While at Adobe MAX, I had the pleasure of talking with one of the customer keynotes, Adam Mollenkopf of FedEx Custom Critical. His team had worked on a Flash Platform and LiveCycle driven console for tracking high-dollar shipments and monitoring just about every aspect of the shipment itself. I'm always searching for stories of why an RIA (here, Flash) was used over Ajax or traditional GUIs, and I think in Adam does a good explanation of why they came to pick the Flash Platform over Ajax in the first part, the interview. We then sit down and he walks us through the demo of the console in action.

During the demo, here, in addition to the general RIA-ness, the special thing to note is the rules engine backing all of the predictions and analyzing sensor and geo data. Those create an interesting (and for FedEx useful) stream of real-time data to console of realtime data to churn over, expose in the RIA, and start making business decisions around.

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and sponsored this videos.

In this screencast, I sit down with Genuitec's Brian Fernandes for a demo of their new Visual Query Builder. Brian walks through several quick examples of how the Visual Query Builder is used to explore, update, and even design a database.

Disclosure: Genuitec is a client and sponsored this video.

Virtualization is magic of IT shops, but as with any technology it creates it's own unique set of management challenges. That's why it was fun to sit down with Convirture's Jaydeep Marfatia and Arsalan Farooq for this two part screencast and see how ConVirt tackles virtualization management issues. They also indulge me in some "the future of IT management" talk which you know I always enjoy – there's even some private cloud talk.

In this first part, we start out with a quick history and overview of the ConVirt project and ConVirture the company. Next, we look at the console for browsing physical and virtual machines, using it drill down into each to look at configuration and health metrics. Having browsed through existing servers, we start looking at how ConVirt helps you create a library of virtual images by creating templates. We see how you can use these templates – with all sorts of settings for the server, storage, network, and more – to create new virtual servers.

Disclosure: Convirture is a client and sponsored this video.

Virtualization is magic of IT shops, but as with any technology it creates it's own unique set of management challenges. That's why it was fun to sit down with Convirture's Jaydeep Marfatia and Arsalan Farooq for this two part screencast and see how ConVirt tackles virtualization management issues. They also indulge me in some "the future of IT management" talk which you know I always enjoy – there's even some private cloud talk.

In this second part, we get into actual management, seeing how ConVirt manages not only the basic parameters for each virtual machine, but also the pools of storage and private networks. When it comes to provisioning, ConVirt also offers the optional intelligent VM placement that automatically figures out the best host to put a new virtual server. Ww wrap up by going over the ConVirt community and commercial support options.

Disclosure: Convirture is a client and sponsored this video.

While at OpenSourceWorld, I talked with Zenoss' Bill Karpovich, getting an update on what's been going on with Zenoss. We talk about recent versions, management packs (with over a 100 now), the community, and reaching the million downloads milestone.

Disclosure: Zenoss is a client.

While at OpenSourceWorld, I pulled aside Reductive Lab's Luke Kanies to get an update on what's been going on in the Puppet world, esp. after the (very) recent funding Reductive Labs got. In the brief interview, we touch on the new staff and the product road-map.

Disclosure: Reductive Labs is a client.

While at OpenSourceWorld last week, I snagged a jiggly-framed updated with John Mark Walker. We talk about the upcoming open source on Windows conference he's planning and (him having been in many community management roles) the state of community management. The book I mention is Dawn Foster's Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy

Disclosure: Microsoft is a client, as was Hyperic.

I managed to button-hole Tarus Balog of the OpenNMS Group. In this short shaky-cam interview, I ask him to give us a quick update on OpenNMS. He talks primarily about the new "provisioning" system that cleans up the way inventory and cataloging of discovered devices is put together in stored, a "CMDB in a file" as I joke. We also talk about Honduran cellphone monitoring.