Apparently I’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months (too much coding) because I missed a product that has unbelievable potential: Drobo. I apologize to anyone thinking that this is old news, but I think it’s important. For those you who were under that rock with me, Drobo is a RAID device that allows you to put in different size drives into the case and actually use the extra capacity. It also is an intelligent little box and will actually change RAID types to maximize the file storage. Now, this is of obvious use to home users who are about as likely to backup their data as I am to swim the English Channel. And as soon as they have a FireWire version video editors will be in love. But what gets me all excited is something that has not been discussed: This technology in RAID for servers.

Today in your typical server farm you have external RAID devices to store your data. This allows for larger databases and easier access for web applications. Problem is, if your web application stores a lot of data (like Heap CRM does) you are constantly needing to expand storage. So what do you do? Well you add more drives of course. So how big of drives are you going to add? Well how about 1TB drives, that’s the largest right? Well, you can’t because when bought the RAID, 100GB was the largest drive you could buy and that’s what the other drives in the RAID are. So you buy 100GB drives. At some point you will fill the RAID and you buy another.

An “enterprise” Drobo would be the last RAID any web application or file server would ever need. So, you start out with 100GB drives. Then you expand with 1TB drives. You fill it with 2TB drives and replace the 100GB drives with 4TB drives. The storage would essentially become endless.

What does this mean to end users? You would have less downtime for maintenance on your favorite web applications, massive amounts of storage would be a lot cheaper if not free and you would see more players in the marketplace as the cost of entry would drop.

It appears Microsoft has rededicated itself to the destruction of the beloved Windows 2000 Professional operating system. For those not familiar, Windows 2000 is a highly efficient version of Windows XP. It doesn’t have all of the fancy graphics or a lot of the interface rework, but the underlying core was stable and efficient. As a result 2000 became a favorite among IT professionals because of how much faster it ran compared to Windows XP.

Well it seems with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has decided that 2000’s time of reckoning has come. Microsoft Office 2007 will not run on 2000.

Now, no Office update is a minor detail in the IT world, but 2007 is even more critical. It now includes standards compliance with the iCalendar format and RSS in Outlook. A faster and (in my opinion) easier to use interface and a new file format that is not downwards compatible.

What is so sad about this is that there is no reason to stop Windows 2000 users from using the new version of Office. In fact all you have to do to get Office 2007 to install is to trick the installer by using an install editor. No, this is about Microsoft wanting Windows 2000 users to buy Vista.

It seems that MySQL has dropped support for Debian Linux. For those of not familiar with Debian, it is an entirely open source platform that has no corporate connection of financial backing of any kind. It is open source and community based in the truest sense.

Now, I’m not someone who believes that no one should make money on Linux. After all I make money by selling products that are dependent on Linux. But I also believe that diversity in the open source community is not only important but vital. Debian is unique in many wonderful ways, and by losing support for the most important database server in the open source community (MySQL), this in some way diminishes Debian’s importance.

I just ran into the best color comparison tool I have ever seen. Adobe Labs has released “kular”; which is easily the most useful app for me as an user experience designer. What kular does is allow you to create groups of colors based on a number of different formulas, allowing for excellent color groups extremely quickly. This allows you to create groups that are distinct and beautiful without spending half your day in Photoshop with a color picker. Thanks Adobe, this is going to save me a lot of time.