Cash Cow of the Universe

Microsoft recently announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion.
In other words, Microsoft’s daily net income is about $55 million.
That’s $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours, or $2.291 Million an hour or $38195 a minute.
In comparison microsofts profit is 8 times the world wide income (yes income, not profit) of McDonalds. You can see the MS Office and Windows are the biggest cash cows in the universe.
Hell I am happy when I receive a royalty cheque for $20. I am not sure those stories about being under "pressure from competition", seem that true now.

WebDAV “MyDrive” idea

Something that is “hot right now” is off-site drives over the internet. An example of a company that are coming on-line with this is Jungle Disk .

Since I now have a working webdav server with an sql backend, I was thinking of using it to create a project to provide a similar service. Obviously I won’t be hosting this anywhere as I don’t have the money to set-up a massive data-centre, but it would be good to see what I could come up with and share the project source with the world. I am going to name this project “MyWebDrive” the basic idea is this.

A user comes to the MyWebDrive website and creates an account , this creates this user an “area”. The user is sent an e-mail with the instructions for how to connect to their “area” via WebDav. Once they have their webdav drive connected they can then copy files create folders etc in their “area”.

This provides the “off-site drive” part.

Also via the web site the user can mange the access to each folder in their “Area”. They can do this by creating their own “friends” in their area, and then setting the access level these “friends” have to each folder. “Friends” can then be sent an e-mail inviting them to connect via webdav to the “area” so they can share the “WebDrive”

This provided the “sharing” part.

At this stage I am not going to be creating my own client for this I will be relying on windows explorer and the Mac OS to provide connectivity. Windows explorer doesn’t support https for WebDAV so this won’t exactly be a secure application, but as a first try that is fine.

I think I will put together two version. One for internal use (“friends” can only be added from Active Directory) , and one for external user ( “friends” can be created in the system). The second version will allow me to have a bit of a play with .Net membership providers which I haven’t worked with before.

The .net components I need to do for the system are:

• SQL Backended Webdav Server ( already have this, but I want to create a cut down version and the sourceforge framework is a little too bloated for my liking )
• SQL based Access control , I already have this from my previous examples
• SQL based membership provider. This is new.
• The website itself to allow people to create accounts, manage their “areas” , send e-mail etc.

Adventures in WebDAV

I have been developing a C# .net WebDAV Server with a backend SQL database for a bit. I have all of the file system functionality ( copy , move, rename, delete make folders etc ) working as well as LOCK support. This all works great. I am now tyring to get some of the MS office features working and have hit a bit of a stumbling block.

If I load a word document from my WebDAV server and then select file->Properties then Word fires a webdav PROPFIND request back to my server and displays an “OK” dialog that says “Verifying Web Properties”.

The PROPFIND request that is sent to my server looks like this

[a:propfind xmlns:a=”DAV:” xmlns:b=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes”]
[a:prop xmlns:c=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”]
[c:save-profile-form-location /]
[/a:prop]
[/a:propfind]

The problem is that I have no idea what save-profile-form-location is supposed to be and a search on google returns a huge 6 documents. So I guess noone else know what this means either ??

I have tried various replies from my server in the format

[D:multistatus xmlns:b=”urn:uuid:c2f41010-65b3-11d1-a29f-00aa00c14882″ xmlns:c=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” xmlns:D=”DAV:”]
[D:response]
[D:href]test.doc[/D:href]
[D:propstat]
[D:status]HTTP/1.1 200 OK[/D:status]
[D:prop]
[c:save-profile-form-location]/WDClient/profile.doc[/c:save-profile-form-location]
[/D:prop]
[/D:propstat]
[/D:response]
[/D:multistatus]

Using all sorts of values and data , but this is all ignored by word. So I am a bit stuck. I may try to arrange a support call to Microsoft about this. It would be nice if I could get word to read some properies from my webdav server. So I will do some more searching on this one.

Smart toilet doors

It has come to my attention that in this day and age, it should be an international crime not to supply reading/viewing material in toilets.

I believe there is definitely a market for "smart" integrated televisions (lcd) in toilet doors. ( Hey pimp my ride once put on in a mud flap !)

I know in japan there is a huge market for "smart" toilet seats. I believe there is a market for "smart" doors as well.

Imagine the door that can detect that you are having a "problem" and starts running quick 15 second ads of high fibre muesli.. Targeted advertising gold.

“Special” Mos burger guaranteed for Taku.

Taku will definitely be first in line for the “special” Mos burger now.

With his new 250bhp Rx-8. Uni to Mos in under 2 minutes.

Happy driving Taku, hope you like my little bit of photoshop.

Suit me up !!

Become super human for ¥70,000 a month

Well maybe you won’t be lifting a train, but 40kg per arm is nice, I can only do a 22kg dumb-bell, so this will surely make me look better in the gym ?? No ??

HAL is originally developed to help elderly or disabled people walk around
with their own legs and HAL-3 achieved the primary goal in 2000.

In 2005, the latest model HAL-5 was given upper body limbs as well as
weight saving and more compact POWER units, longer life battery and much smaller
control unit and spectacularly designed outer shells.

HAL is a robot suit which can expand and improve physical capabilities of
human being. By wearing HAL-5 and you can hold up to 40 kg load by arms and can
increase the maximum weight of leg press from 100 kg to 180 kg.

I can't wait for the "after-market" kits you can get for this..

Glosoli's birthday present

I think I just found glosili’s birthday present . A beautiful representation of "nerd" meets "gambler".

On a long lonely night on a train bound for nowhere....

Gotcha Day

It is my sons’ "Gotcha Day" on April 22. These days, most adoptive families celebrate the day their child was adopted Families vary in what they call it: Gotcha Day, Adoption Day, Family Day, Adoption Anniversary Day. Depending on the family the day selected for this day is different, it might be the first time the family met, the day you went to court, the day your child got home, or the day the adoption was finalized. In our case we chose the day that we returned to Australia for the first time with our son. We actually first saw met about 10 days earlier. On this day we usually get together with friends and watch the home video of when we first met our son and have a bit of a party. Sort of like a second birthday party.

We usually give presents on this day and this year his 이모 got him an amazing present which he got a few days early. It is a K-Kam and although he is only 3 ½ he is already producing some nice movies.

In Dev: C# WebDAV Server with SQL Backend

The work I am doing on building a WebDAV Server with SQL Backend is progressing well. I found a .net web dav server framework at sourceforge , which provides much of the plumbing for the WebDAV server. Their implementation is for a server that uses the file system for storage, I want to use an sql database so that DAV properties can be used inside other .net applications.

One of the problems with the filesystem based implementation, is that the properties of each file (including the custom properties) are binary serialised to a file. This means that they are not easily searched and/or retrieved by external system, so I definitely want to move this to a SQL database.

I am now at the stage where I have created the SQL database and have written the data and business layers, to replace the filesystem layer with an SQL Layer. This means that from windows explorer I can now map a web drive to my C# app and it will display data in the SQL database as if it is a WebDAV fileshare. I can copy, move , rename, delete the files and folders, and also open and save to/from the app to windows applications. This all works great. I still have to do a bit of work to get locking, custom properties and some of the MS Office specific stuff happening but it is looking promising.

The screen shot above shows an explorer window of the WebDAV share. All of the files and folders that are visible are in fact records in an sql table.

I have also written a small app called “Web Folder Mapper” to allow me to create WebDAV shortcuts. The source for this is downloaded here. This is very helpful because it allows you to create a shortcut and then you can simply drag files to this shortcut and then will be stored on the WebDAV server. The screen shot of the mapper tool is below, with the corresponding shortcut that was build on my desktop.

I will release the server source code as soon as I get the rest of the implementation working. I will also be sending it to the admin of the sourceforge framework project, as they have asked for code from anyone who uses the framework to create an implementation.

Small 무궁화꽃 time lapse.

Click on the image to see animation

I have talked about the korean nation flower before. And for some time I have wanted to try and get a time lapse of it changing color. Well over the last couple of days I managed to setup a small area in my office to take photos of a couple of flowers changing color. I tried to remember to take a photo every hour or so, but I forgot alot, and as I don't own a tripod the camera moved around a little. The flowers were also picked they were quite as happy as I would have like them to be, but the experiment worked ok, and you get a good idea of what happens. (Click on the image to see the animation)

Which Watch??

Previously I posted about the Barcode SS by tokyo time evolution well in the search for items for this years birthday list I came across the DT1 by Fusion .. Hmmm Decisions , Decisions

Cool Toy - Splash Rocket

My son and I played with this really cool toy today. You attach the base to your hose and it allows you to fire a cone shaped rocket into the air. If you regulate the water pressure well you can get the cone to hover in the air ( as my photo's show ). A really great toy.

Wii or Gym ... Hmmm

This article says it all

I have to say they left out Wii boxing though. One round of that and I am dead..

For my birthday I would like an alien in a jar

Ok, I can't read japanese so , I will have to guess exactly what this is about. Maybe Tox or Tax can help me out here.. But this is cool, what is sweeter than a alien in a jar for your desk at work..

￥2.800 seems cheap !!

Webdav server in .net.

I am going to be doing some work on a .net webdav server over the next few weeks. It has come to my attention that extending some of the .net workflow applications I have worked on with webdav would be a nice feature; and being able to map a network drive directly into your sql based file store would be a great feature.

I blogged some updates when I have something to show.

Shots of new wrx.

I am not a great Subaru wrx fan, I am far more an Mitsubishi Evo lover. And now I have seen the new one of both of these cars I can say that I have picked the right one.

These are some pics of the new wrx. Like the old one when it first came out I assume there will be huge controversy in the subaru community about this.

I do think the Subaru have “borrowed” some looks from Mitsubishi in the front, and those side lines look very like a bmw 120.

I also found this link for 2008 wrx sti and I have to say it looks like a mazda 3 mps.

A shot of the 2008 Evo is here for comparison

Glosoli caught in Google paper

I am not going to mention who got caught by the google paper april fools joke , but his blog is here . He tells me that he thought it was real because he thought it sounded useful.

Now I wonder if he ordered their new home networking kit

I think this type of post needs a new term "Flogging", flame blogging. I expect comments on this one.

Week began with tsunami

Well I guess anyone reading this who lives in the pacific rim knows that there was a tsunami warning on Monday. I came into work and sat down and then heard what I thought was a Cyclone warning on the radio. ( They use the same siren noise for all emergency announcements it seems). Having lived in a place that has cyclones threatening the coast line every year I am quite used to cyclone warning, but I am fairly sure this is the first tsunami warning I have ever been aware of.

You can see the massive wave that generated by the tsunami on the east coast of Australia at this link.

The original tsunami broadcast is below:

IDQ20003
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
Queensland

Transmitters serving the coastal area east coast are REQUESTED TO USE THE
STANDARD EMERGENCY WARNING SIGNAL BEFORE BROADCASTING THIS MESSAGE

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
QUEENSLAND TSUNAMI WARNING
Issued at 9:17am on Monday the 2nd of April 2007

For people in coastal areas of Queensland.

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST

TSUNAMI BULLETIN

TSUNAMI THREAT TO EASTERN AUSTRALIA and Willis and Barrier Reef
Islands, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii
has detected an undersea earthquake near Solomon Islands and has issued a
Tsunami Bulletin.

The earthquake has also been detected by Geoscience Australia.

AN EARTHQUAKE OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

ORIGIN TIME - 6:40 am EST 02 APR 2007
COORDINATES - 8.6 SOUTH 157.2 EAST
LOCATION - SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAGNITUDE - 8.1

Based on the magnitude and location of the earthquake,
tsunami could start affecting these locations at the following local
time:

Cooktown from 0931am 02/04/2007
Cairns from 0949am
Brisbane 1033am
Gladstone 1139am
Mackay 1144am