Blog posts tagged with 'intel'

I hope by now a lot of you know about the new "unconference" portion of Synergy 2008, Geek Speak Live.  Part of Geek Speak Live is the Geek Speak Lounge (GSL).  Basically is an area to meet at during the Live event and meet with other members of the Citrix community and discuss and share new ideas and topics.  It's also where you can see some demos with a twist, more on this later! 

First, here's the proposed GSL layout:
 
There are 4 main demo areas.  The twist is that the demos are intended to let you experience future Citrix technology  more interactively, possibly using some applications and devices that aren't what you'd usually see us demo.

So here's the rundown:

Cool Devices - This section of  the GSL features gadgets that can be today, or may be enabled tomorrow with the ICA client to become your XenApp or XenDesktop ICA end points.  Customers are using cell phones and PDAs today to do this, but we have some new devices that are starting to change the game and starting to reach Nirvana Device status as described in Chris Flecks post.  You'll get to try them out in the GSL, in exchange for you opinion and comments on how use of such devices can add value to your business, or not!  Hopefully this demo area makes you think about app and desktop delivery in some new ways.  For a quick preview of some of the devices that will be present, check out the Nirvana Devices Invade Synergy Geek Speak Lounge post.  (Note: we originally had a BarCamp session on this topic, but due to the great response we've gotten from others willing to present, we've removed this from BarCamp.  But you can still get the hands on experience and knowledge in the GSL on this subject).

Project Alice Demo - Haven't heard about project Alice, also referred to as Reverse seamless?  It fits in very nicely with our XenDesktop story and is a sneak peak at some new technology we are working on to allow the user to leverage local applications running on the end point device in the context of their XenDesktop seamlessly.  Image having those favorite apps you have on your laptop seamlessly showing up as part of your Corporate XenDesktop environment with out needing to switch between the local desktop and XenDesktop. 

Project Apollo Games - You've probably seen some of the blogs on project Apollo.  Apollo does a great job of enabling the new graphics intensive features of next generation applications in a Citrix environment (preview at Derek Thorslund's blog).  Well this is the GSL twisted version of those demos.  We're going to have 8 Dell XPS 710 gaming systems running an early version of Apollo, remoting an action game to Wyse Thin Clients.  You've seen the CAD demos, now it's your turn to actually sit down and give the power of project Apollo some hands on time, in true Geek Speak fashion.  While you probably won't be publishing games to your end user's any time soon, you should be able translate the power of this demo into how project Apollo can help you move to the next generation of graphic intensive applications in your Citrix deployment in the future.   We'll have some of the apps Derek has blogged on with Apollo as well, for those non-gamers like myself

Apollo Media Center - To further show off some of the new video capabilities the Apollo team is working on, we will also have an Alienware Area 51 system running Media Center in the GSL.  And you guessed it, the Alienware system will be "Apollo-ized" and remoting videos out to a large screen monitor via a Wyse thin client.  Again, maybe not what you'd do in production, but you should be able to translate this demo with a twist into better ideas on how to deliver some of those training videos and other multi-media out to your users in the future.

The GSL should be a great place for you to meet with other members of the Citrix Community, discuss new ideas and hopefully come up with some new ones!

Thanks to Intel for sponoring the event, and the list of other partners supporting the GSL effort:

Alienware, Dell, Wyse, Nokia, Sprint, Celio, i-Mate, Impatica, Icuiti

We look forwared to meeting you there!

Adam

Wanted to do a quick post on some of the cool gadgets we will be demoing in the Geek Speak Lounge at Synergy 2008 sponsored by Intel.  Alot of the devices are  the ones you may have seem me blog on earlier, and a few are potential candidates to add into the mix down the road.  Here's your chance to get hands on with some of these next generation access devices, and BYOG (Bring Your Own Gadget) that you think would make a good Nirvana Device candidate for use with Citrix:

 
If you look close you'll see 4 of these devices actively connected to a XenDesktop, and 2 of them remoting that desktop from the device out to a larger screen in true Nirvana Device fashion!
 
Devices shown starting in the front and moving counter clockwise:
 

• i-Mate 9502
• Impatica Showmate
• Nokia 810N
• HP iPAQ 210 - accessing a XenDesktop
• i-Mate 6150 (behind the iPAQ) - accessing a XenDesktop connected to the 22" Dell Monitor
• Celio Redfly Mobile Companion
• Sprint Treo 700wx (on the Redfly) - accessing a XenDesktop connected to the Redfly
• Nokia E90 - accessing a XenDesktop
• Nokia E61i

All of the devices shown currently work with XenApp and XenDesktop except for the Nokia 810N.  Intel will also be providing some prototype devices to show off as well. 

We'll also be following up to this post with a full rundown of all of the cool stuff that you can see and use in the GS Lounge early next week!

Look forward to seeing you and hearing your comments in the Geek Speak Lounge at Synergy 2008

PS: You might even have a chance to one of these cool devices home with you from the show to use with your own XenApp and soon XenDesktop environment!!!

Intel's "Cliffside" technology enables a single physical Wi-Fi adapter to function like two independent Wi-Fi adapters.

I don't know of any software out there, it may exist though, that allows a single Wi-Fi adapter to be able to connect to multiple wireless networks. The only exception to that would be is if the adapter had multiple radios in either the same or different bands.

The other really exciting thing I can see from "Cliffside" is what it can do for us with virtual machines.

Here is a real scenario that "Cliffside" could have helped solve:

A good friend of mine over at Siemens, Scott Hembroff, ran into a bit of a problem that involved the local host needing to be able to connect to the Siemens Wireless network, but yet also be able to connect a running virtual machine on to another Wireless network. This problem could have been solved with some really crafty voodoo magic, but the big hurdle had to do with the security of the other wireless network and how they locked down MAC addresses and Machine ID's. Basically to solve the problem we ended up using a USB Wireless adapter that we did not let the local host install, we only installed it on the guest. This allowed for the security measures in place on the other Wireless network to not be comprised, but yet allow us to have the physical host exist on two different Wireless networks.

If "Cliffside" had been around when we were tackling this problem, who knows, we might not have even thought twice about what to do. With that being said, it doesn't look like "Cliffside" in its current advertised feature set from Intel, could have solved the problem, as they are intending the second partition to only be used as a PAN. I get it, but why wouldn't you go all the way with the ability of true duality?

This is a good starting point, but if our computers are to be fully virtualized or are running more than one virtual machine, we are going to need to be able to connect to more than one wireless network, and the virtual machines are going to have to have be able to do that from one physical/virtual wireless adapter.