more argument for moving to Linux or Macintosh...

• PC Decrapifier: Main, How it Works, FAQ, Download
• WSJ: Walt Mossberg Column, Walt Mossberg video
• Apple: Stuffed commercial
• CBC: Craplets Could Damage Vista Launch

Next Big Thing: Scala

My buddy David Pollak, host of a local geekbeer social event, thinks Scala is the next big thing in web programming.  Scala is an object-oriented / functional programming language that compiles down to Java byte code.  It's statically typed but fully supports generics and polymorphism.  And it's published under an open source BSD-like license. 

David's got pretty good street cred; he's built large scale applications in everything from C++, C#, Ruby and pretty much everything else in between.  Over lunch recently he told me in a rather offhand fashion that he used Scala and the related lift framework to write a Twitter clone (called Skittr) in 800 lines that scales to 1 million users on a two-box Intel Core Duo setup.  Holy cripes, that's scalable. 

Part of the reason Scala's able to do so much with so little code comes down to the framework called lift which is also open source under an Apache license.  Lift takes all that is good about the Rails framework for Ruby but performs 6x faster and is fully multi-threaded.  It's still in an alpha stage, but looks pretty impressive.

• David's Blog: Prance With Horses, Skittr with Mice
• O'Reilly Radar: lift/scala for web apps
• Lift: Lift web framework, Google Code
• Scala: Home, Tutorials, Download, Overview (PDF), Language Spec (PDF)

Java Redux

I was unable to attend JavaOne this year since I was at the Red Hat conference in San Diego. Still, I heard good things, especially about a new language and framework called Scala/lift.  Both Java Flex guru Bruce Eckel and scalability guru David Pollak commented on Scala. (More on that next week.) 

So my only way to find out what was going on was through blogs and news releases.  If you missed JavaOne, check out the links below.  Interesting highlights include Sun's announcement of JavaFX scripting, the JPhone and the results of open sourcing Java. Interesting to see Sun finally get behind scripting languages after poo-poohing them for so many years.  (But what I really want to know is how did Charlie Babcock manage to cover both the Red Hat conference in San Diego and the JavaOne conference in San Francsico!)

• Sun: JavaOne WebCasts, News, More News, Blogs
• ITNews: Sun Reads A New Script
• InformationWeek: Call it the JPhone
• CIO Insight: Interview with James Gosling on Java
• Redmonk: Evolving JavaOne
• Bruce Eckel: JavaOne Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200

At Red Hat's conference last week, I spotted a guy using a tiny keyboard equipped PDA that I didn't recognize.  It turns out it was the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200, which is not available officially in the US, but is popular in Japan. Still you can buy it through the web at Dynamism and other grey market importers.

The Zaurus has gone through several iterations and form factors over the years and was the first Linux handheld shipped way back when. It now has a 6gb hard drive, SD and CF slots and a decent VGA (640x480) screen.  It's compact enough to carry in a pocket or on a belt clip and weighs just over 10 onces (298 g). With the SD slot, you can add a wi-fi card and get internet connectivity.

I don't think there's a perfect device for all purposes, but the Zaurus is pretty good if you need a keyboard, though at $800 it's pretty expensive.  On the other hand, Nokia's N800 tablet has a bigger screen and built-in wi-fi support for half the price, but, alas, no keyboard.

• Dynamism: Sharp Zaurus, Nokia N800