Matt Loney's Blog
What it says on the box
Tuesday 31 October 2006, 2:26 PM
Boost your Google ranking
You might notice that the ZDNet UK edit staff are using their full, real names as usernames here. There's two reasons for this: first, so you know who we are and can find us; and second, because ZDNet UK tends to have high Google rankings - once your name appears on our site you tend to rise quickly up the Google search pages.
Of course you may remain anonymous if you wish, but if you want a high ranking on Google then we'd suggest you use your real name. Now this is not an invitation to post ads here or links to ads. That would be against our Ts&Cs, so don't do it!
Update [03 Nov 2006]: Our operations director Mike Barrett, who until this week you would not find on Google, has been testing this. Read the results here, or see them here.
Monday 30 October 2006, 6:33 PM
What that beta tag is all about
We're all getting used to seeing online applications launch in beta, but less so big editorially driven sites.
So why have we launched in beta? Well, for several reasons. First is that this redesign takes us, we like to think, some way beyond your average big editorially driven site. The community area we have built includes tools for professional networking; ZDNet is now as much an application as a publishing platform, and that means there is still a lot we need to iron out, and a lot we can improve on. Because we've built the platform ourselves it means we can change and improve, so we're very keen to hear your ideas for how we can make it better.
We have had the site in private beta testing mode for some time now, and as with any application, the point at which you open it up to the world is somewhere on a continuum. This continuum runs from major bug fixes to minor feature tweaks; and the point of launch is preferably as far towards the minor feature tweaks end of the spectrum as possible. We know we've still got some minor tweaks to make, and again there is plenty of opportunity for you to have your input. With that in mind we figured it made sense to launch the redesign in beta.
If you click on the button near the top right of every page this will take you to a form where you can give us feedback. Alternatively you can register and send any of the edit team a message through the system.
Wednesday 11 October 2006, 3:56 PM
Virtual appliances
I first heard of virtual appliances a couple of years ago during a trip to Sweden to hear about Intel's AMT technology. I didn't hear about them from Intel, but from Gartner analyst Brian Gammage, who reckoned there was a gap in the market here with a window of opportunity spanningn several years before Microsoft got his act together.
I reckon he was right - and no, this isn't a case of hindsight. When VMWare ran a competition this year to create virtual appliances, it got several hundred appliances entered. You can, for instance, download a complete stack for the Asterisk IPPBX - Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Asterisk itself - all fully confiugured and ready to go. How cool is that? Sure, these things are still a way from mass take-up, but some companies - vendors at least - are beginning to use them in anger.
I was having lunch with Paul Di Leo, the CEO of Zeus Technology, a couple of weeks ago, and he is very excited about the potential of virtual appliances. They will, for instance, allow Zeus to distribute fully working stacks of trial software - you want to try out their extensible traffic manager? Download the appliance. You don't need to install software in the traditional sense of the word, simply download it into a VMWare Player.
I gather that Zeus is also starting to use virtual appliances in production environments in housem, where it effectively has anm application sitting on a dedicated virtual OS that can move around, and is never materially affected by any other apps. There are some great possibilities here, not least for security - imaging firing up a browser on a dedicated OS. The OS layer starts to look much less signficant doesn't it?
