Day 33 – Madison, WI – Rest Day

Real quick power blog, as i have 19 minutes until we load the truck.  Sorry for typos.

Yesterday, we had a great day as we took a Trek Factory Tour in Waterloo, WI.  It was a lot of fun, as the entire team went and had a great informal tour with Jason Mountford of Trek.  Got to see the way they fabricate the Trek carbon fiber bikes.  It’s really cool, how they make them in pieces, glue them together, bond/sand them, paint and decal.  Looks really easy, but it’s all the intricacies that makes Trek the bike they are today.

Yesterday was also bike clean day.  You might remember a couple of days ago that I got a tire flat.  Well, it was a sidewall tear, and I put a dollar bill in the tire to help keep the sidewall from tearing more.  It worked.  But I went ahead and switched it out with a new tire.  I also put on my new chain.  So, I am hopefully good for the rest of the ride.

We also got a nice surprise with a visit from Bob Dumke, a 2007 Big Rider, and his wife Barbara.  They brought lots of goodies for the team.  We’ve had several cities where we’ve met previous riders, and it’s really nice to sit and chat about their experience.  At this point, I’m always curious how it is getting back into life after the ride.

Today, we may have our toughest challenge as we have a 95 mile route into the wind down to Garden Prairie, IL.  Oh, our 8th state today in Illinois.  I hope to get a good state line picture.  The next two days, we’ll spend a couple hundred miles getting around Chicago, and we still won’t be done.  We are also starting the first day of 6 days on the road until our next rest day in Ohio.  Hard to think we’ll be in Ohio in a week.

Hard to leave Madison, as it’s been a fun town to be in.

Talk with you in Garden Prairie.

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First Impressions of iPhoto ’09

Got my hands on iLife ’09 yesterday as Apple shipped it out 1 week ahead of the estimated delivery date.  Yes, Apple has a way of doing that with items purchased before they officially go on sale.  Good thing, I guess.

My main interest in iLife ’09 is actually iPhoto and it’s new support for Faces and Places.

With my family version, I installed it first on my laptop (MacBook Intel) with around 1,000 photos.  First, it updated my iPhoto library in about 60 seconds.  Next, I was able to immediately checkout events and photos like before with no problems.

I went into places and immediately started to tag several events that I had with the Places I had bee over the past year or so.  I don’t have a GPS camera, so I had to manually find the places and attach to the photos.  I give the Places an A+ so far.  Very easy to use.

Next, I clicked on the Faces tab and noticed that it was going through my entire library and trying to detect faces.  It took quite awhile with the 1,000 photos.  I didn’t time it, but I believe it ran for about an hour.  Not too bad.

One it had detected all the faces across my library, I was able to define some names with the faces.  This is a very easy process.  Took me only seconds to go into a photo of a family shot and immediately identify all the people in the photo with relative ease.  Then, for each person, I had it recommend other pictures with that individual.  Wow, Wow, Wow!  This was so easy and I was amazed at how accurate.  I was able to immediately find 50+ photos with a 100% hit rate.  Now, after I start exhausting all those photos, the hit rate tails off rapidly, but that’s because I got nearly all of them.

Now, the not so great part about iPhoto ’09 and Faces.  With my iMac (iMac G5) everything installed correctly and quickly.  The initial library update worked great.  But the initial face detection is VERY SLOW.  I started the process about 16 hours ago, and it is still estimating another 12 hours.  Now, I am trying to detect faces across ~32,000  photos.  Good thing is that it does allow me to do other thing in iPhoto, like find places, but WOW it is SLOOOOOWWWWW!

I’ll soon take a closer look at iMovie and the other components, but first I need to get my iPhoto back from taking up all the CPU.

That’s it for now…

SailPoint IdentityIQ 3.0

Today, SailPoint Technologies announced SailPoint IdentityIQ 3.0 (formally known as ComplianceIQ), an all encompassing identity governance solution featuring:

• Compliance Manager
• Role Manager
• Access Request Manager
• Identity Intelligence

SailPoint IdentityIQ 3.0

If you attending Digital ID World this week in Anaheim, CA, be sure to attend an Enterprise Role Management Workshop hosted by SailPoint to learn more.

Technorati Tags: Compliance, Identity, Provisioning, Digital ID World, Risk, Roles, SailPoint

Congrats to the OpenDS Team

Congratulations to Ludovic Poitou and the entire OpenDS team for the release of OpenDS 1.0.0!

Having worked with Ludo over the years I know how happy the team is to obtain this latest milestone for a great Open Source Directory Server in Java. Having worked with Directory Service products over the last 10 years, the release of OpenDS is even more exciting as it represents a next era in directory service products. For those out there looking for a scalable, easy to use and state of the art, you should definitely check it out. The Java platform allows you to install this OpenDS, from the web, in minutes on a multitude of platforms. It runs great on my MacBook.

As a member of the Project OpenPTK, I am equally excited to see a sister Identity Management Java.net project obtain this milestone.

Technorati Tags: OpenDS

iPhone – 2.0 firmware a winner!

Late this afternoon, I upgraded my 8GB iPhone (1st Generation) to the 2.0 firmware and was pleased with how easy the entire upgrade process was. For those out there upgrading, it’s important to update your iTunes to the latest release (7.7) and do a sync from your iPhone before you get the updates and upgrade the phone.

Once you begin the upgrade, it takes about 10 minutes to load it on, verify the load and then install the new firmware. After that, it’ll allow you to restore your backup from iTunes. After which your phone will boot saying that it’s been activated. That’s all!

I didn’t mess with it much at that moment, thought I might need some time to focus on the new features. While out at dinner, couldn’t help it. Pulled the phone out of my pocket and started to play around. One cool things I found out right away is that I could go to the app store over Edge and pull down apps. I started with AOL and eBay. In about 2-3 minutes, I was IMing folks and logging into my eBay account.

Then, the KILLER APP, or should I say Blackberry Killer:

Push Email, Calendar and Contacts

Took me less than 1 minute to add my Exchange account and it asked what it’d like to push. I selected only Email and Calendar at this time. Went to my laptop, emailed my work email a new mail. In less than 30 seconds, my iPhone beeped with a new email. How cool is that?

As Apple’s site proclaims, “The best phone for business, Ever“.

I’ll try to post additional blogs on other things I see, good and bad. Enjoy this new update, and for those getting the new iPhone here in the states tomorrow morning, have a blast!

Now, I’m off to figure out MobileMe.

Technorati Tags: iPhone

OpenPTK Update…

Yesterday, Scott, Derrick and I held our Q3 OpenPTK Meeting. The goal was to discuss the final todo’s around the release of OpenPTK version 1.1. You can view the Meeting Minutes to see what we discussed. Some items discussed of particular importance:

Documentation Wiki
Of interest, we’ve been working on a public wiki that we hope to use for documentation of the 1.1 release. The easy link to remember is:

http://wiki.OpenPTK.org/

You’ll see that this redirects you to Sun’s Wiki – Project OpenPTK Site. Feel free to bookmark either. Note that the wiki is still under construction. Feel free to submit any comments you feel would make it easier to use.

Downloads, Code, Issues and Project Info
And as always, we are still keeping Downloads, Code, Issue Tracking and Project Info at Sun’s Java.net web site. The easy link to get there will continue to be:

http://www.OpenPTK.org/

Version 1.1 Release
Although we haven’t finalized the actual date of the version 1.1 release, we’d characterize it as being pending. With this release, we’ll provide a Release Notes Guide with the new features to version 1.1. As the date becomes available, we’ll be sure to send an email to the OpenPTK mailing lists or mention it on one of our blogs.

OpenPTK Mailing List
You ask, “How do I get on the mailing list?” Follow these easy steps:

1. If you have already, Join Us! (You need to create/have a Java.net login)
2. Click on Mailing List to join one of the mailing lists (announce and users are a couple of good ones).

Thanks and keep the comments coming!

tls

Technorati Tags: Identity, OpenPTK, Provisioning

Vonage and VPN Access

I’ve got an issue with my current VoIP service (Vonage) and am looking for a replacement or fix.

I have been using Vonage for several years now, am happy with the service, but as of a few months ago, I have a need to VPN in to my corporate network using a standard MS VPN service. Problem is, that my Vonage router (RT31P2) doesn’t support VPN through the router. I just got off the phone with Vonage support to find out that this router doesn’t in fact support it nor do they have one that does.

First of all, that’s really hard for me to believe they don’t support it through this device. The only option I have is to go from my Cable Modem to another Router, then to my Vonage router. This works great, until I’m on a phone call and decide to download something while on call. Voice quality is terrible with dropped packets.

So, it looks like my days of being a Vonage customer is long gone. Any thoughts on this? Curious as as to what others would recommend for a VoIP service.

Thanks in advance!

Technorati Tags: Vonage

SailPoint Hospitality Suite – Burton Group Catalyst ’08

Had a little fun with the video that I shot at our SailPoint Hospitality Suite at Burton Catalyst ’08 Conference last week.

Hats off to Melanie and the SailPoint Marketing team for putting together! All the fresh seafood, drinks and demonstrations of SailPoint ComplianceIQ was enjoyed by all.

Technorati Tags: BurtonGroupCatalyst08, SailPoint

Auditing Privileged User Access

You may ask, what is Privileged User Access. An aspect is when a developer has access to root access on a Unix system or Administrator access to an AD Domain. I’m sure that happens often in your shop. Over the years, at past companies, I can’t count how many systems, including production customer systems, that I’ve had root access to. And at a minimum, these weren’t secured with even the most basic open source controls like sudo.

So, I ask, of all your Unix systems or AD domains, when you see someone login as root:

• Do you know who that person is?
• Is it someone on your staff?
• Maybe a vendor or partner?
• Maybe a competitor?
• And even if it is a friendly, should they have that access?
• What controls do you have in place to audit that access?

A couple of weeks ago, two leading vendors, Cloakware and SailPoint Technologies, in Privileged User Access and Governance, Risk & Compliance announced a partnership to deliver the industry’s first privileged user audit and compliance management solution.

With this combined solution, you not only get the security of knowing who has access to privileged user accounts, but also the ability to tie Governance, Risk and Compliance around that access.

In other words, my CIO can verify that Terry Sigle has root access to systems A, B and C while my CISO can audit, review activity and provide a role based definition around that access. This closed loop compliance will allow my enterprise to pass the related SOX controls around privileged user access.

I’m currently working on some prototypes around this combined solution and look forward to providing more details. I’d be interested if you have any good stories around privileged user access and how you’ve dealt with audit controls and roles around this.

Technorati Tags: Cloakware, Identity, Risk, Roles, SailPoint

Kudos to Starbucks!

Ok, after my previous post on GameStop’s “Bait and Switch” practice, I owe kudos do folks who do a great job. After all, good service these days is really hard to find sometimes.

This has actually happened many times. I often (yes, too often) stop in at a Starbucks for a quick coffee, especially when I’m waiting for my daughters dance or gym classes. The other night, I stopped in (Custer/Parker Plano, TX location) with my laptop looking forward to catching up on email, ordered a simple Coffee of the Day. They were currently brewing a pot and due to the immediate unavailability, they provided me that cup “on the house”. Wow! Without asking, they just refused to accept payment, even though I was in no rush and was happy to wait the short 5 min that it actually took.

My hats off to Starbucks for giving me an A++ experience.

Technorati Tags: GameStop, Starbucks