The next iteration of Desert Code Camp is going to be May 31 at University of Advancing Technology.
University of Advancing Technology
2625 W. Baseline Road
Tempe, Arizona 85283
This always draws a good crowd. It’s a pretty broad event though it tends to have a slant toward Microsoft technology. Ruby is also well represented, but really it’s a good way to get out and meet fellow geeks in Arizona. I’m going to be up in Portland for RailsConf, but JumpBox is sponsoring the event and Sean will be doing some kind of presentation.
Google recently announced a new cloud based application deployment system called Google App Engine. I’ve been playing around with App Engine for the last few days and it’s really interesting. If you build an app for it you’re REALLY locked into Google, but the benefits of the system are pretty compelling. Since the SDK they released is Open Source we decided to put together a JumpBox for it.
The JumpBox gives you a drop in place system for doing Google App Engine development that’s contained in an isolated environment within a virtual machine. It runs exactly the same on Mac, Windows or Linux and gives you a development environment that lets you take advantage of great virtualization features like snapshots. It will run from a single download on Parallels Desktop, any VMWare product, Virtual Iron, Microsoft Virtual PC/Server and Xen Open Source in fully virtualized mode.
It’s a great solution if you want to play with the Google App Engine SDK without really installing it on your system. It’s also perfect as an integration point for a small team working together on a Google App Engine project.
Google made it possible to build applications for App Engine using several different mechanisms and the JumpBox comes with CGI, Google Webapp and Django environments setup and ready for development. It’s also a really great way to just kick the tires of the different frameworks before committing to development.
Also, since this is a JumpBox our backup system is included which allows you to backup your source code and development data to network shares or Amazon S3.
The JumpBox for Google App Engine Development is just something we put together because it looked interesting, if people find it useful we’ll continue developing it and tracking Google’s SDK releases. I think there are a lot of things we could add to it to make it a really useful tool for developing apps. If you have any suggestions definitely let me know.
We recently sent Sean off to be interviewed about JumpBox for the Scoble Show. The episode was posted last night and is included below. Check it out if you want to know a little more about what we’re doing.
After a quiet couple months, things are really cracking now with JumpBox. We had some great stuff queued up that took a lot longer to get out than I expected. The funny thing is that the product was ready, but it took a while to line up the rest of the pieces. So what have we been up to?
So what this means is that JumpBox now provides a single virtual machine download that will run the same on any VMWare product, Parallels, Microsoft Virtual PC/Virtual Server, Virtual Iron and Xen Open Source. Now that’s portability. One download, run it on Mac, Windows, Linux using the virtualization platform of your choice. It’s simple, quick, flexible and powerful, everything software should be.
That’s some pretty cool stuff, but we weren’t quite done yet, so today we announced the release of the JumpBox Proving Grounds and eight new JumpBoxes. The Proving Grounds is our beta user community which we are using to get new JumpBoxes into people’s hands much faster. We released eight beta JumpBoxes today, and here’s a secret, there’s seven more sitting in the queue. Want to check them out, then get your invite now.
Here’s what’s available today to people who join the Proving Grounds.
BTW, we’re also doing a joint Webinar with Virtual Iron on December 12 so if you want to learn more about JumpBox or Virtual Iron it’s a great opportunity. You can signup here.
Man, it’s getting harder and harder to blog any more. There’s a lot going on in my life that I should be writing about, but never do. Not sure why.
We launched JumpBox in July and it’s moving along nicely. We’ve since released two platform point releases and one new JumpBox for the Twiki Enterprise Wiki system. It was a scary thing to launch the company with no idea whether or not anyone would be willing to pay for what we were doing. Thankfully they were and we easily beat expectations for our first month. Now the challenge is just getting the growth we need to become profitable. We have some really interesting stuff in the pipeline for release in November which is pretty exciting.
Perhaps more important though, it looks like after 37 years I’m finally going to get married. Oct 27 is the date, exactly one year after Lisa and I met for the first time. I’ve tended to not share too much about my personal life, but this is a pretty important event and it’s amazing that I finally found someone who is as quirky as I am.
That about sums up my life right now, business and getting married. Could be worse I guess.
“Making it easy to throw away”, that sounds like a pretty odd benefit to a piece of software. But it’s a characteristic that is more desirable than we’d usually admit. Mac OS X has shown us how this can work for desktop software and it’s a great feature. It makes it really easy to try software without worrying about it mucking up your system, if you don’t like it just throw it away. Of course if you do like it, it’s also easy to just keep using it. This is what JumpBox brings to server software. Think of it as server software that doesn’t muck up your system and if you don’t like it you just throw it away.
This is what’s been occupying my time for the last year or so and today we released our first production builds based on the JumpBox Platform 1.0. Nine JumpBoxes are currently available (but if you catch us at OSCon or the TechCrunch party this week we’ll give you a DVD with all the apps plus an unreleased tenth JumpBox). Here’s the list of current applications
These things are really easy to get running. All you need is virtualization software from VMWare or Parallels and they work exactly the same whether you use them on Mac OS X, Windows or Linux. So maybe there are a few other benefits beyond being able to throw them away.
Anyway, it’s a big day for my little company. It’s been a year since we started it and it’s a strange feeling to move from being a venture into actually being a business. Now is where the real work begins though.
Just wanted to post a quick note to say I’m in Portland this week for the O’Reilly Open Source convention thru Thursday and will be at the TechCrunch party in San Jose Friday night. If you’re going to be at either of those events I’d love to meet some new people while we’re here. I can be contacted via email kstaken@xmldatabases.org.
Trac is a great application to track software development projects, but anyone who’s tried to install it knows it can be a real pain at times. This is especially true if you want to get it working on Windows or Mac OS X. Because there’s such obvious pain here, we decided to give it the JumpBox treatment.
So here’s how to install trac in about 10 minutes. And the best part, for nine of those minutes you can put your feet up and enjoy a cup of coffee (or it you really wanted to you could do other real work, your choice I guess ). The best part, this process will work roughly the same whether your using Mac OS X, Windows XP or Linux. All that’s required as a starting point is virtualization software, either VMWare or Parallels.
Here we go.
Download
Visit the JumpBox web site and download the Trac/Subversion JumpBox. Downloading will take a few minutes so proceed with the coffee sipping.
Extract
Once the download is complete you need to extract the archive. It’s pretty big, but the size is worth it for the time it saves. Plus you really wanted to drink some more coffee anyway.
Run
Once the extraction is complete look in the folder and double click on the JumpBox.vmx file if you’re using VMWare or JumpBox.pvs if you’re using Parallels. The JumpBox will take a few seconds to load, just enough time for a little more coffee.
Collect
Ahh, now comes the hard part. Once it’s finished loading you need to locate the IP address to use to access it. You’ll find it on the console for the virtual machine. Locate the line that says “Application Page:” and use a web browser to open that URL.
Configure
Now it’s time for the very complicated installation process. You’ll be prompted with a short form asking for a little information to configure things. OK, it’s really just four pieces of information and at this point you’re just seconds away from having a working Trac install. Fill it out and click the button at the bottom.
Click
That was easy, and the app is now configured and ready to use. Just click the URL for the application and start using your Trac installation.
Enjoy
What could be simpler?
You now have a fully functioning, self contained installation of Trac 0.10.4 and Subversion. Besides the tremendous time savings from this, your installation also isn’t tied to the system it’s running on. Need to move it to a server? Just shut it down, copy the trac directory to the server, correct the paths in the virtual machine configuration files and start it back up.
This process is simple enough that anyone can do it, and it’s also the exact same process for every application packaged by JumpBox. So want a Drupal, Joomla or MediaWiki installation? Now, you know how to do that in ten minutes or less as well. No more excuses, so get a Trac install will ya.
Over at JumpBox we just posted the first release candidate for the JumpBox virtual appliance platform and along with it new releases of all of our virtual appliances.
JumpBox virtual appliances aim to bring ease of use to the deployment and management of Open Source server based applications. They’re completely focused on delivering a simple user experience that requires as little technical knowledge as possible. We currently have four appliances available that are based on the platform and we’ll be releasing a number of new ones as we go forward.
Today I came across an article about a new 32GB solid state 2.5″ SATA disk from SanDisk. This could potentially be a quite extraordinary development. Compared to current hard drives, it’s faster, quieter, uses less power, has much faster random access times and doesn’t have any moving parts. All very positive sounding things, the down side is that it’s lower capacity and costs quite a bit more than current harddrives. I’ll be watching these drives closely and am definitely looking forward to seeing real world performance numbers. There’s no data on write performance and the limited write cycles of flash media could be an issue for really heavy write intensive applicaions.
Kimbro Staken exploring creative use of technology and whatever else happens to seem interesting.
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May 19th, 2008 by 
Kimbro Staken 
