Pinglist :: Command Line Tool

Ah the command line, wonderfully powerful and often so cryptic it bends your mind like a pretzel…

But we geeks love to use it none the less.

Pinglist is a little handy tool I whipped up a few days ago.

One of the hard things to do on the command line which should dead simple is to ping a list of machines and return if they are up or down.

Well with Pinglist you can!

Its really an extension of the traditional Windows “ping” command that is used by every single tech across the globe.

What it does is looks in the specified directory for a nominated text file name and outputs a CSV sheet with the discovered results.

Pinglist syntax looks like this:

To break it down further:

pinglist is of course the name of the tool

input is the name of the .txt file you want to query without .txt  - this file should list of machines (one machine name per line)

output is the name of the .csv you wish to output

When you are running the tool its output will look as below:

And the CSV Output looks like:

Raw CSV:

CSV in Excel:

So if you like what you see, grab a copy here…

Click here to Download Pinglist 0.25b

(File Size: 188kb)

Software Asset Management – A Primer – Part 1

I know why you’re here, you typed into Google “Software Asset Management” expecting hundreds of links to methods, processes and software tools that help manage software in an easy concise and straight forward manner.

You probably then clicked on a few links and had plenty of websites tell you how important Software Asset Management is and that it can save you or your company thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Then they will tell you that its their solution that is the best for you to invest in and that it will end the issues that you are experiencing with your deployed software.

Well, while some of the tools will get you some of the way, you won’t fix your problems.

Its true that you need excellent tools to best capture information about the software in your environment, but its not the only thing you need.

So many business have struggled with Software Asset Management, and even when the combination of good policy, great tools and staff culture change are in place; it can still be a worrying task to complete.

So why is SAM so hard?

The overshadowing concern, before you think about policy, procedure, process and tools, STANDARDS.

Why such a problem?… Because there are no standards.

Firstly there is no standard by which software companies should license themselves. I’m sure we’ve all seen situations where you’ve said ” I wish X Company would license their software like Y Company”, I know I’ve said this more than I’ve liked.

No standards equals the ability for a software manufacturer to choose how they license their software, and traditionally the larger the company and more popular in industry the software the harder it is to control your licensing.

But why make it harder to license and be compliant for software you buy?

It all comes down to the almighty dollar. If its harder to license then you’ll spend money to make it easier, but are you really making it easier or just giving the software manufacturer the keys to a self-operating money making machine?

Here is caveat number two, with harder to license software it inherently becomes harder to ever know your true obligations of the licenses you purchase.

How many people do you know who can speak ‘Legalese’ the language of contracts and licenses? I know very few people who can digest this information an turn it into meaningful statements about licenses, even more so I’m yet to find two people who agree on the exact particulars of a software license.

Most people understand the overall idea of a software product:

1. You purchase a piece of software.
2. You open the box to install.
3. You agree to a page of text that you don’t read or understand.
4. You start to use the software.

This is the single largest mistake people and companies alike make when buying software.

Once you agree to the conditions the software product comes with, then you are legally bound by the End User Licensing Agreement (ELUA).

Do all software companies provide a similar method to producing and enforcing a EULA? Nope, once again it comes down to there being no standards.

A EULA can be as simple as the following:

1. You agree to be bound to this document
2. You agree not to reverse engineer this software
3. You agree not to copy or sell this software

But as most it can be excruciatingly painful in its detail and complexity, only adding to the frustration of any person wishing to know what they may or may not do with their newly purchased software.

Have you read the EULA for each piece of software you’ve deployed? Wait a minute, you just said that you use freeware and open source.

Yep EVERY piece of software has a license and a EULA, even if its freeware or open source, don’t be fooled just because you didn’t need to pay for it.

Here are the short answers:

Do you need to read the EULA? Yes.

Do you need to adhere to the EULA’s terms? Yes.

Can a EULA be written that makes my use of this software difficult? Absolutely.

The 2nd reason is quantity and distribution…

Distribution is your enemy, how many machines do you have that use software you’ve purchased, all of them probably do unless you have made the change to open source or freeware operating systems.

So how many? one machine? one hundred? one thousand or more?

Anything from one to one hundred machines is quite controllable, you’ll probably know the people who use the specific software on the systems and they probably feel a sense of ownership of the software on their machines.

Up to one hundred people also are quite quick to respond to change in processes or procedure.

Anything over one hundred people and you start to run into a few larger issues, who needs the software? how many do you distribute it to? will they understand the limitation of the software use?

Have over one thousand people in your business or company? then the road is hard and fraught with pain, but this also may be to your advantage.

The 3rd reason is discovery…

Ok so you have a network full of software, how do you find out what is on each machine? What quantity do you have out in your network? Can you target a single PC for discovery?

Without spot on discovery, you’ll feel like you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle of any description.

The 4th and final reason is metrics…

Metrics are important, don’t let anyone say otherwise, you need metrics.

Killer metrics will only serve you best when all other things slot into place, know where you’ve come from, where you are and where you are going and metrics will be the proof in the pudding.

There is light at the end of the tunnel…

Its just how long the tunnel is.

The above statements seem quite final, and depending on your distribution you can have a nightmare on your hands, but worry not there is room to breathe.

Where to start, where to start… Locked Environments and Baselining is the key to making sure you are managing your software assets correctly.

Look out for the next part of this primer!

In the next part of this primer I will be discussing further the concepts and methods of Locked Environments, Baselining, SOE (State of Environment) benefits, Bulletproof Distribution and more!

If you have any ideas or further questions so far add it to the comments!

Best RSS Reader for Netbooks

As we all know, Netbooks lack the screen real estate that larger PC’s have. Sure you can plugin an external monitor to help out, but when you are mobile you don’t have that luxury.

I’ve sampled a lot of RSS Readers in my time, most fit for the basics of RSS subscription and aggregation but only a few really stand out of the crowd. Add in the needs of the mobile blogger / tech writer and you have an even harder task on hand, if you are a blogger constantly on the go then having a robust RSS Reader is essential.

So lets delve into the world of RSS Readers for Netbooks.

Google Reader

This is an excellent RSS reader for on the go for most laptop and cross-platform but is good for netbooks? Lets take a look.

On the plus side Google Reader does indeed fit the bill for portability, not requiring installation other than a current version browser and the much needed internet connection.

You can also use this offline with an installation of Google Gears and of course if you use Google Chrome then you can install the Google Reader Notifier Extension to know when new items are available.

Reading articles on the small screen with Google Reader is pretty good, especially if your browser has an excellent full screen mode.

To be accurate, Google Reader is a web app pretending to be a traditional desktop reader, it contains features that usually only desktop readers would have.

On the netbook it is as nimble as your current internet connection is, so waiting for content to load isn’t a problem, there are some UI elements which could be smaller such as the subscriptions sidebar width, it would also be nice to be able to minimize or remove the items listed in the sidebar that you don’t always need.

Pros: Google reader is fast, clean and built for usability.

Cons: A few UI flaws that need to be updated.

RSS Owl

RSS Owl has been around for a long time, longer even than Google’s offerings in fact.

First released in 2004, it has a lifetime of development to make it a strong RSS reader. Where it differs from Google Reader is this is a desktop solution, software that has been written exclusively in Java.

Although being a desktop application it is available for Windows, Mac OS X and a variety of Linux flavors.

RSS Owl is a great desktop reader, its interface is clean and uncluttered, plenty of options for the avid RSS reader and being written in Java its nice and snappy when downloading new feed content.

However on a netbook the only useful feed viewer setting is the newspaper view. Best of all though is that it comes in a portable flavor, meaning you can throw it on a USB drive and off you go.

Syncing is amazing with RSS Owl, the developers really have made it easy to sync from a wide range of sources, Google Reader, OPML and a plethora of others.

The wide and vertical views are not good on the small screen as you cannot read the post titles.

The one great saving viewing feature however is the tabbed views your open feeds is a great way to switch between each feed.

Pros: Quick, clean and useful and syncs to a wide range of sources including Google Reader. Portable version available.

Cons: Limited options for small screen space.

FeedDemon

FeedDemon is an enormously popular RSS reader, its also a reader that has been with us for a long time.

Originally being developed for Newsgator as paid software with online subscription features from Newsgator.com, fast forward a few years and it became freeware with feed syncing  to Google Reader.

FeedDemon looks great on the small screen, lots of space for your feeds to occupy, minimizing subscription pane, tiny header pane makes this all a joy to use.

FeedDemon has an amazing array of features that will keep even the most addicted RSS junkie happy.

On the downside, feed syncing is fairly slow, even with just a few feeds on a fast connection, so a large number of feeds would slow the process down considerably.

Another downside is that without hacks you can’t use the official build of FeedDemon as a portable app (mind you I’m sure the more industrious of you would find a portable version somewhere).

Finally and understandably it is ad supported. Going from paid software to freeware is a hard task, the ads are unobtrusive but still niggle at the senses while reading your favorite feed.

Pros: Probably the best reading experience from a downloadable client

Cons: Slow feed syncing, no portable version, it is ad supported.

FeedReader

FeedReader may appear to be one of the weaker of the RSS readers available for desktop use.

Its basic, really basic, but that might not be too bad.

FeedReader is really a bare bones reader, it has simple and functional features without providing a full on RSS reading experience like something like FeedDemon provides. No options to gather data from external online readers like Google Reader, it does have an import feature for OPML files so you can at least export your feeds from another source or sync from FTP / OPML hosted remotely.

The biggest drawback is that you need to add each feed manually to the reader, FeedReader does have auto-discovery which works for the most part but fails sometimes with websites that offer multiple feeds.

It comes in both installable and portable flavors to keep both worlds happy.

Pros: Terribly lightweight, great reading pane size.

Cons: Manual feed input, no syncing to online readers.

The Verdict

Really its up to you in the end, these 4 options are by no means the only on offer, feed tickers and other methods to get your RSS fix are available in droves.

If you have another reader you love to use on your netbook or have other alternatives for RSS reading, hit the comments to let me know!