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Web UI

The capabilities of browser based applications have exploded in recent years. (This is especially important for ZENworks – as we move the management console to the new ZENworks Control Center.)

There is a breaking set of new ‘Web 2.0’ applications that use AJAX to deliver a really rich UI; Google Maps is probably the most well known; but I also love these:

Protopage
BACKBASE

I remember some of the contortions that had to turned just a few years ago to get anything even looking like this in a browser.

I saw some of the Hula calendar work when I was last in Cambridge – it all looked very slick.

TechCrunch is a great resource for tracking some of these new concepts.

I predict that these UIs will become prevalent on the most sticky sites; I also hope that a lot of the ‘cool’ and ‘sexy’ comes across into the more mundane enterprise IT world.

New music

I finally spent some time (and parted with the hard earned) and got some new music:

Camera Obscura – Biggest Bluest Hifi
Camera Obscura – Underachievers Please Try Harder

I first heard this band on the John Peel 65th Birthday Party – it’s a lot like early Belle and Sebastian; mellow lyrics and guitar. Best served with a nice bottle of red.

Decemberists – Picaresque

This band is on tour this fall – nearest gig to SLC is in Boise, ID. Huh? Go figure. SLC truly is a live music backwater – my proof points are here and here.

Final hit was a couple of CDs from DJ Tiësto – a hot tip from Mark Schouls.

DJ Tiësto – In My Memory
DJ Tiësto – Parade of the Athletes

Nice – a couple of hours of European electronic music. Good for the drive into work.

ZENworks 7 imaging

ZENworks OS imaging has always been based on the Linux kernel – it’s fast, efficient, has a great networking stack and is also extensible. None of the problems of DOS and getting NDIS drivers etc.

Earlier versions of ZENworks – (ZfD 3.x, ZfD 4.0, ZENworks 6, ZENworks 6.5) – spawned a slew of sites dedicated to tweaking this Linux environment. Notable is the Novell Forge Project zfdimgdrv. The imaging environment has also been extended by the likes of ENGL.

ZENworks 7 changed to a SLES 9 SP2-based kernel; this provides extensive hardware support (and real support; things that have been tested).

For unsupported hardware – or to add updated drivers – life is now a lot simpler.

Matt Misbach – one of the ZENworks engineers – passed on this tip:

  1. Obtain the binary driver file, it has the extension of “.ko”, (If no binary driver is available, then the source needs to be obtained and built on a sles9 sp2 machine.)
  2. On your ZENworks server mount the /srv/tftp/boot/initrd file using a similar command:
    mount -o loop /srv/tftp/boot/initrd /mnt
  3. copy the new .ko file into the /mnt/lib/modules/2.6.5-override-default/initrd
  4. umount /mnt