automation

Marc Fleury, founder of the successful JBoss open-source project and company, is largely considered one of the great open-source pioneers.

Not many people can claim to have have built a project that continues to inspire tens of thousands of downloads each month, plus the commercial envy of Larry Ellison and $350 million from Red Hat.

Fleury can, but he's not resting on his laurels. Having upended the application server market, Fleury is now funding OpenRemote, an open-source home automation project that was inspired while Fleury was shopping for a "geek chic" home automation system and discovered that … Read more

If you know how to use a CD player, you will be a master at using GhostMouse, a tiny program that lets you record and play back a series of mouse movements, including right clicks and drag-and-drop actions. You may, however, ask yourself when or where you could put your recorded clicks to work.

Using GhostMouse's compact, three-button interface, you can record a script to replay a set of actions. Unlike other programs designed to record and replicate user actions, this one is limited to mouse-related tasks. More robust programs will handle typed text and other keyboard actions. Still, … Read more

JaBack is one of many backup programs on the market. It includes most of the standard backup features; however, we found its file backup configurations vague.

The main user interface was plain, with large command buttons at the top of the window, a tree-menu on the left that displays all created backup tasks, and a large panel that displays the specifics of each task. The program includes a set of tips at the bottom of the window, but it's never a good sign when you have to depend on tips to find your way around the interface. But once … Read more

TimeMachineEditor is a free, simple application that lets you change the default setting for your Mac's Time Machine hourly backups.

TimeMachineEditor lets you set a new hourly interval, or even specify multiple calendar intervals for hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backups--whether you want daily backups at 2 a.m., weekly backups at a certain time every weekend, or any other possible combination. You can also set Time Machine to automatically back up when disks are mounted or when the computer wakes from sleep.

Time Machine's default setting may be adequate for most users, but for certain situations--for example, … Read more

Marc Fleury (of JBoss fame) and Mark Spencer (of Digium fame) have a significant side project: turning us all into couch potatoes, but doing it with open source.

Their project, OpenRemote, is the world's first open-source remote for home automation. Given the plethora of systems (entertainment, lighting, etc.) that need to feed into a home automation system, opening up a central repository of controls to enable developers to plug in new ones feels like the right way to go.

Part of the OpenRemote team's vision is tying into the world we already live in, not merely making our … Read more

Allkeys Macro provides users with an opportunity to customize their computer functions and possibly eliminate the need for a mouse. While this sounds like a dream come true, the reality may be far too complicated for novice users.

A macro is a shortcut to help eliminate steps between tasks. For example, many people use the Control+C command to copy something. Allkeys Macro provides users with the ability to set up a macro for any command imaginable. The 30-day free trial allows users to choose their own keystrokes to perform the task and map out what will happen when those … Read more

In Aptera Motor's manufacturing facility, visitors are given a sledgehammer and encouraged to swing away at the company's electric vehicle prototype. Dent it, and you can win $100.

This challenge, of course, will not apply to accidents on the streets when the three-wheeled aerodynamic vehicle hits California's congested highways in October.

The hands-on exercise demonstrates the vehicle's inherent safety, and is an attempt to overcome the perception that a small, lightweight, three-wheeled vehicle isn't as safe as a conventional gas-fueled car. … Read more

I wrote not long ago about the various disciplines that data center operations teams will need to work through to address those cloud-computing values you often hear hyped by people like me.

In that post, I noted that many organizations had gained an understanding of how server virtualization could be used to abstract software concepts, thus managing them distinctly from the underlying hardware. I also noted, however, that few organizations had made the decision to systematically automate that management.

Channel-V tonight pointed me to an interview by Virtualization Review's Keith Ward of Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior director of product marketing. In the interview, Balkansky discusses the upcoming VDC-OS product release, and what it means to the next generation of data centers. He starts with a very familiar theme:

"Henry Ford introduced automation to the manufacturing world," Balkansky says.

"We're transitioning from swinging hammers to pushing buttons," he continues. "The focus becomes on what needs to happen, not spending the majority of your time executing it and making it happen. Ford introduced speed and efficiency and predictability in the (manufacturing) process." Those same elements will characterize VDC-OS, he says.

Balkansky goes on to point out that the very core of the system administrator role will change as a result, an argument that I've been making for some time. Rather than focusing on reactive, tactical operations, the system administrator of the future will "specify the service levels the application requires: availability, security, scalability."… Read more

For a variety of reasons, Matt Quinlan, formerly of JBoss, left Appcelerator some months ago. I was glad to hear this week that "Quin," as he's called, has landed at Loopfuse, an open-source marketing automation company. Quin is one of the brightest lights from JBoss, and will be a credit to Loopfuse as its vice president of Sales and Marketing.

It's a great coup for Loopfuse and, more importantly, a return to the open-source industry by a highly respected JBoss veteran. Welcome back, Quin.

Disclosure: I am an advisor to Loopfuse.