I’d rather be surfing

Following up on my previous post on the 700MHz auction, today is some “glass half full” kind of news.  I feel pretty optimistic about the prospects for a more open wireless market…  And it’ll be interesting to watch as Google takes on the Wireless Incumbents.

I recently joined an Alternate Reality Game apparently based on the upcoming J.J. Abrams movie (1.18.08). Check it out here: Ethan Haas Was Right.

I’ve read about these games a bit but this is the first time I’ve gotten involved. My girlfriend had a lot of fun with the NIN Year Zero ARG and I enjoyed it vicariously…

I suppose now I have to see this game through until the end… Next phase starts on August 1st (which by the way is 08.1) — very soon now.

I recently realized there are two very different ways to create a Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for Amazon EC2.

1. Modifying an Existing Image
2. Creating a New Image from Scratch

Modifying an Existing Image

This method is described in the Getting Started Guide for EC2 and is very straight forward. Essentially, you startup an instance, install all the software you want on your image - Apache, Rails, Mysql, etc - then use Amazon’s command line tools to bundle the image, export (save) it to S3 and register it.

Creating a New Image from Scratch

This approach was much more difficult (at least for me). It’s described in the EC2 Developer Guide and involves creating a loopback file, installing an OS to it and configuring the OS. I can get around Linux pretty well, but some of these commands were pretty esoteric and I ran into some frustrating failures.

When to Use

If you are creating a custom AMI for internal usage or just want to create an image quickly, I recommend Modifying an Existing Image.

If you are creating a custom AMI for external (public) consumption, need complete control over the OS and its configuration, Creating a new Image from Scratch is probably the way to go.

Installing Asterisk and Amazon EC2

Asterisk, the open source VOIP server and Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) are a match made in heaven. Herein, I’ll explain how to get an Asterisk server installed on EC2.

Prereqs

I assume you are familiar with Amazon’s Web Services and have an account enabled for EC2. If you are new to AWS, start here. If you are new to EC2 but have an account you should run through the Getting Started Guide before continuing.

Startup an EC2 Instance

I am using a server image I created from the Fedora Core 4 Base image that Amazon made available. You can use the base image or your own. In the Getting Started Guide that you went through previously, you should have installed the command line tools onto your local machine. Using those tools run:

ec2-describe-images -o amazon

You should get something like:

IMAGE ami-20b65349 ec2-public-images/fedora-core4-base.manifest.xml ...
IMAGE ami-22b6534b ec2-public-images/fedora-core4-mysql.manifest.xml ...
IMAGE ami-23b6534a ec2-public-images/fedora-core4-apache.manifest.xml ...
IMAGE ami-25b6534c ec2-public-images/fedora-core4-apache-mysql.manifest.xml ...
IMAGE ami-26b6534f ec2-public-images/developer-image.manifest.xml ...
IMAGE ami-2bb65342 ec2-public-images/getting-started.manifest.xml ...
IMAGE ami-bd9d78d4 ec2-public-images/demo-paid-AMI.manifest.xml ...

We’ll startup the Fedora Core Base Image (ami-20b65349) by issuing the command:

ec2-run-instances ami-20b65349

Keep checking the status of the instance by running:

ec2-describe-instances

You should see that the instance is running and login to your instance at this time. (If you can’t complete this step, you should complete the Getting Starting Guide that I mentioned previously.)

Install Compilation Tools

First install
the compiling tools using yum (package installer):

yum install gcc gcc-c++ -y

(BTW - kudos to my alma mater for yum)

Next we need to install the termcap libraries:

yum install libtermcap libtermcap-devel newt newt-devel ncurses ncurses-devel -y

Download and Install Asterisk

Now we can grab the latest version of Asterisk (currently version 1.4.8). Run the command:

wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.4.8.tar.gz

Unpack the tar and cd into the directory that you unpacked it to.

tar xfv asterisk-1.4.8.tar.gz

cd asterisk-1.4.8

Now we can configure, compile and install Asterisk. If you want to customize any installation settings, now is the time. You can read extensively about the various settings available on numerous websites. We are going to just install the default settings. Run the commands:

./configure

make

make install

That’s all folks… Optionally, you can run the “make samples” command to install the sample configuration.

Look for my my next article on configuration and integration with a VOIP provider.

Lot’s of posts on Google bidding on the upcoming auction of the 700MHz wireless spectrum.  (Om does a great job of explaining what the 700MHz spectrum is and why it is valuable for wireless in this post.)

I tend to agree with Google’s position on opening up the spectrum.  My interpretation is that Google’s wants the 700MHz spectrum to function like the Internet: anyone can connect, consume and possibly build services.  As we’ve seen with the Internet, opening up the network promotes competition and innovation and we (consumers) benefit greatly.

One of the reasons, I haven’t gotten an iPhone is the fact that there is no SDK for building client apps. The Open Moko Neo 1973 looks like an interesting alternative (with a terrible name)… The hardware and software are open and built for developers in mind. If I don’t succumb to the iPhone pressure, I just might get this.

Spent all day Saturday at the iPhoneDevCamp which was organized by the BarCamp crew.  Met a lot of cool folks…  What I found interesting was the fact that most developers I met had never developed for mobile!  Most had no experience with WAP, SMS or Client (JavaME, etc). It looks like the iPhone can not only change the wireless consumer but also the perspective of the Silicon Valley developers…