I suspect open compute project welcomes additional testing resources for the benefit of everyone... as long as it doesn't involve an oppressive amount of process that simply serve to slow down progress.
But... Web scale IS different, so I can't blame the main sponsors for not prioritizing what isn't as important to them. Once you accept that ALL hardware fails, and that you can either pay more for more reliable hardware, or you can develop better software architecture to handle failures, you look at things differently. Spend your money once on good software engineering, instead of over and over on every server.
> Is modern IT taught how to do what you just said? Do they learn how to strike the right balance between Security and Usability?
The enlightened ones know about DevOps and design thinking. Everyone else who believes draconian IT desktop control is the right solution is simply wrong.
People are more productive when they have an environment they like / want / choose.
IT simply can't control all tablets, phones, home computers, and more and more workers telecommute and work remotely, so... the battle is already lost for total control. Next best thing it to step back, take a holistic view on priorities, risks, the new status quo, and how IT can HELP your customers and business succeed... and plot a new course based on making PEOPLE productive first.
The idea of NASA ground control needing to tell astronauts to "close outlook" on their massively expensive mil-spec laptops so they can do file transfers of OST files gives me acid reflux.
IT is a commodity. Sharp IT managers see that virtualization will bring extremely powerful APIs and with a little bit of workflow and orchestration magic, their needs for the most skilled IT talent will stay the same or reduce as quantity of work increases over time. As much as people in the IT trenches may wish things to not change, change will continue. Fewer people with less skills will be able to manager larger numbers of systems and services.
Google for just about anything IT related, and you'll find THOUSANDS of hits on how to do it. Step-by-step instructions. Video walkthroughs. Preconfigured VM images. Despite what us IT folks may think -- that's UNUSUAL and somewhat unique for computers and IT. How many people can google "ubuntu ldap kerberos" or "linux drbd mysql" and follow the steps?
The "master mechanics" become architects and software developers who design "cars" that require fewer visits to the mechanics. They design process that is simple. They implement service menus that look more like a fast food menu. They automate their jobs and move on to more interesting work.
... and that's in the best interest of the business. The business likes predictable systems and services.
Most of us slashdotters with low userid numbers can vouch for the fact that a whole lot has changed in the last 12 or so years.
IT used to be the wild west. UNIX was not widely well understood -- even by software developers. UNIX servers were inaccessible. UNIX servers were big bucks. Linux was obscure. Hardly any computer hardware or software did much of anything out of the box. Sysadmins, consultants, and IT workers were worth their weight in gold -- because that wasn't any other option.
Now... IT is mature. Hardware is cheap and reliable. Linux is ubiquitous. Linux admin experience is not rare. apt-get or yum can deploy massive amounts of useful, nearly preconfigured software in minutes that would have taken sysadmins WEEKS or MONTHS to build, deploy, patch, etc in the past.
When I first started in IT, building a server was an *ART*. Each one was unique -- from the hardware to the disk layout to the partitioning, to the OS, to the locally installed software. Building a server was like building a Stradivarius.
Now, building a server is like stamping a kazoo out of tin. I can make 500 kazoos a day. They're all the same. I don't even need to log into them once.
In the past, general IT folks were quite often the white hat security experts who learned by doing/experimenting. Now... most companies have security teams an intrusion detection systems that sound alarms if anyone runs nmap on nessus.
Your average IT guy USED to have endless opportunities to be a hero by introducing opensource software options that almost nobody else in the company knew about. Linux in the mainstream has changed all that.
A *GOOD* IT worker used to have almost magical abilities to do orders of magnitude more work. Now, large scale admin processes are much more widely understood, there are many more tools, and those magical processes are well documented and demystified so that even the junior IT folks can do them.
How many IT jobs today involve compliance? How rewarding is compliance-related work? I bet that some of the lack of willingness to suggest process improvements is somehow tied to the process baggage of IT compliance.
I still like my job, but it's changed a lot. I don't *just* do IT. I add value to my company. Today, IT needs to be much more closely integrated with the business. IT needs to be a business partner. I doubt any businesses today would hire a BOFH.
I downloaded the alpha 6 netbook remix, put it on a USB stick, booted it on a Dell Optiplex 755, installed it, patched it, and am running it right now.
I think the "netboox remix" interface actually suits a lot of what people use computers for today... a glorified web browser... while not distracting the user with all the other windows, window decorations, virtual desktops, etc.
I'm a power user who loves those things, but I'm surprised how I feel somewhat freed up by not having to worry about them.
but seriously, the only way I see that Sony could make this almost ubiquitous would be to build a web app that uses flash and something like google gears for disconnected content playback persistence.
but they allow 3rd parties to sell hardware and write device drivers for their "appliance" -- neither of which they can directly support.
And... they encourage 3rd party software development that integrates with their OS... which they can't directly support.
Personally, I think that since Apple now runs on what is in effect commodity hardware, this argument won't hold water any more. In the past, they could say that someone illegally copied their proprietary hardware. But... since OSX boots on commodity hardware and is just restricted by software to not run on non-Apple servers out of the box... it seems anticompetitive to me.
"use competent people that actually give a damn". Don't just bring in warm bodies so that all the chairs are filled.
So true... a smart, skilled IT worker with a MASTERY of perl, shell, and UNIX fundamentals can be AT LEAST two orders of magnitude more impactful to the business than an "average" IT worker.
Well, if you are checking your physical clock at the microsecond level from a java app running within a virtual machine, then I suspect your clock could be wrong many more times a day.
China: The world's biggest prison for journalists and cyber-dissidents
Around 30 journalists and 50 Internet users are currently detained in China. Some of them since the 1980s. The government blocks access to thousands for news websites. It jams the Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur-language programmes of 10 international radio stations. After focusing on websites and chat forums, the authorities are now concentrating on blogs and video-sharing sites. China's blog services incorporate all the filters that block keywords considered "subversive" by the censors. The law severely punishes "divulging state secrets," "subversion" and "defamation" - charges that are regularly used to silence the most outspoken critics. Although the rules for foreign journalists have been relaxed, it is still impossible for the international media to employ Chinese journalists or to move about freely in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Install the OS themselves? How many normal people are really going to do that?
Maybe not when they initially buy a machine... but Microsoft has trained people well that after about 6 months of using Windows and installing all sorts of software, sometimes the best solution various random problems and performance issues is a TOTAL OS REINSTALL... or to buy a new computer.
I'm sure that Microsoft and most hardware vendors are really not thrilled that customers aren't demanding exponentially faster machines with exponentially more RAM and disk space.
How do you drive customer upgrades to more bloaded OSes when customers are demanding devices with lower cpu/ram specs?
As the price of systems drops from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars, having to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for OS + Office licensing becomes a non-trivial fraction of total system cost.
Also, you can bet that the hardware manufacturer's profits on a $500 device are razor thin. If they can cut $20 to $100 or more off the cost by using Linux, it's worth it.
So, at this point, I have to wonder whether Microsoft is going to try to converge WinCE code with Vista code for Windows 7 to have a single OS that can run on phones / UMPCs / netbooks / laptops / desktops (or at least the same codebase even if CPUs aren't the same). That's probably going to be hard for Microsoft. I expect they'll try to reimplement apps in silverlight instead.
All the goodness of goosh without the need for X or a browser
I actually added some of the handlers years ago, but I found that eventually Google searchbox was able to do many of them for me directly - like "quote intc" , "ufo site=cnn.com", etc.
I created my own handlers (elvii) for internal intranet use to do all sorts of mundane queries from the commandline with ease. Its amazing how excited people get when you give them a commandline way to do really quick web queries and get results with minimal CSS/ads/formatting junk.
That's my bet too. EFI on IA64 runs Windows PE binaries (for IA64). EFI on X64 (which hasn't been implemented by many hardware manufacturers btw) runs Windows PE binaries.
I, for one, griped at Intel about EFI the first time we tried to do any useful automation on Itanium with it -- EFI is glorified DOS, except without any of the useful tools available for DOS. Intel would have been miles ahead if the would have made a linux BIOS/preboot environment instead.
Directories full of random documents in random formats of random version with varying degrees of completeness and accuracy tend to get less useful as an information source as time goes on. Docs get abandoned and continue to provide outdated information and dead links. Doc formats change and require converters to import. Doc maintainers leave the company.
If you work somewhere where people are not trained to attach Office docs to every email, where people don't use Word to compose 10 bullet points, where people don't use a spreadsheet as a substitute for all sorts of CRM and business applications... a Wiki is actually a good solution.
You can use something like MediaWiki or Twiki or... heck you can use a whole variety of content management systems.
The key to success is to *EMPOWER* people to actually update information, and have a few people who are empowered to actually edit, rehash, sort, move, prune wiki pages and content. As the content improves, it will draw in more users and more content creators. Pretty soon, employees will *COMPLAIN* when someone sends out information and doesn't update the wiki.
Some corporate cultures are not wiki-friendly. Some management chains *fear* the wiki. Some companies have whole webmaster groups who believe it is their job to delay the process of getting useful content onto the web by controlling it. If you're in one of those companies... start up your own wiki and beg for forgiveness later.
... suddenly, I'm thinking about how much *more* likely it would be to have the plot of The Crying Game play out in a virtual world than in the physical world.
And, if there's no law preventing a man from dressing up as a woman in real life, why should there be restrictions for them to do so in a virtual world?
For anyone whose thinking, "well in real life, at a real bar, I can tell it's a man dressed up like a woman so I won't ever talk to him -- that's the difference!", I challenge you to go see a cabaret show in Thailand and *then* say that. I saw a few performers that were way hotter than my wife who would have made me not care about the presence of a Y chromosome.
As a palm faithful for years and years, it was with great reluctance that I jumped ship to the iPhone. The browser and media player on the iphone are FANTASTIC. I can't say enough good things about them. There are however, a number of problems I've had dealing with my transition from Palm to iPhone.
- Few key *NATIVE* apps that I can't or don't want to replace with a web-based app: Let's face it, EDGE or wireless networking isn't good enough everywhere to completely depend on for frequently used apps. I want a local password manager app. I want a multiprotocol IM client. I want ability to record voice and video clips. I want a global search function. I want a draw/paint/notepad app where I can draw things like I do on cocktail napkins. I want a *REAL* todo app that ties into my calendar. I really miss my car maintenance/gas mileage app.
- mail app. Make email able to open any audio/video attachments with "itunes" multimedia player. Give me per-email account config options for # of messages to download, how many to keep. How about download and keep all messages until free ram less than X? Need ability to search email subject, to:, and email body.
- Integration features: I want my phone to "guess" my location based on cell towers, wifi access points and show a 'you are here' in Google Maps. I want to be able to select text from a webpage, and have the option of emailing the text with a link to source page to anyone in my address book. I want to be able to enter a phone number in the "location" field for a meeting and be able to touch the number on a meeting reminder and have the iphone dial my meeting number.
- Sync: Please oh please, let me sync my calendar with Google Calendar and Google contacts - I'd like to be able to do it wired or wirelessly. Add support in iTunes for syncing with Mozilla Sunbird. Add support for syncing with multiple calendar sources that have different sync locations and rules -- let my sync my work calendar and have events show up in red. Let me sync my personal calendar and have events show up in blue. Let me be able to toggle viewing my wife's personal calendar on and off as I wish and have it show up in a different color. Let me schedule events for multiple calendars. Please also add support for syncing with Palm Desktop. There aren't many good free PIMs on Windows. Outlook blows. Not everyone or every company uses Exchange. I wasted days trying to get 10 years of Palm data into outlook and into my iPhone. In the end, I only got about 80% of it over. That's a tragedy -- Apple should make it trivial for a Palm user to switch to iPhone with all their data.
- Browser: Flash, Flash, Flash... oh and bluetooth printing support
- Remote access: If you don't open up the iPhone, at least give us a multipurpose remote access app. I want to choose from the following options: 1) text-based ssh console, 2) RDP client that support multi-touch screen scaling and screen tilting, 3) VNC client that supports multi-touch screen scaling and positioning
- Hardware enhancements: Bluetooth - give me a tiny, foldable bluetooth keyboard and iphone stand that pairs with the iPhone so I can put it on the desk and type faster. Keyboard folded over should be about same size as iphone. Give us Stereo Bluetooth support and sell a stereo bluetooth headset with a MIC for phone use too (We hate wires). Keep larger flash drive capacities coming. Keyboard slider might make an interesting device - I won't be typing any novels on my current iPhone.
- Provide a *FREE* SDK for 3rd party development. Don't force me to jump ship to a gphone in 1 year. Let me hack my iPhone without worrying about Apple updates needing me to "reformat" my device and resync all my data. Come on, now!
- iTunes - let me grab new podcasts wireless and sync up info when I sync with itunes
Did I mention native, multiprotocol IM client? Oh, well let me mention it again. Let me specify my own XMPP/jabber servers too so I can connect with my corporate IM servers.
Slashdot Mirror
Flashback to 2003.
Reading daily updates on slashdot
Reading daily updates and comment threads from PJ on groklaw
I can't believe that 15 years later this lawsuit lumbers on.
How many tens of millions of dollars (hundreds of milions?) have both sides spent on this lawsuit?
I suspect open compute project welcomes additional testing resources for the benefit of everyone... as long as it doesn't involve an oppressive amount of process that simply serve to slow down progress.
But... Web scale IS different, so I can't blame the main sponsors for not prioritizing what isn't as important to them. Once you accept that ALL hardware fails, and that you can either pay more for more reliable hardware, or you can develop better software architecture to handle failures, you look at things differently. Spend your money once on good software engineering, instead of over and over on every server.
> Is modern IT taught how to do what you just said? Do they learn how to strike the right balance between Security and Usability?
The enlightened ones know about DevOps and design thinking. Everyone else who believes draconian IT desktop control is the right solution is simply wrong.
People are more productive when they have an environment they like / want / choose.
IT simply can't control all tablets, phones, home computers, and more and more workers telecommute and work remotely, so... the battle is already lost for total control. Next best thing it to step back, take a holistic view on priorities, risks, the new status quo, and how IT can HELP your customers and business succeed... and plot a new course based on making PEOPLE productive first.
The idea of NASA ground control needing to tell astronauts to "close outlook" on their massively expensive mil-spec laptops so they can do file transfers of OST files gives me acid reflux.
IT is a commodity. Sharp IT managers see that virtualization will bring extremely powerful APIs and with a little bit of workflow and orchestration magic, their needs for the most skilled IT talent will stay the same or reduce as quantity of work increases over time. As much as people in the IT trenches may wish things to not change, change will continue. Fewer people with less skills will be able to manager larger numbers of systems and services.
Google for just about anything IT related, and you'll find THOUSANDS of hits on how to do it. Step-by-step instructions. Video walkthroughs. Preconfigured VM images. Despite what us IT folks may think -- that's UNUSUAL and somewhat unique for computers and IT. How many people can google "ubuntu ldap kerberos" or "linux drbd mysql" and follow the steps?
The "master mechanics" become architects and software developers who design "cars" that require fewer visits to the mechanics. They design process that is simple. They implement service menus that look more like a fast food menu. They automate their jobs and move on to more interesting work.
... and that's in the best interest of the business. The business likes predictable systems and services.
Most of us slashdotters with low userid numbers can vouch for the fact that a whole lot has changed in the last 12 or so years.
IT used to be the wild west. UNIX was not widely well understood -- even by software developers. UNIX servers were inaccessible. UNIX servers were big bucks. Linux was obscure. Hardly any computer hardware or software did much of anything out of the box. Sysadmins, consultants, and IT workers were worth their weight in gold -- because that wasn't any other option.
Now... IT is mature. Hardware is cheap and reliable. Linux is ubiquitous. Linux admin experience is not rare. apt-get or yum can deploy massive amounts of useful, nearly preconfigured software in minutes that would have taken sysadmins WEEKS or MONTHS to build, deploy, patch, etc in the past.
When I first started in IT, building a server was an *ART*. Each one was unique -- from the hardware to the disk layout to the partitioning, to the OS, to the locally installed software. Building a server was like building a Stradivarius.
Now, building a server is like stamping a kazoo out of tin. I can make 500 kazoos a day. They're all the same. I don't even need to log into them once.
In the past, general IT folks were quite often the white hat security experts who learned by doing/experimenting. Now... most companies have security teams an intrusion detection systems that sound alarms if anyone runs nmap on nessus.
Your average IT guy USED to have endless opportunities to be a hero by introducing opensource software options that almost nobody else in the company knew about. Linux in the mainstream has changed all that.
A *GOOD* IT worker used to have almost magical abilities to do orders of magnitude more work. Now, large scale admin processes are much more widely understood, there are many more tools, and those magical processes are well documented and demystified so that even the junior IT folks can do them.
How many IT jobs today involve compliance? How rewarding is compliance-related work? I bet that some of the lack of willingness to suggest process improvements is somehow tied to the process baggage of IT compliance.
I still like my job, but it's changed a lot. I don't *just* do IT. I add value to my company. Today, IT needs to be much more closely integrated with the business. IT needs to be a business partner. I doubt any businesses today would hire a BOFH.
Handbrake is definitely the best free DVD ripping software under Linux
I downloaded the alpha 6 netbook remix, put it on a USB stick, booted it on a Dell Optiplex 755, installed it, patched it, and am running it right now.
I think the "netboox remix" interface actually suits a lot of what people use computers for today... a glorified web browser... while not distracting the user with all the other windows, window decorations, virtual desktops, etc.
I'm a power user who loves those things, but I'm surprised how I feel somewhat freed up by not having to worry about them.
Even Microsoft isn't a Microsoft-only shop.
How did Dell suddenly become the computing term trademark police? Just a few months ago, they were trying to trademark "cloud computing"!
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2224228/dell-cloud-claim-struck
Puh-leeze!
SNOBOL - http://www.snobol4.org/
Logo - http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/logo/programming.html
FORTH - http://www.phact.org/e/forth.htm
Prolog - http://www.logic.at/prolog/faq/faq.html
Algol - http://www.algol68.org/
Lucid - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Lucid
PL/I - http://www.users.bigpond.com/robin_v/resource.htm
so, it will work on both blueray and UMD...
but seriously, the only way I see that Sony could make this almost ubiquitous would be to build a web app that uses flash and something like google gears for disconnected content playback persistence.
Sort of like a mashup of youtube and itunes.
Sort of like a Sony music store except... better.
but they allow 3rd parties to sell hardware and write device drivers for their "appliance" -- neither of which they can directly support.
And... they encourage 3rd party software development that integrates with their OS ... which they can't directly support.
Personally, I think that since Apple now runs on what is in effect commodity hardware, this argument won't hold water any more. In the past, they could say that someone illegally copied their proprietary hardware. But... since OSX boots on commodity hardware and is just restricted by software to not run on non-Apple servers out of the box... it seems anticompetitive to me.
This could be the most interesting court case on Slashdot since SCO vs. IBM -- looking forward to PJ's analysis on groklaw
So true... a smart, skilled IT worker with a MASTERY of perl, shell, and UNIX fundamentals can be AT LEAST two orders of magnitude more impactful to the business than an "average" IT worker.
Well, if you are checking your physical clock at the microsecond level from a java app running within a virtual machine, then I suspect your clock could be wrong many more times a day.
If you have issues with the Chinese *government*, you can always choose to not support the olympics by not watching.
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=174
China: The world's biggest prison for journalists and cyber-dissidents
Around 30 journalists and 50 Internet users are currently detained in China. Some of them since the 1980s. The government blocks access to thousands for news websites. It jams the Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur-language programmes of 10 international radio stations. After focusing on websites and chat forums, the authorities are now concentrating on blogs and video-sharing sites. China's blog services incorporate all the filters that block keywords considered "subversive" by the censors. The law severely punishes "divulging state secrets," "subversion" and "defamation" - charges that are regularly used to silence the most outspoken critics. Although the rules for foreign journalists have been relaxed, it is still impossible for the international media to employ Chinese journalists or to move about freely in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Maybe not when they initially buy a machine... but Microsoft has trained people well that after about 6 months of using Windows and installing all sorts of software, sometimes the best solution various random problems and performance issues is a TOTAL OS REINSTALL... or to buy a new computer.
I'm sure that Microsoft and most hardware vendors are really not thrilled that customers aren't demanding exponentially faster machines with exponentially more RAM and disk space.
How do you drive customer upgrades to more bloaded OSes when customers are demanding devices with lower cpu/ram specs?
As the price of systems drops from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars, having to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for OS + Office licensing becomes a non-trivial fraction of total system cost.
Also, you can bet that the hardware manufacturer's profits on a $500 device are razor thin. If they can cut $20 to $100 or more off the cost by using Linux, it's worth it.
So, at this point, I have to wonder whether Microsoft is going to try to converge WinCE code with Vista code for Windows 7 to have a single OS that can run on phones / UMPCs / netbooks / laptops / desktops (or at least the same codebase even if CPUs aren't the same). That's probably going to be hard for Microsoft. I expect they'll try to reimplement apps in silverlight instead.
*years* ago, most of us were doing this same type of thing from a commandline with lynx/links.
If you like this, you'll probably like surfraw too
http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/
All the goodness of goosh without the need for X or a browser
I actually added some of the handlers years ago, but I found that eventually Google searchbox was able to do many of them for me directly - like "quote intc" , "ufo site=cnn.com", etc.
I created my own handlers (elvii) for internal intranet use to do all sorts of mundane queries from the commandline with ease. Its amazing how excited people get when you give them a commandline way to do really quick web queries and get results with minimal CSS/ads/formatting junk.
That's my bet too. EFI on IA64 runs Windows PE binaries (for IA64). EFI on X64 (which hasn't been implemented by many hardware manufacturers btw) runs Windows PE binaries.
I, for one, griped at Intel about EFI the first time we tried to do any useful automation on Itanium with it -- EFI is glorified DOS, except without any of the useful tools available for DOS. Intel would have been miles ahead if the would have made a linux BIOS/preboot environment instead.
Translation: We're going to play a lot of Halo 3
Directories full of random documents in random formats of random version with varying degrees of completeness and accuracy tend to get less useful as an information source as time goes on. Docs get abandoned and continue to provide outdated information and dead links. Doc formats change and require converters to import. Doc maintainers leave the company.
If you work somewhere where people are not trained to attach Office docs to every email, where people don't use Word to compose 10 bullet points, where people don't use a spreadsheet as a substitute for all sorts of CRM and business applications... a Wiki is actually a good solution.
You can use something like MediaWiki or Twiki or... heck you can use a whole variety of content management systems.
The key to success is to *EMPOWER* people to actually update information, and have a few people who are empowered to actually edit, rehash, sort, move, prune wiki pages and content. As the content improves, it will draw in more users and more content creators. Pretty soon, employees will *COMPLAIN* when someone sends out information and doesn't update the wiki.
Some corporate cultures are not wiki-friendly. Some management chains *fear* the wiki. Some companies have whole webmaster groups who believe it is their job to delay the process of getting useful content onto the web by controlling it. If you're in one of those companies... start up your own wiki and beg for forgiveness later.
... suddenly, I'm thinking about how much *more* likely it would be to have the plot of The Crying Game play out in a virtual world than in the physical world.
And, if there's no law preventing a man from dressing up as a woman in real life, why should there be restrictions for them to do so in a virtual world?
For anyone whose thinking, "well in real life, at a real bar, I can tell it's a man dressed up like a woman so I won't ever talk to him -- that's the difference!", I challenge you to go see a cabaret show in Thailand and *then* say that. I saw a few performers that were way hotter than my wife who would have made me not care about the presence of a Y chromosome.
http://images.google.com/images?q=cabaret+show+thailand
As a palm faithful for years and years, it was with great reluctance that I jumped ship to the iPhone. The browser and media player on the iphone are FANTASTIC. I can't say enough good things about them. There are however, a number of problems I've had dealing with my transition from Palm to iPhone.
- Few key *NATIVE* apps that I can't or don't want to replace with a web-based app: Let's face it, EDGE or wireless networking isn't good enough everywhere to completely depend on for frequently used apps. I want a local password manager app. I want a multiprotocol IM client. I want ability to record voice and video clips. I want a global search function. I want a draw/paint/notepad app where I can draw things like I do on cocktail napkins. I want a *REAL* todo app that ties into my calendar. I really miss my car maintenance/gas mileage app.
- mail app. Make email able to open any audio/video attachments with "itunes" multimedia player. Give me per-email account config options for # of messages to download, how many to keep. How about download and keep all messages until free ram less than X? Need ability to search email subject, to:, and email body.
- Integration features: I want my phone to "guess" my location based on cell towers, wifi access points and show a 'you are here' in Google Maps. I want to be able to select text from a webpage, and have the option of emailing the text with a link to source page to anyone in my address book. I want to be able to enter a phone number in the "location" field for a meeting and be able to touch the number on a meeting reminder and have the iphone dial my meeting number.
- Sync: Please oh please, let me sync my calendar with Google Calendar and Google contacts - I'd like to be able to do it wired or wirelessly. Add support in iTunes for syncing with Mozilla Sunbird. Add support for syncing with multiple calendar sources that have different sync locations and rules -- let my sync my work calendar and have events show up in red. Let me sync my personal calendar and have events show up in blue. Let me be able to toggle viewing my wife's personal calendar on and off as I wish and have it show up in a different color. Let me schedule events for multiple calendars. Please also add support for syncing with Palm Desktop. There aren't many good free PIMs on Windows. Outlook blows. Not everyone or every company uses Exchange. I wasted days trying to get 10 years of Palm data into outlook and into my iPhone. In the end, I only got about 80% of it over. That's a tragedy -- Apple should make it trivial for a Palm user to switch to iPhone with all their data.
- Browser: Flash, Flash, Flash... oh and bluetooth printing support
- Remote access: If you don't open up the iPhone, at least give us a multipurpose remote access app. I want to choose from the following options: 1) text-based ssh console, 2) RDP client that support multi-touch screen scaling and screen tilting, 3) VNC client that supports multi-touch screen scaling and positioning
- Hardware enhancements: Bluetooth - give me a tiny, foldable bluetooth keyboard and iphone stand that pairs with the iPhone so I can put it on the desk and type faster. Keyboard folded over should be about same size as iphone. Give us Stereo Bluetooth support and sell a stereo bluetooth headset with a MIC for phone use too (We hate wires). Keep larger flash drive capacities coming. Keyboard slider might make an interesting device - I won't be typing any novels on my current iPhone.
- Provide a *FREE* SDK for 3rd party development. Don't force me to jump ship to a gphone in 1 year. Let me hack my iPhone without worrying about Apple updates needing me to "reformat" my device and resync all my data. Come on, now!
- iTunes - let me grab new podcasts wireless and sync up info when I sync with itunes
Did I mention native, multiprotocol IM client? Oh, well let me mention it again. Let me specify my own XMPP/jabber servers too so I can connect with my corporate IM servers.
Lastly, one app I re