Fix “RPC Server is Unavailable” Error in Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Disk Management

 

More good stuff from Petri....

 

Fix “RPC Server is Unavailable” Error in Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Disk Management: "

One of the coolest features of the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Manager application, is the fact that you can now remotely connect to a server running Windows Server 2008 R2, and manage roles, features, services, disks and other aspects of the remote server. This was not possible in Windows Server 2008.

The steps needed to enable remote management are listed in my Enabling Remote Management in Windows Server 2008 R2 article.

A few days ago I was asked by one of my readers about a strange error he was getting. It seems that whenever they tried to connect to a remote server and use the Disk Management snap-in, they got this error:

Virtual Disk Manager

The RPC server is unavailable

And this is what it looks like:

Searching Google for an answer brought a few results, but I thought I'd list it here for my other readers, as it seems that the configuration steps that are needed in order to get remote disk management going are a bit vague.

In order to remotely manage disks on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine, you need to perform the following tasks:

Target Server

On the target server (the one you want to connect to) you need to set the Virtual Disk Service (VDS) to Automatic, and start it.

Open a Command Prompt window and type the following command:

sc config vds start= auto

Next, type:

net start vds

BTW, this can also be done through the Services snap-in if you're more comfortable with it.

Next, type the following command to enable the remote-volume-management firewall exceptions:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group='Remote Volume Management' new enable=yes

Again, this can also be done through the Windows Firewall with Advance Security snap-in if you're more comfortable with it.

Now, proceed to the next step.

Client Machine

You need to enable the following Firewall rules on BOTH source and target servers. Most documents and manuals fail to specify that, and unless you enable the rules on both machines, you will not be able to connect.

So, open a Command Prompt window and type the following command to enable the remote-volume-management firewall exceptions:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group='Remote Volume Management' new enable=yes

Again, this can also be done through the Windows Firewall with Advance Security snap-in.

Once you enable these Firewall rules on both the source and target servers, you will be able to connect to the remote server.

Open Server Manager, right-click Server Manager and select 'Connect to Another Computer'.

Enter the name of the remote (target) server and click 'Ok'.

If all is well, you will be able to use Disk Management remotely.

Lesson learned.

"

 

(Via Petri IT Knowledgebase.)

 

10 things you should know about researching a company

10 things you should know about researching a company: "

Whether you’re looking into potential new clients or hoping to become an employee of a particular company, you’ll be on more solid footing if you’ve done some homework.

---

In the course of your work, you likely will need to do research on a company or organization. Here are a few reasons to undertake such research, along with some tips and sources that can make the process easier.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

Why do the research?

The better informed you are, the more effective your business relationships will be, whether you’re selling your company’s services or hoping to land a new job. Let’s consider three ways your research can pay off.

1: Identifying problems your company can solve

Everyone knows about your problems if you’re BP. The problems of many other companies, however, are less well publicized. Nonetheless, on their Web page, in their annual reports, or in media interviews, companies often will discuss challenges they’re currently facing or expect to face in the future. Learning about these problems can give you insight into how your business can help a company resolve its problems.

2: Identifying ways you can add value if a company hires you

If you’re interviewing for a job at a company and you’ve researched the challenges it’s facing, you can make a good impression. If you have the skills that can address those problems, so much the better. Even if you don’t, you still show initiative and resourcefulness, thereby improving your chances in the interview.

3: Determining financial stability

Regardless of whether you are a prospective supplier or a prospective employee, you’ll want to get paid by a company if you eventually associate with it. If the company pays its obligations on time, it may pay you on time as well. If it is consistently late, you may want to think twice before becoming a supplier or employee.

How to go about it

Having discussed reasons for wanting to know about a company, let’s look at various ways to do the research.

4: SEC (publicly traded companies) & EDGAR

Companies that issue publicly traded stock are governed by the Securities Act of 1933. In general, this act requires that such companies disclose financial and company information so that investors can make informed decisions. Enforcement of this act is handled by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Companies must file disclosures with the SEC, and these disclosures are available at the SEC Web site through the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system (EDGAR).

Examples of such filings include the annual report form 10-K and quarterly report form 10-Q. The SEC offers a comprehensive list.

5: Online brokerage services

If you have a brokerage account, such as with Fidelity or Vanguard, you most likely have access to research analyst reports about publicly traded companies. These reports may be free to you or may involve a fee. However, they can provide valuable additional information to that of the SEC.

6: Finance pages

Financial Web pages such as finance.yahoo.com are another good source of information. In fact, I have found that Yahoo often provides better information about a company than that company’s own Web site. For example, some company pages make it difficult to find a physical headquarters address or an actual main telephone number. However, when viewing a Yahoo Finance page for a given company, the link for Profile displays such information readily.

7: Dun & Bradstreet

Dun & Bradstreet offers information about non-publicly traded companies in addition to publicly traded ones. A valuable type of information it provides is the payment history for a company.

8: Current and former employees

Current and former employees can be a good source of information. If you are a prospective employee, the closer those employees are to your intended job, the better the information will be. Be careful about getting information from only one employee, because that person could be the ‘outlier.’ On the other hand, if you hear the same thing from two or more people, the chances are greater that the information is accurate.

9: Newspapers and press releases

When reading newspaper articles and press releases, don’t confine yourself to such material alone. Consider contacting the writer of the story or the media relations contact whose name appears in the release. These people can give you invaluable additional insights.

10: Blogs, discussion groups, and forums

If you visit blogs, discussion groups, or online forums, you probably will find a good deal of information about a company. Keep in mind, though, that you might be getting a biased view. If you see information that looks like it could be important, try to validate it by determining whether other sources say the same thing.

"

 

(Via 10 Things.)

In Depth: 18 ways to do things Apple doesn't want you to do

In Depth: 18 ways to do things Apple doesn't want you to do: "

Apple produces incredibly capable computers, but with a little tweaking, you can boost their functionality further still.

If you have a video format you wish you could play in QuickTime, sound files that are beyond iTunes or a peripheral that doesn't work under OS X, there might well be a means of getting around the problem.

Here we look at 18 interesting ways of taking control of your Apple device, giving it exciting new capabilities that aren't available out of the box.

1. iTunes FLAC and Ogg

Natively, iTunes is capable of playing five types of audio file: MP3, AIFF, WAV, AAC and Apple Lossless. But what about FLAC and Ogg files?

To play FLAC files in iTunes, you need to download an app called Fluke, which installs new components for QuickTime. After installing, restart iTunes and you can import FLAC tracks without converting them; just follow the instructions here.

To play Ogg Vorbis files, download a QuickTime component from here. Installation is manual, but simple. Just drag the bundle into your Components folder, as instructed in the Readme file downloaded with XiphQT.

2. Terminal tips to lift restrictions

There are several Terminal commands that lift Apple-imposed restrictions on how you can use your OS X applications. Just go to Applications > Utilities, launch Terminal.app and type in one of the following codes.

There are hidden debug menus in several applications that come bundled with your operating system. They're meant to be for developers only, but you can open them with these Terminal commands:

Safari defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

Address Book defaults write com.apple.addressbook ABShowDebugMenu -bool YES

iCal defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu YES

You may need to relaunch the app. The debug menu shows in the menu bar. To hide it, repeat the command replacing 1 with 0 or YES with NO.

This next code introduces a new stack into your Dock, showing recently used apps. To remove it again, just drag it out of the Dock.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistentothers -array-add '{ 'tile-data' = { 'listtype' = 1; }; 'tile-type' = 'recents-tile'; }'; killall Dock

Finally, if you want to increase the magnified size of your Dock icons, you can enable magnification in the Dock's System Preferences. Simply try this code:

defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -int 512; killall Dock

The icons are now up to 512 pixels large. You can substitute 512 with another figure if you wish, but don't go any higher than 512. To turn off this effect, go back to the Dock's System Preferences and move the Magnification slider. These tips all work with Snow Leopard and Leopard, but cannot be guaranteed to function with older versions of OS X.

3. Use almost any USB controller in OS X

01. USB Overdrive X

With USB Overdrive X installed, you can make full use of almost any USB mouse, trackball, joystick or gamepad. Programmable buttons can be used in OS X, even if the bundled software is Windows-only. The latest version (3.0.1) now offers 64-bit Snow Leopard support.

02. Controller configuration

Configuring your controller is easy, and you can assign an action to each of its inputs. Here we're configuring a gaming device, and assigning a key press to the controller. Pressing left on the gaming pad gives you the same function as pressing the 'A' key.

03. Application settings

You can configure your USB device for a specific application. Create a duplicate configuration setting for the controller in question, select the application you wish to configure it for and then set it up in the usual way. These settings only apply to that app.

4. Copy from iPod to Mac

By default there's no way of copying music from your iPod or iPhone back onto your Mac, but enterprising developers have found a way around this. Senuti lets you copy selected items or your entire music and video collection in this way, retaining playlists and track titles.

Alternatively, Clickfree Transformer for iPod lets you back up your Mac's data to an external drive, but can also copy from your iPod or iPhone back onto your Mac.

5. iPod without iTunes

If you love your music but can't stand iTunes, there are several third-party alternatives you could try.

Floola is free, and supports almost all iPods. You can play your media from within the application, copy from your iPod back onto your Mac, convert incompatible audio formats and even sync with Google Calendar. Floola runs on OS X 10.3.9 or later, which is great news for those using older Macs. It might look a little spartan, but it's just the thing for those who complain that iTunes is becoming bloated.

PixiApps Ecoute takes a similarly minimalist approach, but looks a lot prettier than Floola. If you're looking for a lightweight alternative to iTunes, Ecoute is definitely worth its $10 shareware fee.

6. A new OS for your iPod

There's a Linux distro for almost any electronic device, and the iPod is no exception. Installing Linux gives access to a wealth of open source applications created for the iPod.

You can get an installer that runs on the Mac and installs Linux on your iPod from www.tinyurl.com/666hu. There's also more information on iPod Linux at www.ipodlinux.org.

Also worth a mention is Rockbox, a free alternative operating system that works on a wide range of digital audio players, including many current iPods. Granted, it's not as attractive or instinctive as iPod OS, but it offers extra features such as an equaliser, visualisation and skins.

7. More movies

A couple of free components greatly increase the range of movie files playable using Apple's QuickTime framework. Perian supports numerous video formats. Flip4Mac offers WMV compatibility, and is completely free if you only want the Player version.

8. Magic prefs

By using MagicPrefs, you can greatly expand Magic Mouse capabilities, adding gestures such as swipes, pinches and Multi-Touch clicks.

9. Take photos on an iPad

Apple has come in for a lot of criticism for not putting a camera on the iPad, but believe it or not, there's a way of taking photographs with your shiny new tablet device.

Developer Yusuke Sekikawa has come up with an ingenious solution, but you need an iPhone as well as an iPad. Sekikawa's cunning fix involves two linked applications downloaded from the iTunes Store.

Camera-A costs $1, and runs on your iPad. Camera-B is free, and is for your iPhone. At the time of writing, both are currently US-only, but are bound to be released over here when the iPad makes it to these shores.

By running both applications and connecting your devices over Wi-Fi or with Bluetooth, the iPad makes use of the iPhone's camera. Just point your iPhone at whatever it is you wish to snap, and control the picture-taking process through your iPad.

10. Unsupported devices

Not every peripheral is Mac-compatible out of the box. IOXperts has years of experience developing Mac drivers for PC peripherals, including a series of paid-for driver bundles.

For example, IOXperts Webcam Driver 1.1 for Mac OS X offers drivers for well over a hundred cams, and there's a high-end version for industrial cameras too.

IOXperts hasn't updated its drivers in a while, so some cameras listed as 'supported' might not actually work with the latest version of Snow Leopard. But as the unregistered versions work for 30 minutes before asking you to register, you've nothing to lose by giving them a try.

11. Pimp your Dock

DockDoctor, gives you all sorts of customisation options for your Dock. You can go 2D or 3D, make the icons for hidden applications opaque and even disable the Dashboard to save resources.

If you don't like the Dock's default colour, you can rebadge it in various shades, or apply a custom skin such as a chessboard. Custom skins are bundled with the app, and more are available to download online. DockDoctor is free, but a $2 (about £1.20) donation is requested to help with hosting.

12. Revamp your Finder

TotalFinder brings a wealth of new features to OS X's Finder. This Snow Leopard-only application gives you window tabs similar to those found in Safari.

You can stop Finder littering shared storage drives with .DS_Store files, which are invisible to OS X but drive Windows users to distraction, and a dual-panel mode that enables you to open two folders in the same window. And there are more exciting features to come.

At the time of writing, TotalFinder is in Version 0.8 and free. When it reaches Version 1.0, however, beta copies will begin to expire and the app will cost $15 (around £9.75), which we think is well worth the money for what you're getting.

13. Hacking Apple TV

Out of the box, Apple TV comes across as a very limited device. For one, it's slavishly tied to iTunes. Not only that, it's very restricted regarding what video formats it can play. Also, the standard interface has been criticised for its lack of finesse. Thankfully however, there's a free, cross-platform home theatre application that's proving very popular with Apple TV users.

With Boxee installed, you can play just about any DRM-free video on Apple TV. Installing Boxee on your Apple TV is a straightforward task. Just follow the step-by-step guide on the application's website.

You begin by downloading an application called ATVUSB-Creator, which is available for both Intel and PPC Macs. This is used to turn a formatted USB flash drive (minimum size 512MB) into a Patchstick, a device used to hack your Apple TV. If your USB stick isn't being recognised, try pressing the Rescan button, or use another brand.

After creating a Patchstick, insert it into your Apple TV and switch on. The Patchstick runs the ATV boot loader, which gives you the option to install Boxee. Do so and restart your Apple TV.

For a comprehensive guide to everything you can do by hacking Apple TV, go to www.appletvhacks.net.

14. A better bin

Hyperbolic Software's Smart Trash adds a series of new features to OS X's Trash, the most important of which is the ability to empty it for selected volumes only; very useful if you want to clear some space on a flash drive without deleting items binned from your hard drive.

You can also set it up to delete locked items, keep a log of everything you've erased and sort trashed items according to the volumes on which they were stored. Smart Trash is $10 (about £6).

15. Smarter phoning

With its focus on the iPhone, Apple seems to have paid scant attention to helping OS X play nicely with other brands of mobile phone.

Thankfully, Nova Media has released several interesting applications that fill the gap very nicely. iSync Plugins brings sync capabilities to more than 270 mobile phones, enabling you to sync your contacts, calendars and more.

Phone Plugins gives you the option of typing an SMS message on your Mac, which can then be sent using your Bluetooth-capable phone.

16. Ripping DVDs

Watching DVDs on your MacBook takes its toll on the battery life, and any Mac with a fast optical drive is likely to prove too noisy for close and cosy movie viewing. Fortunately, there are a couple of applications that enable you to rip your DVD's contents to your Mac's Desktop, for viewing directly from the hard drive.

RipIt is incredibly easy to use, and bundles all the ripped files into a single packet, which can be viewed as if it were an optical disc. MacTheRipper is more versatile, but not as user-friendly.

Remember, ripping copyrighted DVDs that you don't own is illegal, and bypassing copy controls is a legal grey area, even if you own the disc. It's up to you to make sure you're acting within your country's law.

17. DiscRotate

As optical drives get faster, they also get louder. As mentioned in the last tip, this can be really irritating if you're watching DVD content on your Mac.

Luckily there's another solution available to you. It's called DiscRotate – a small preference pane that enables you to restrict the speed of your drive without interfering with the playback you view on the screen. It's accessible at any time through a handy menu bar icon, and you can reset it again when the movie's over.

18. Write to NTFS

Natively, OS X can read an NTFS-formatted drive, but not write to it. Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac OS X gives full read/write access, and fully supports OS X 10.6 in 64-bit mode.

Related Stories

• Amazon introduces audio and video to Kindle on iPhone and iPad
• Review: Apple Mac Mini
• In Depth: 11 things to expect from the iPod touch 4th generation

"

 

(Via TechRadar: All latest feeds.)

In Depth: Cool iTunes scripts you should download today

In Depth: Cool iTunes scripts you should download today: "

AppleScript is something of an unsung hero. It provides scope for automating repetitive tasks, but few users ever go near it.

 

If you're an iTunes power user, scripts are a must, but you needn't hack away in AppleScript Editor — many pre-built iTunes scripts are available online. All you need to do is download them, plonk them in the iTunes Scripts folder, wait a second or two, and extra functionality is yours.

All of the scripts mentioned are available for free from the Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes website. If you're using iTunes on a PC, check out these Windows Solutions at the same site.

Track management

If you've a pretty big music collection, keeping it in good shape can take time, and with thousands of tracks things can slip through the net. Scripts can assist you with management tasks, taking minutes or seconds to do what would usually take you hours or more.

One of the best 'house cleaning' scripts is Super Remove Dead Tracks. This finds songs in your library that are no longer available on your Mac. Every 500 tracks it throws up a dialog box to inform you of its progress, and you also get an optional text-based log file at the end, telling you which entries have been deleted. On our 13,500-track test library on a bog-standard 24-inch iMac, this entire process took under a minute.

Tracks Without Artwork to Playlist is in a similar space. It enables you to select a library, playlist or an arbitrary bunch of tracks and copy songs without artwork to a new playlist. On activating the script, all you need to do is click Proceed, choose a name for your playlist and wait for a bit. On our iMac, the script took about five minutes to churn through our 13,500 tracks, finding about 1,500 that lacked artwork.

With a 'no artwork' playlist in place, it's a simple process to send these tracks to Album Artwork Assistant in order to grab artwork online.

TAKE A SHORTCUT:If you regularly use a script, apply a keyboard shortcut via Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences

On the playlist front, another great script is Gather Up the One-Hits. It collects tracks where the artists are each represented in your library by just a single song. Chances are this will mainly comprise content from compilations, but we found a bunch of one-offs we'd grabbed from the iTunes Store and subsequently forgotten about.

Track info and playback

Along with rapidly cleaning up your library, scripts can be used to deal with metadata issues, without you having to open a single Get Info window.

Quite often, the data iTunes downloads when you import tracks from CDs by fairly obscure artists isn't accurate. A common error is the artist and track name fields being reversed. The Swap This With That script from the This Tag, That Tag Scripts compilation can deal with this.

Launch the script, select a tag to swap from and another to swap to, and your songs' data is amended. However, be aware that there's no undo.

If your niggles with track data are subtler, investigate Track Names to Sentence Caps and Track Names to Word Caps — both of which reformat cases in track names — and Remove n Characters From Front or Back.

The last of those enables you to remove a specific number of characters from the start ('front') or end ('back') of a selection of song titles. So if some song titles have track numbers at the start or the likes of '[disc 1]' at the end, this script helps remove that information quickly and easily.

Once your track data is in order, scripts can also assist with playback controls. Needle Drop enables you to audition a selection of tracks in automated fashion, after defining playback length and an intro point. For example, you can play ten-second bursts from two-minutes into every track from a specified playlist.

Another favourite is Make Bookmarkable, which attempts to turn the file type of selected AAC tracks into M4B, thereby making them 'bookmarkable', so playback resumes where you left off. Make UN-Bookmarkable reverses the process.

External considerations

Our final set of scripts involves taking your experience outside of iTunes in various ways. The first pair deals with discovering more about what you're listening to.

Search Wikipedia and Google Video Search work in similar ways: select a script and a dialog appears asking whether you want to make a search based on the currently playing track or currently selected track. You're then asked to select a category to base the search on.

INSTANT INFO:Search for an artist or album on Wikipedia directly from within iTunes simply by using a little script

For Wikipedia, you can select the artist, album or composer. For Google Video, you choose between song, artist and album. The dialogs aren't pretty, but they get the job done and save time.

Another set of scripts enables you to export track information from iTunes. Although this can be done using File > Library > Export Playlist, the resulting text file is complicated, huge and unwieldy. Instead, we recommend Album-Artist to HTML Table, which exports a list of your artists and albums (and, optionally, associated tracks, although processing that information takes a long time, so we dont recommend it) to an HTML document that you can open in a web browser.

The script has a couple of quirks: you need to reorder your track list to Album by Artist for best results, and don't let the script open a browser when it's finished or you'll likely get an error. Instead, click Done and manually open the file it outputs.

Another export option worth a look is Playlist to papercdcase.com. This enables you to export up to 28 tracks from a playlist to papercdcase.com (the site opens in Safari), which cunningly formats the data into a PDF file that can then be turned into a CD case, if you get your origami skills in order.

 

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"

 

(Via TechRadar: All latest feeds.)

Yet Another Album Artwork Assistant

Here's another, haven't tried it out yet but was turned on to it by TechRadar...

How to start your own ISP

An interesting article, granted, it's in the UK but it's not really that different for the US.  I recall having read about a community in Colorado many years ago that did the same thing because the local ISPs didn't see a reasonable return on investment or too long a payback period.  I know people here in the Bay Area who don't have local access to anything other than satellite or cellular Internet and are clamoring for Internet access.

Yesterday congress passed funds for ISPs to beef up their Internet services to residences.  Let's see if we can get more homes connected!

 

 

How to start your own ISP: "

There are 4,000 homes in the UK that don't have internet access at all (known as 'notspots') and 2.5 million who only have 2.5Mbps ('slow-spots'). If you're one of these people, you no longer have to put up with being ignored by your local ISP – you can become your local ISP.

 

Some villagers, such as those in Lyddington, Rutland, have banded together and raised the capital to lease BT's services and lay their own fibre-optic cables, turning their internet no-go zone into a digitally connected hub that offers the 200 homes in the village download speeds of up to 40Mbps.

Companies such as BT and Virgin usually consider plans to develop the infrastructure of rural areas as economically unviable, so until now villages like Lyddington were effectively cut off from the internet.

Being denied broadband is no joke. More and more council and government services are accessed online – for almost all of us, the internet is a must.

To create their own ISP, which they called Rutland Telecom, Lyddington's residents joined forces with a local ICT company, which was able to resell BT's broadband service. They then paid for and laid their own fibre-optic cable to the village's street cabinet.

Director Mark Melluish said, 'For the first time in UK telecommunications history, the telephone lines of customers are completely cut off from the local BT exchange.' And they won't be the only ones for long.

Residents of Alston Moor in Cumbria have already dug the trenches needed to lay the cable for their own 100Mbps service.

Other options

Of course, there are alternatives that are worth investigating before setting up your own ISP. There's mobile broadband technology, which uses the mobile phone 3G network. However, this is quite costly, and the service is patchy outside built-up areas (www.ofcom.org.uk offers a coverage map).

Another possible option is satellite broadband. Again, this is expensive: start-up costs are typically over £600 per household, with high monthly rental rates (£30 to £100 depending on usage) and low data speeds (typically 2Mbps).

Other solutions involve using wireless technologies, but these require an uninterrupted line of sight from receiver to receiver, so aren't suitable for areas with high vegetation or hilly terrain.

We contacted BT to see what it had to say about the new ISP startups. It said: 'This is a positive development as, to date, BT has been alone in investing in rural areas.'

We also asked BT what it was doing to address the problems of rural areas lacking broadband access. The company replied: 'BT is investing £1.5billion to deliver fibre broadband to at least 40 per cent of the UK (10 million homes) by summer 2012. We are also rolling out advanced copper broadband – offering speeds of up to 20Mbps – to 75 per cent of homes by spring 2011.' Any guesses as to where that 75 per cent isn't?

Want to follow in the footsteps of Cybermoor and Rutland Telecom? Here's our handy guide

1. Check if it's the right approach for your area

Before you start digging up the road to lay your fibre-optic cable, it's important to see whether setting up your own ISP is a sensible idea in your region.

It's definitely worth exploring your options with the CBN (Community Broadband Network) or with companies such as Cybermoor and Rutland Telecom themselves, who can help you carry out all of the necessary feasibility studies.

Then you can start work on a business plan so that you can demonstrate how your company is going to deliver its service to its customers and profi ts to its investors.

2. Organise the funding

Setting yourself up as an ISP doesn't come cheap. We're talking tens of thousands of pounds to buy or lease the technology needed and lay the fibre-optic cable.

There may be some grants available for your region, but private investment seems to be the normal method of funding. This means finding 10 to 20 like-minded friends who don't mind investing a couple of grand each.

If your business plan is sound, then you should be able to offer them a reasonable return over the longer term, should the project be successful.

3. Get the lawyers in

There's a lot of red tape involved in setting up a company. Apart from the usual form-filling at Companies House, you'll need to sort out the contracts for planning permission for your infrastructure, the returns for the investors, the contracts with BT Openreach for using or taking over their phone lines and services, as well as the legal paperwork for the agreements on subscriptions and billing for your customers.

4. Buy/rent the technology

Investing in industrial technology is a costly business, especially if you're planning to future-proof your service. You'll need the latest fibre-to-the-home Ethernet switching technologies to replace your (likely) antiquated BT street cabinet, as well as the networking technologies required to make it all work.

BT told us that it's happy to help companies set up their own broadband services: 'In the case of Rutland Telecom, it is buying our Ethernet products such as Backhaul Extension Service (BES) and Sub Loop Unbundling (SLU).'

5. Trench warfare

Next, you need to lay your brand new fibre-optic cable and replace the innards of your village's BT street cabinet.

Being granted permission to dig up public highways isn't easy, so you'll need to plan for this part of the process a long way in advance. Then it's just a case of getting the workmen in – the whole job only took six hours to complete in Lyddington.

6. Customer service

Now all you need to do is start billing your customers… Oh, and provide some customer support should anything go wrong (such as someone accidentally driving into your cabinet).

Also, don't forget that now the Digital Economy Act is law, you'll be responsible for what your customers download using your servers – so policing their behaviour may be another cost that you need to factor in.

 

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"

 

(Via TechRadar: All latest feeds.)

Ducati creates a short film with the iPhone 4

Amazing that the video was shot solely with an iPhone, also amazing ride on the Multistrada, I think I'd like one of those....

 

Ducati creates a short film with the iPhone 4: "

Filed under: Video, iPhone

I have to eat my words -- despite my belief before launch that an iPhone 4 wouldn't be hard to find without a preorder, I'm still waiting to get the chance to buy one. But I got to play with another one last night (that screen!), and just like every other time I've had a chance to use it, I've been very impressed by the back camera. Both stills and HD video look really amazing when taken with that thing. Here's another example: the Ducati motorcycle team filmed the entire commercial above on eight different iPhone 4s over a period of four days -- watching it in HD shows off just what this camera is capable of.

They did use the Owle Bubo, which explains some of the better shots a little bit. And you can also see that slight shudder so common to low-end HD cameras, especially when the camera pans quickly or tries to capture fast motion. But especially without color correction, the images still look terrific for a camera on your phone. The audio is great as well, but I'm not convinced they did that with only a phone. The final video was edited together in Adobe Premiere, just because 'there were enough unknowns' without trying to use iMovie on iPhone for the first time.

TUAWDucati creates a short film with the iPhone 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone - Ducati - Unofficial Apple Weblog - Apple - Owle Bubo"

 

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Open-source ERP 'most active' SourceForge project

Of course it was inevitable, but I get shudders at the thought of trying to implement.  I'm sure there's lots of professional services available to assist, but WOW!

Open-source ERP 'most active' SourceForge project: "Open-source ERP software may represent a small chunk of the overall market, but as a concept it has clearly gained a critical mass of adherents."

(Via Computerworld Breaking News.)