Today living in information age someone should think about valid tranport of information and data should be settled fine.

This might be fine for IP packages, SMS or MMS … although I personally do not believe about that is really fine at 100% though.
Right over the weekend I had a hard time making my iPhone receiving MMS messages again. With the now aged OS 2.2.1 I had used SwirlyMMS for it and now upgrading to OS 3.0 and still having messages in it, I’ve decided to give it a go for SwirlyMMS again by neglecting the now build in MMS feature therefore.

Installing SwirlyMMS I’ve got told that I now need to use SwirlyMMS2 and even need to pay $US 6 for the upgrade to it. Now, hm – as mentioned I had prior received messages in it and therefore I did. But wasn’t really prepared the software would make trouble later one though.

Anyway, I got it figured out and finally "nearly" everything does work again like before with the new iPhone OS 3.0 for me.

But after this excurse now coming back to the topic of communication, it even seems to be more complicated dealing with real humans than with bits and bytes instead. Lately I had the feeling rushing into some really unwanted trouble about. Recognising it finally was nearly to late to prevent it though. Getting aware about was same with me using the emmergency brake therefore.

For sure and granted it wasn’t the most pleasant way though. Just the only I one could see and figure at that time.
And I guess soon we will see how easy or not is to fix that communication issue as well ….

You might have recognised that lately I turned a bit quiet here?. Yeah, this happens from time to time when something does trap my interest totally.
Now in this specific case it was the wish to transfer all my stored SMS from the old mobile phone to my newly bought iPhone. Not Possible??

Hah! Sure there is no straight way to do and  what a pity the original client software by Motorola does not even allow you to dump the info. But why shouldn’t it be possible though?
With a strong will there is a solution for every thing! Believe me!!

Now searching for info, I found snychonizing services on the net … How cool! Passing on the SMS to them and loose Origin and Timestamp at the end? NEVER!

But querying Google brought up the info that there are P2KTools to dump the Motorola and even they have issues, I was able to dump the messages into ascii files.
This was a beginning for sure.

But now back to the iPhone. How to syncronize it? Looking into things brough up the info about http://youarchive.it and a loadable tool called iTextuploader. A quick test of both ended up with the sureness it works reliable and fine. Checking options even told me there is a bidirectional exchange possible, but the web frontend didn’t allow me to add the older messages.

Ok! So there seemd to be no quick solutions at hand first. Next investigation brought up the info that on the iPhone the SMS info is stored within a SQLite database …a database???
Great! That was the answer of everything. Downloading the db from the iPhone was easily done. In fact – lazy as I was – I just did send it as an email with attachment to myself.

Then it needed 10 to 15 minutes analyzing the internal structure of the database and another hour adding the messages and adjusting and correcting the database integrity again.
Uploading it directly to the device?! Nah, the risk damaging my new SMS info by overwriting the db directly seemed to high.

So I went back to the webservice and used their "old way" uploading messages through the webinterface by uploading the db … in that case the prepared one.
And?! Nothing! No complains, no warning, no errors …. purely loaded and now visible within the web application.

With the offered export  funtion of the pages I marked all message for to restore them on the phone and back at the iPhone I told iTextuploader (uploader ROFL) to download them.
Wasn’t that easy? Now I have SMS info on the iPhone out of a time the device was not even invented.

Virtualization is one of the today’s  key words of modern .IT. Today hardware and software vendors do offer virtualization solutions for nearly everything and all.

Regardless it is a CPU, your memory or hosting package, the disk access or finally an middleware or application runtime layer it needs to share and virtualize, the ready to use managing framework for it is already developed and offered on the market.

Even Apple, this so far manufacturer of nice and trendy hardware for geeks – "Show me one person not being aware about this brand new  iPhone 3G!" -  is now part of the game. Finally since opening their world, no longer using own hardware for their MACs and porting OSX to Intel CPUs things like Parallels and VMware are part of the big game and the world has changed.

But …. What does this mean for customers and application owner. Do we have to forget about all? Or perhaps to throw away all our nice but old applications and sites?  …. What kind of world we developers have to work in tomorrow?

Good Question!

Following actual market researches, lower costs for application development, system integration and application maintenance,
accelerated integration of applications, more flexible adaptation of existing applications to future changes in technology and, not least, the ability to develop and market new products and services more quickly – are just some of the many benefits that
companies are expecting from a new approach to application design resulting from the introduction of service-oriented architectures (SOA).

Will this influence the work of small business owners? Such one or two man shows designing special and individual tailored customer solutions?

For me the answer is YES. Perhaps not today and with a bit of luck not right tomorrow (the reprieve to learn about!). But certainly in a predictable time frame we all will have to deal with it …… Why?

Experts are in agreement that an infrastructure that is not flexible quickly comes up against its limits, resulting in logistical, as also performance problems. Today only a service-oriented software design (using web service technology, for example) involves the development of modular, reusable software units that can be distributed across different systems. And therefore is able to deal with common hassles and business impacts like software upgrade, maintenance, server crashes and downtimes in a reasonable and appropriate way.

Early this year I changed my hosting provider because of feeling more and more disappointed about their leak of professionalism. For years my former hosting partner offered a solid hosting at a fair and reasonable price to me – At the end and shortly before I left they just and basically had ignored and /or missed to do their homework!

Two years ago I was able and willing to wait a few hours until my mail host was up and running again. Today I’m no longer and I really  insist in receiving all my sms, emails and micro blog postings instantly without any service interruptions.

 I basically expect – as for my feeling all customer do – my site and services up and running all time! There is no way for me to think about missing inquiries and business I might loose out of some service disruption.

The new provider I decided for does now offer grid-Services to me. Oh!! … How exciting you may now throw into our discussion.

Sure there are still issues and hassle to deal with, but since then my pages were never down for more than a few minutes and my emails came always through – Not to speak about the plenty of more resources I do now get at a similar rate like before!

You see?! There are impacts on our daily business. And virtualization and a service orientated application design does for sure have a serious impact and direct impact on our all business.

Thats my opinion and my 5ct on the topic! You have another one?

Today I have the feeling to walk through an overall easy day. After a few days of hectic and stress things seems to ease and calm all today.

A customer "from hell" who dragged me now for years is nearly finally handed over to someone else and all the phone calls we actually have about his migration are very relaxed and easy. They are filled up with terms like great, glad you can help, thanks god you remember … We even started again joking with each other while talking …. And in just a few weeks it will be done and past.
Not sure I really will feel sad then though.

As an update for those who aren’t aware. Germany has won the soccer game against Turkey and will now fight for the European Soccer Championship versus Spain on Sunday. I followed both semi- final games and have to confess that the Spanish Guys did a more as excellent job beating down the Russian Team 3:0 yesterday.

I’m sure it will need them all all to give for our boy on sunday and I’m very much pressing thumbs for them to win.

But looking back I’m aware it was another news, highly await by me, reaching me yesterday by sms and finally making me seeing this week as easy, special, happy and overall positive at all.

Ok then! Guess it’s now time for me to think about an early weekend, starting to prepare myself cheering for our boy on sunday evening, for them going for the CUP and bringing it home!!

Sure, it is a nice and interesting thing living in information age and being able to communicate with friends, buddies and pals around the globe instantly, Running reliable friendships over distances my grandma would have thought about as impossible. Getting all benefits out of technologies like phone, fax, sms, email and instant messaging by enjoying todays advantages like an internet- or phone flatrate. Being informed, in touch, involved and close by … Thats the deal!

On the other hand I wonder how our parents and grand parents would have coped with such a hectically business day like we are used to have today. Sure there were deadlines also, projects, time critical things and challenges in general to finish, to succeed and overcome  as well ……..  and and and

But on days like today, when I start working and nearly not having time to read and answer all my emails until the first scheduled phone conference does start (not speaking about the first morning coffee at this stage) I feel somewhat stressed to be honest.
You are aware this might be around 8:10 am?! Feeling stressed already :-/

And this first call is instantly continued with the next customer calling, in between an instant messenger  messages is popping up and an email with a 20 pages attachment arrives needed to get studied before lunchtime turns up ….. Then I really wished I would sit on a lonely island with my feet in the water trying to catch some fish, later on collecting some coconuts, preparing some "message in a bottle"  ….. and perhaps next week starting to train my own carrier pigeon perhaps. :-/

Thanks god not every day is like today (and the two other phone conferences already scheduled during afternoon will also certainly end somewhen)