The 2008 SAGE-AU Victorian IT Symposium - Friday 30th May 2008

The 2008 SAGE-AU Victorian IT Symposium is a one day technical conference held in Melbourne. It is organised by the SAGE-AU Victorian Chapter and aims to provide an educational forum for systems and network administrators, system managers, developers and other technical professionals to meet and share their knowledge and experiences. This is the fifth year running for this event, focusing on a providing a fast paced stream of technical presentations.

Register:
* Early bird registrations until 16th May 2008 (this week!)
* Register online at: http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/2008VIC/Registrations

Location:
Hotel Grand Chancellor
131 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne

When:
Friday 30th May 2008, 9am - 5pm

Programme:
* Evolution of Storage - Cameron Huysmans (Total RISC Technology)
* EMC Next Generation Products - Shane Moore (EMC)
* Routing and Security Platforms - Lachlan Kidd (Cisco)
* Life-cycle Management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Michael Wahren (Red Hat)
* Apple Technology Update - Joseph Cox (Apple)
* An Illustrated History of Software Failure - Paul Fenwick (Perl Training Australia)

The 2008 SAGE-AU Victorian IT Symposium is proudly supported by our Gold Sponsors Red Hat, EMC Corporation and Total RISC Technology.

You can find out more details at: http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/2008VIC/Home

First Melbourne Flex User Group Meeting - OzFlex Unleashed!

I went along to the first Melbourne Flex User Group meeting tonight, OzFlex. I must say it was exciting to see the enthusiasm of some of the local developers in building a community that focuses on RIA. The presentation by Matt Johnston walked through a simple AIR application highlighting the native menus and the file system API. If you’re working with Flex and interested in presenting, get in touch with Matt.

For more information, check out http://ozflex.urbanwise.com.

Moving WSUS Server Updates

If you’re using Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), there may come a day when you need to move the updates to another drive. Once WSUS has been installed, the WSUS Administration tool doesn’t let you do this, but you can do it using a command line tool called wsusutil found in C:\Program Files\Update Services\Tools. I’m running version 3.0 SP1.

The command is:

wsusutil movecontent logfile.log x:\WSUS

(where x: is the new destination)

If you have already copied the content (make sure you’ve set the correct permissions), you can run:

wsusutil movecontent logfile.log f:\WSUS -skipcopy

NOTE: This is separate to the WSUS database itself, this only applies to the actual patches.

To see the other uses of wsusutil, run it with no arguments:

C:\Program Files\Update Services\Tools>wsusutil.exe
Windows Server Update Services administration utility. Try:
wsusutil.exe help checkhealth
wsusutil.exe help configuressl
wsusutil.exe help configuresslproxy
wsusutil.exe help deletefrontendserver
wsusutil.exe help listinactiveapprovals
wsusutil.exe help removeinactiveapprovals
wsusutil.exe help export
wsusutil.exe help healthmonitoring
wsusutil.exe help import
wsusutil.exe help listfrontendservers
wsusutil.exe help movecontent
wsusutil.exe help reset
wsusutil.exe help usecustomwebsite
wsusutil.exe help listunreferencedpackagefolders

Melbourne Flex and AIR Event

The local Adobe User Group is canvassing Aussies about the possibility of a Flex event in Melbourne.

Adobe Platform Evangelist Danny Dura will be in Melbourne in late January so there is a strong possibility that there will be a Flex/AIR night meeting.

The planned date is Tuesday the 29th of January, 2008.

You can register your interest at: http://www.techevents.com.au/flex/

Chumby and Flash Lite 3.0 Talk

Due to a cancellation of one of the speakers at the Melbourne Adobe User Group meeting, I gave a quick talk on Chumby. For those that don’t already know about Chumby, it’s a wi-fi, always-on, low end consumer device that runs Linux as its operating system and Flash Lite 3.0 for it’s applications. It’s a very interesting device, and project for that matter.

Below is my virtual Chumby, you can learn more about Chumby at Chumby Industries, places like Engadget, the various Chumby blogs (see the Chumby welcome screen) and of course Google.

Microformats Talk

For anyone interested in web technologies, I’ll be doing a talk tonight on Microformats at the Melbourne Adobe User Group. My talk will follow another presentation on Adobe AIR.

“After a quick discussion of the Adobe MAX Conference, a presentation will show you how you can convert HTML/Javascript, or Flash, or Flex into Adobe AIR. Afterwards an introductory presentation on Microformats.”

Find out more information.

Open Source Developers’ Conference 2007

The Open Source Developers’ Conference 2007 is a conference designed by open source developers, for developers and business people. It covers numerous programming languages across a range of operating systems, and related topics such as business processes, licensing, and strategy. Talks vary from introductory pieces through to the deeply technical.

This year, the conference travels to Brisbane and will be held at the Royal on the Park Hotel (opposite the City Botanical Gardens), aiming to further build on the huge success of OSDC 2004-2006 in Melbourne. OSDC 2007 expects to welcome over 200 delegates.

Early bird registration until October 14th!

With three developer talks on at any time, spanning over the three days of the main conference, and the tutorials on the Monday before the main conference, there is bound to be something of interest to any developer. A new fourth track is dedicated to the business related topics and is sure to attract many additional interested parties.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Success in Development & Business”. An overview of the confirmed sessions is online, the program scheduling will be made available soon. The 2007 keynote speakers will be: Rusty Russell (opening), Rasmus Lerdorf, Paul Fenwick (dinner), and Nat Torkington (closing)!

OSDC 2007 will be held in Brisbane on November 26th-29th.

For more information visit http://osdc.com.au.

MySQL via JDBC and an Overview of MySQL use in Australia

The MySQL User Group is well and truly alive in Melbourne, so make sure you enter this one in your calendars.

This months meeting will include a presentation on MySQL via JDBC and an Overview of MySQL use in Australia.

For users, administrators and developers using MySQL. Anybody doing anything in this area is welcome to come along! You’re also welcome to speak! Even if you’re just curious about the technology.

When:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 7:00 PM

Where:
RMIT University
Building 10, Level 8, Room 4 (10.08.04)
Melbourne

Description:

Meeting plan:

1. Introductions and general discussion.

2. Presentations / mashups

- Using MySQL via JDBC (Java)
- Quiz on MySQL the ‘DO NOTS’
- Overview of MySQL use in Australia

3. Questions and answers.

For more information visit http://mysql.meetup.com/93/.

OWASP Australia Security Conference 2008

A Call for Papers for the OWASP Australia Security Conference 2008 was posted on the OWASP Australia list today. This event will be the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region, so I’m sure it will be an exciting event.

The conference will be held in February 2008 on the Gold Coast in sunny Queensland, and will cover a wide range of web application security related topics.

Abstracts are due by 30th November 2007
Full submissions are required by 31st January 2008

For more information please visit: http://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Australia_AppSec_2008_Conference

SAGE-AU Victorian Chapter Meeting - “Freebase”

SAGE-VIC have been invited to attend the first Freebase user group meeting outside of the US. Since a few SAGE-AU monthly meeting regulars are very interested in going to this event, we have decided that this would be a great opportunity to try something different, meet some new faces and at the same time learn about Freebase.

Freebase (http://freebase.com) is a free database of everything. Currently in alpha release, Freebase offers a structured view of all kinds of data and APIs to let you use that data (all licensed under Creative Commons) in your own applications.

DATE: Tuesday 9th October 2007
TIME: 7:00 PM
VENUE: Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne (Yahoo! Maps or Google Maps)

The venue, Horse Bazaar, has good wifi, so bring your laptops.

The format will be:

* 7pm: arrive, grab drinks, meet people
* 7:30pm: a short presentation of Freebase and what it’s all about
* after that: experiment, explore, play, hack, talk, share ideas, or whatever comes naturally

For current information, visit http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/271565/.