Woohoo, workaround for Squarespace API issue, back blogging in Marsedit

I've been down from my writing because I haven't been able to use MarsEdit. 

“Nearly every word I write for Daring Fireball is published through MarsEdit.”John Gruber, Daring Fireball

MarsEdit 3

Desktop blog editing for the Mac.

The best way to write, preview, and publish your blog.

I've been trading e-mail with Daniel Jalkut, ex-Apple guy like me, but we didn't overlap our time in Cupertino to see if he sees the same problems as I do.  He just go a workaround that fixed the problem.

To get things back to normal for your Squarespace 5 blog in MarsEdit:

1. Open MarsEdit
2. Click the Squarespace blog icon in MarsEdit’s main window.
3. Select Blog -> Edit Settings from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
4. Change the API Endpoint URL to:

   http://five.squarespace.com/process/service/PostInterceptor

   Note that this is identical to the malfunctioning URL with the exception that the “www.” has changed to “five.”

5. Close the settings window and Refresh the blog to confirm it works.

This works and I am back using an Editor.  Yeh!!!

I like Squarespace, and I agree with Daniel, I don't think they understood the severity of the problem.

I have been in touch with Squarespace through their regular support channels, but they do not yet seem to appreciate the scope of the problem. In short: all Squarespace customers who rely upon 3rd party editors (not just MarsEdit) that use the API interface, were met with a sudden stoppage of functionality for those apps. The reason? The API through which the service is provided suddenly stopped working and instead redirects to a 404 landing page:

Words of Wisdom from a Funny CEO, Twitter's Dick Costolo U of Mich Commencement speech

Telling the facts is boring and not something many spend time sharing.  Telling good stories, being funny, and entertained is what gets people to share.  

Here is Twitter’s Dick Costolo commencement speech at U of Mich from Youtube.

If you don’t want to watch the whole video which is 17 minutes long go to this part where Dick discusses a conversation with Steve Carrell and one of the more important points Dick tries to make. http://youtu.be/oqRPesTumlA?t=11m47s

13:15there are no expectations there’s no scripts

13:19when you’re doing well what you love to do

13:23you become resilient

13:25because that’s the habit you create for yourself

13:28you create a habit

Comparing Technical Conferences - IBM Impact vs. AFCOM Data Center World

Most of my readers are data center folks who would go to AFCOM Data Center World, Uptime Symposium, DatacenterDynamics, Gartner Data Center Conference and/or 7x24 Exchange.  I’ve gone to all of them as well as Intel Developer Forum, GigaOm Structure, and IBM Pulse.  In prior jobs I used to go to all kinds of Microsoft, Apple conferences, and Seybold Publishing.

Last week I was in Las Vegas when a bunch of other data center people were in town.  I’ve gone to AFCOM data center world and unfortunately, I really don’t learn much as I know plenty of people i could ask about power, mechanical systems, and the presentations really don’t interest me.  I’ve spent so much of my time writing executive presentations whether for Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, or other data center folks that I don’t have the patience to sit in most presentations.  So, looking for options of what to given I was going to LV anyway I found that IBM had a conference called Impact.  I had gone to IBM Pulse 2 years ago, and found it useful.  Last week I spent two days at the IBM conference, and I am going to contrast some of the differences between a conference like IBM Impact vs. AFCOM data center world.

Data Center World is promoted as 

Data Center World

Data Center World is the premier educational conference and Expo for data center and facilities management professionals providing real-world solutions for critical data center infrastructure through comprehensive, vendor-neutral education, peer-to-peer networking and unparalleled access to technology service providers.

…

More than 1,000 data center professionals from 26 countries around the world gathered this week in Las Vegas for Data Center World Spring 2013 at the Mandalay Bay conference center.

IBM Impact

IMPACT 2013 was a success!

More than 8,500 technology and business leaders representing every industry gathered from around the world at Impact 2013. They discussed how to make the best use of technologies such as mobile, social, cloud computing and big data. IBM customers described how they have re-imagined operations, processes, and technology, sharing their stories and expertise.

Data Center World is a 1,000 people focused on the data center building.  IBM Impact has 8,500 people focused on Social, Cloud, Mobile, and Big Data.

It has been a while since I went to DataCenterWorld, but usually there is DataCenterKnowledge covering the event which is owned by iNET Interactive and also owns AFCOM and DataCenterWorld. Media coverage on a Google search showed a few posts.

TEXT100 is the PR company supporting IBM Impact which is the same company that supports Schneider Electric.  There were 30 - 50 media and analysts (quite possibly many more were registered) that I could see at the IBM Impact event.  Media and Analyst there were companies like ZDNET, IDG, Forrester Research.

Many of the media and analyst had access to executives in media presentations which made it easier to drill into more details and ask more questions.  There were also 1-1 meetings for some.

I was able to learn more about IBM’s MessageSight Appliance and PureSystems.  The MessageSight Appliance is a new announcement. Curious I went to Google News to see the coverage.

IBM Crunches Internet Of Things Data

In-Depth

-InformationWeek-Apr 29, 2013

The above was considered by Google News to be in-depth, but this post had no details on the test hardware used by IBM to support the performance numbers.  The software architecture of the system addresses the challenge of how to handle a huge amount of streams that can’t be handled by a typical database, creating the need for an appliance, a server system that can handle millions of devices.I reached out to the folks at Text100 and IBM to get more details on MessageSight Appilance.  There is some cool stuff that IBM put in MessageSight and I hope to discuss details in the future.

Finding something as cool as MessageSight Appilance at AFCOM Data Center World is not really possible.  At some point you may see the MessageSight Appliance show up in your data center, connecting to millions of devices.  But, I don’t know if the MessageSight Appilance is going to look any different than any other IBM System P Series Server which it is built upon.

Three Private Clouds - IBM PureSystems, Redapt Private Cloud, AOL microdatacenter

IBM PureSystems hit the one year anniversary of their launch, and at IBM Impact i heard about PureSystems a lot.  After a few days, I filtered the marketing material to figure out what is the IBM PureSystems.

Then I saw this IBM video on PureSystems by Jason McGee.

This reminded me of what AOL’s Mike Manos has blogged on AOL’s microdatacenters.

Here is just a few of the things required to look at/change/and automate to even make this kind of achievement possible:

• Developing an entirely new Technology Suite and the ability to deliver that capacity anywhere in the world with minimal to no staffing.
• Delivering extremely dense compute capacity (think the latest technology) to give us the longest possible use of these assets once deployed into the field.
• The ability to deliver a “Microdata Center” anywhere on the planet regardless of temperature and humidity settings
• The ability to support/maintain/and administer remotely.
• The ability to fit into the power envelope of a normal office building
• Participation in our cloud environment and capabilities
• The processes by which these facilities are maintained and serviced
• and much much more…

and a third version of a PureSystems approach is Redapt’s Private Cloud.

What is the Redapt Cloud on Citrix CloudPlatform?

The Redapt Cloud is a bundle of tightly integrated infrastructure power by Citrix CloudPlatform.  It delivers a turnkey private or hybrid cloud at lower costs than public cloud providers.

Reasons to Consider the Redapt Cloud

• The Redapt Cloud blends proven reference architectures and our team’s experience to delivery a fully integrated private cloud
• A Redapt Cloud offers network, data, and compute performance that is superior to public cloud offerings.
• Your Redapt Cloud is designed to meet your application workloads and data capacity.  As your needs grow, so can your Redapt Cloud by adding compute and data as required.
• At scale, it is less costly than a public cloud.  Show us your public cloud utilization and we’ll demonstrate how the Redapt Cloud will save your organization real money.
• The Redapt Cloud can offer the data and network security that has been deterring your IT department from utilizing the efficiencies of cloud computing.
• Powered by Citrix CloudPlatform, which is recognized by industry pundits as  the Infrastructure as a Service leader.
• Infrastructure arrives at the data center of your choice ready to deploy.  Realize an operational cloud in as little as 14 days.

Sometimes it is easier to understand something when you see what others have done.  When I look at the IBM PureSystems site it is much easier to visualize what this means.

IBM PureFlex System

PureFlex System is an infrastructure system that provides an integrated computing environment — combining servers, storage, networking, virtualization, and management into a single offering.

This same description can be applied to AOL’s microdatacente and Redapt’s private cloud.

Squarespace API back down again, so need to change my writing style

When you get used to a certain way of creating content, many times there is an overall flow to your work.  Whether you are using Word, Photoshop, or Excel, a person creating content gets used to a way to work.  When your favorite tool is gone, changing can be hard.

Since last Thursday, SquareSpace 5’s API has been down.  This means I can’t publish from MarsEdit or Windows Live Writer to the blog.  I could use the browser posting feature, but I am so used to working in an editor that I can easily cut and paste reference urls, images, or video, it slows me down.  It feels like it is so slow it stops me from writing.

Given it has been 4 days now with the feature down, I am going to change what I write until it is up, and hope the API is fixed soon.