JumpBox Official Blog

Hard to believe it but today we celebrate our third year of existence. We founded JumpBox on July 28th, 2006 with the goal of making Open Source more accessible. The idea was that by dramatically reducing the technical barriers we could enable new use cases and bring this software to new audiences. We’ve come a long way in three years thanks to the support of people like you. And we know we have a long way to go before realizing the degree of usability we envision. Reminiscing over the past year here are few of the more notable milestones:

• Growing the library to over 50 JumpBoxes
• Joining forces with a hosting provider to deliver affordable, turnkey hosting of JumpBoxes
• Rolling out early access to Cloud Gear, a no-upfront-cost way to take advantage of hosting JumpBoxes on Amazon EC2
• Creating self-service tools for managing one’s subscription
• Launching the Ramp Up video series to help reduce the learning curve for getting started with new JumpBoxes
• Building out a helpful set of documentation with our wiki
• Working with the Open Source projects to help them provide more effective trials for their users
• Making the cover of Linux Journal

Thanks for your continued interest in us. If these achievements above seem significant, wait until you see what we have planned for this next year.

And now if you’ll excuse us we have some cake to eat

Hello,
We’ve done it again, this time traveling across the Atlantic to the country of France to bring you this newest addition to JumpBox Open.

Introducing the JumpBox for GLPI – IT and Asset Management System

GLPI helps you manage and track IT equipment, like computers, software, peripherals, and consumables, and their associated maintenance, documentation, and help desk requests.

GLPI stands for “Gestionnaire libre de parc informatique” (loosely translated as “Free IT Manager”) but with available support for 22 languages you don’t need to “Parlez-Vous Français” to use it. GLPI should prove useful to small and mid-sized in-house IT organizations as well as outside service providers who manage computers, etc. for others. GLPI’s additional benefits include easy management of equipment documentation, including operating procedures, FAQ’s, and lease agreements, help desk functionality that allows users to directly request help desk support, and job tracking and routing. Additionally, GLPI enables multi-user, multi-location use, and features a mail notification system which can deliver help desk requests directly to technicians.

Special Note: GLPI can be combined with another application, OCS Inventory NG,
to enable auto-discovery, inventory visualization, and application deployment to
monitored computers. Would you find that combination useful? Please let us know and we’ll do it!

Find out more about GLPI: From GLPI’s website, the JumpBox for GLPI web page and our

Ramp Up screencast for the JumpBox for GLPI

(Psst, it’s in the post below. Quick before you miss it!)

Our series of screencasts to help you “Ramp Up” and get started quickly with JumpBox applications continues.

Manage JumpBoxes on Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) with Amazon’s new web-based console
Last year we knocked the skin off the ball, crushed the bat over our knee, and trotted the bases throwing up the peace sign when we made our library of JumpBox applications available on EC2, a service which allows you to rent computing power to run your applications. Amazon has recently released a web-based point and click interface that allows you to manage those JumpBoxes on EC2 much easier.

The Amazon Web Services Management Console gives you the ability to start and stop EC2 instances (such as JumpBox AMI’s) and view and perform actions on running on those instances. Upcoming features of the console include the ability to manage Amazon’s S3 data storage service, which is supported by the JumpBox backup system. This new interface means < a href=”http://www.jumpbox.com/jumpbox-open#subscription-plans”>Premium and Plus subscribers, whose subscriptions automatically include access to all JumpBox AMI’s, as well as the general public, who can access the 12 free JumpBox AMI’s, no longer have to download any software or plugins to manage JumpBox instances. JumpBox deployments just keep getting easier.

And now ladies and gentlemen…it’s time for

Updated Applications!!!! (crowd roars!!!)


JumpBox for Joomla 1.5

Joomla! is an award-winning Content Management System (CMS) that will help you build websites and other powerful online applications.

The Joomla! community has updated Joomla! version 1.5.8 to 1.5.9. This is a security release and users are strongly encouraged to upgrade immediately. JumpBox version 1.1.8 (updated from 1.1.7) includes this Joomla! application update.

JumpBox for OpenFire

OpenFire is a real-time collaboration server that enables instant messaging. Based around the open Jabber XMPP protocol, OpenFire provides private and public instant messaging and group chat with support for any client that supports Jabber.

The OpenFire community has update OpenFire from version 3.6.2 to 3.6.3. The release includes fixes to a few minor bugs. JumpBox version 1.1.2 (updated from 1.1.1) includes this OpenFire application update.
JumpBox for Drupal 5.x

Drupal 5.x is a content management system that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of web content.

The Drupal community has updated Drupal from version 5.14 to 5.15. This release fixes security vulnerabilities and sites are urged to upgrade immediately.
JumpBox version 1.1.9 updated to 1.1.10 includes this Drupal 5.x application update.
JumpBox for Drupal 6.x

The Drupal community has also updated Drupal 6.x, from version 6.8 to 6.9. This release fixes security vulnerabilities and again, sites are urged to upgrade immediately. JumpBox version 1.1.7, updated to 1.1.8 includes this Drupal release.

Premium and Plus subscriptions to JumpBox Open include the ability to use all JumpBox AMI’s on EC2. Here are just a few benefits:

• Use JumpBoxes on EC2 as a lab environment to keep your systems administration investment low while you test the viability of applications.
• Instantly scale your application to meet spikes in traffic or demand. Traffic crash your site? Not likely with a JumpBox on EC2. When your JumpBox’s computing requirements change, Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, providing more power. No compromises, no up-front investment.

Live the simple life out there people. No hardware, no software, no stress.

No wife telling you to cook more often you lazy so and so, no arguing with your daughter to do that darn homework, no going to the pantry to get your hidden box of Mike and Ike’s only to find that your little son found them first. Man, all of them! No going to the… Oh wait. Uh, never mind all that.

You want stress free living? JumpBox Open

We grew our labor force by 16% last week with the addition of our newest team member.
David (bottom left) joins us as Senior Software Architect and will be primarily working to strengthen the JumpBox platform and add some powerful features to the “Rapid Trial widget.” David’s trading card reads as follows:

David hails from local software company Happy Camper Studios, a company he founded in 2004. He has been involved in numerous software projects including the Monkeybars GUI library the Rawr packaging tool, and the Gemini game engine, all JRuby based. David has also been active in education, speaking frequently at local tech events like the Desert Code Camp as well as national events such as SXSW and Community One. He currently teaches software development courses at the Art Institute of Phoenix. In his spare time David plays ice hockey and soccer but admits that these sports account for only a small percentage of the scars he currently has (we’re still trying to convince David not to play in cactus patches).

At any rate, we’re excited to have David on board. Many of the platform advancements you’ll see in the coming months will be a direct result of his efforts. Please give him a warm welcome (ie. here’s your chance to curry favor with him and lobby for that feature you’ve been wanting to see).

It’s like a reverse Agatha Christie novel – the numbers are going up instead of down!  Today our newest team member Steven joins us to help hone our marketing message and tell a better story for JumpBox.  Steven’s trading card reads as follows:

A self-proclaimed social media junkie and technology freak, Steven brings enthusiasm and a fresh marketer’s perspective to the team.  Formerly in his spare time Steven raced go karts and shredded mountains on a snowboard. He now dedicates his attention entirely to his wife, two children and web-based technology. 

We’re excited to have Steven involved and helping us translate the sometimes abstract concepts and features involved into meaningful benefits for our users. Welcome aboard Steven!

So here at work, we’re in the process of developing a new web site for our subscribers. We’ve decided to implement the site atop the SilverStripe Content Management System, as we’ve found it to be incredibly flexible and easy to use. It’s based on a powerful MVC framework that’s written in PHP. We develop mostly on Mac OS X, which includes PHP5 pre-installed, so therefore it should be easy to install, right? Wrong!

Want to install SilverStripe? Sure, drop it in place, it’s just a directory structure, but when you try to access the main page, which generally results in SilverStripe attempting to perform its initial setup, you’re Denied!

Why? Well, first of all, SilverStripe requires MySQL… Not included by default on Mac OS X. So I had to install that. I also had to install the MySQL Admin and MySQL Query tools so that I could create the default SilverStripe database and properly set up its permissions.

Next, SilverStripe requires the GD2 PHP extension. Unfortunately, Mac OS X’s PHP installation includes absolutely none of the common PHP extensions. Have one of the thousands of PHP apps that want to use the PHP SOAP extension out of the box? Can’t! Yep, I found that one out while I was trying to do PHP development using the EC2 SOAP APIs.

Should be easy enough to compile the GD2 extension and install it, right? No Way! Building GD2 from a standard PHP download requires a bunch of dependencies that aren’t installed by default on Mac OS X, and then when you finally do get it built and add it to your PHP.ini, it still doesn’t work. So how about MacPorts? Why should I have to install PHP from MacPorts if PHP is already installed?! Even worse, I’d have to reconfigure Apache to use the MacPorts PHP5 install instead of the default. Bleck!

Long story short, I wasted over an hour of my time trying to get the Mac OS X PHP install to bend to my will with absolutely no luck. Then I realized something. I work for JumpBox… We actually have a JumpBox for SilverStripe. It took me about ten seconds to download the JumpBox, another ten to uncompress the Zip file, and yet another ten seconds to start up the SilverStripe VM. After that, I had to fill out a couple of fields for the initial setup, and was good to go. Yes, people, it took under a minute to get a working SilverStripe system up and running.

Even better, instead of having to go through the headache of installing SilverStripe, MySQL, and the missing Mac OS X PHP extensions all over again on my MacBook (so that I can work at home, of course), all I had to do was suspend the VM, copy the JumpBox for SilverStripe folder onto my 5gb thumb drive and throw it in my pocket. Try doing that with your average everyday install.

Okay, “belated b-day,” (it was yesterday).  Two years ago we founded the company with the goal of dramatically simplifying server software.  We postulated that if it were made easy enough, people would find innovative uses and ways to leverage it more in their daily lives.  We saw a sea of Open Source applications that were extremely powerful but prohibitively complex, and therefore a ton of opportunity to simplify how they could be managed.  
 

Two years later we like to think that we’ve put a sizable dent in the problem. And while we have a long way to go towards achieving our vision of supreme usability and flexibility, it’s good to celebrate where we’re at. If you follow this blog, thanks for tracking JumpBox developments.  We promise to continue to work towards making server software easier and more useful and we look forward to your continued input to enable us to produce products and services that simplify your life.

Everyone give a big welcome to our two newest team members at JumpBox, David and Tom.

Their trading cards read as follows:

David is the reason you see so few bugs in our products. He’s the Q & A master who puts each app through its paces to ensure it’s squeaky clean and free of any annoyances. David’s been working contract for us for a few months and just recently joined us full-time. David reads more books than most lawyers do and we’re told the Library of Congress now pales in comparison to the shelves in his den alone. Read more from David on Twitter.

Tom joins JumpBox today bringing a wealth of software engineering and architecture knowledge. In his former life, Tom had worked with Kimbro to write an entire native XML database engine from scratch (dbXML). Tom is the guy who will be responsible for advancing the capabilities of the JumpBox platform and performing (what will appear to the rest of the world as) software magic. Tom is an active local musician in Phoenix and plays in a local post-punk band called “Glamour Shot.” Read more from Tom on his blog.

We’re looking forward to David’s continued merciless bug squashing and Tom’s software super powers to make the JumpBox experience even better for you, our users.

It’s always nice to put faces with names. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce the people behind JumpBox:
 
(and yes, to confirm the rumor, JumpBoxes are indeed made of plywood- that’s the secret ingredient behind their stellar usability…)
If we had trading cards for the team members they would probably read something like:

Austin – Platform Engineer: Linux kingpin and Starbuck’s aficionado, Austin comes to JumpBox from the Google Mars project at ASU where he admin’d the massive IT infrastructure used to communicate with the Mars rover. Austin is an Arizona native and brings a wealth of systems experience to the team. He’s currently the person that cranks out the new builds of the appliances you see posted regularly to the site. Austin represents the Xbox gaming platform in the company.

Kimbro - CEO: The brains and vision behind the JumpBox technology, Kimbro is an audiophile, a technologist and an avid BMX trick rider from sunny AZ. Kimbro oversees technical as well as business strategy and also assists in development tasks as necessary. Kimbro has the best commute of anyone in the company consisting of a single flight of stairs. He represents the PS3 gaming platform for JumpBox.

Ben - Platform Engineer: A Ruby on Rails prodigy hailing from Kauai, Hawaii, Ben creates most of the administration tools you see visible in JumpBox appliances. Ben is a skilled rock climber and took his first tumble this weekend falling 20′ from a face in Queen Creek, AZ. We’re happy to report that Ben is A-OK and confirms that the rope does indeed arrest rapid vertical descent. Ben reps the Nintendo wii game system for JumpBox.

Sean - COO: Sean waters the plants in the office and makes sure checks clear. Sean is the third Phoenix native in the company and finds it amusing when he has to write about himself in third-person. Sean is a little behind the times and currently represents the antiquated PS2 game system for JumpBox.

So that’s the company behind the technology. The “team” is actually considerably larger as you’ll see if you browseour forums and we’re extra-stoked to have a beekeeper on board. Below is a picture of the “Buzz Board” in our office. When people download a JumpBox, we present a survey and at the very end there’s an option to upload a photo so we can see the people who are using our stuff and theoretically talking about it. This gives us a more personal connection with our users and lets us put faces to our users. If you’ve already downloaded one and want your picture up on the board here’s a direct link to that photo upload page. Our team looks forward to working with you to build more useful stuff.