Apparently 6 in 100 people get appendicitis. It is not a trivial affliction. in acute cases, where rupture occurs, there can be severe complications and it can be fatal.

I am pleased to hear that James is now on the road to recovery and that he is getting better.

He must be as he sent me a link to buzzwords amazingly, we must have both signed up at almost the same time ;-0
Check it out it rocks...

I have shown the patience of a saint with Vista. I love the glass interface, and I love the fact that desktop search actually finds stuff really quickly. But I can't bear the  slowness. Further, ANYTHING to do with networking becomes a ridiculous challenge of jousting with the network and sharing centre to grant me access to a resource that I need.

I wont miss it nailing me to the wall on so called designated 'public' networks, nor will I miss the cackhandedness of copying or managing files over the network.

Cheers Vista, like a dodgy ex-girlfriend I won't really be missing you, but heck I don't relish going back to boring XP either. If it was not for Visio, Outlook, One-Note and |DS, I really would say goodbye for ever...

I Thought a brief roundup of some of the things that I saw would be good to share....

Apple

FCS finally shipped two days before the show. Not much else was shown around the show on the partner stands...speaking to the apple reps at the show the next drive seems to be to unify the apps across UI and improve the interoperability between applications. More announcements before the end of the year

Archion

Neat solution to adding non Avid storage to unity / and or as standalone Unity Storage. Uses internal virtual drives and RAID 5 to provide a viable option for storage vs Avid sourced boxes. In use for the last few years by major Avid houses in the US. Interesting. Strong capacity and price point. Also have a similar product to Facilis - called 'Node'. http://www.archion.com/2008/

Apace Systems

Main product is their SAN offload engines (Unity Offload Engine UOL XSAN Offload engine XOL) etc... and MAM - Media Asset Management service that runs on the Offload Engines....they Sell hardware and software as part of this solution. Further they provide the option to plug a machine directly into the Offload engine, and edit from that should your main storage fail. http://www.apacesystems.com/products.html

Avid

You know about all of these already. New products and New thinking. Avid appear to be really committed to fixing all their issues. Let's wait and see...

Consentry

Smart Ethernet Switch Devices - User and Access control capabilities integrated into the switch.  Neat solution to monitor users, applications and inspect traffic. Main USP is that they have a dedicated multi-processor based CPU engine integrated into the switch fabric, dedicated to deep packet inspection algorythms. They have the ability to track pretty much everything on the network http://www.consentry.com/

DVS

Showed the new Spycer Box  as a  media hub, SAN Node,  and it was also running an improved version of Spycer. Also showed  Clipsters refined end to end  complete DCI compliant package delivery. Awesome.

Facilis

Showed file level locking and thus Avid project sharing. Releases by the end of the year they say.

Gridiron - Flow

A relationship based asset management software tool from Gridiron. As you work cutting and pasting work from text, images etc...flow tracks this into a complete collection - including all elements used (ie including fonts) You can then gather these elements into a collection based archive, to track changes for example. Very different and interesting approach. They also make the existing Nucleo suite of tools for AE. Check them out http://www.gridironsoftware.com/Products

Storage DNA

A storage management and synchronisation suite for SAN / unity/ any direct attached  storage over LAN or WAN. Deep Synchronisation options managed by server. Selling as a software solution and looking to move to a fully hosted service in the future. Requires server controller and agents - server co-ordinates, agents are installed on each direct attached device. My personal pick of the show. http://www.storagedna.com/

Root6 will be working with some of these companies- if you want any info / let me know at my work address at root6 ltd

Phil asked me the other day, and that is a very good question. I guess I put it down to the following issues:

1/Being busy on confidential projects. LOTS of interesting stuff around, I just cant talk about it.

2/Choosing not to report on the ludicrous things some of our clients get up to because a sense of professional behaviour and business courtesy precludes me from doing so.

3/Wanting to have lunch in this town again if I decided to go ahead and do 2/ above...

So yes I still Blog, I just need to find a subject to turn my sometimes cynical but hopefully interested and unwavering glare on... Now the "technology meets broadcast and IT" shagfest  er convergence  event that is NAB2008 is upon us.

I will do my best to report on the news from everyone (including our principals) without annoying any of them by being unbiased...

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